Rome.)
The “horsy” vocabulary in this story is quite difficult, and the present translator gratefully acknowledges the borrowing of a few technical terms from the above-mentioned “Black Horses” (in Better Think Twice About It And Twelve Other Stories, translated by Arthur and Henrie Mayne, published by John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd, London, 1933)—but even there some of the text is simply omitted! The reader’s indulgence is requested for any technical deficiencies that still remain in the present version after exhausting the aid of all available dictionaries.
“La signora Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero” (Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law) first appeared in the volume of stories E domani, lunedì … (And Tomorrow, Monday …), published by Treves, Milan, 1917. It was included in the (posthumous) fifteenth volume of Novelle per un anno, 1937. It is the source of the three-act play Così è (se vi pare) (Right You Are, If You Think You Are), produced the same year that the story was published. The story has been translated with the title “Signora Frola and Her Son-in-Law, Signor Ponza,” “Mrs. Frola and Her Son-in-Law, Mr. Ponza” and “A Mother-in-Law.”
This is probably the key Pirandello story about the relativity of truth and the impossibility of penetrating other people’s minds. Valdana is also used as the name of a provincial town in the 1909 story “L’illustre estinto” (The Illustrious Deceased). In the above-mentioned story “‘Leonora, addio!’” there is a woman who is unmistakably kept locked up by an insanely jealous husband.
Even though the play based on this story is one of Pirandello’s most important, and was a turning point in his whole career, it is still possible to prefer the original story. Among other things, the play introduces a character who exists merely to speak for the author (like the raisonneur role in nineteenth-century French drama) and who literally, and all too mechanically, has the last laugh at the end of each act. The play turns the son-in-law and mother-in-law into more obviously pathetic characters, and converts the puzzled townspeople into pernicious priers. The fruitless questioning of the son-in-law’s female companion, a secondary element in the story, becomes the all too carefully prepared climax of the play, in which she appears symbolically veiled, changing the whole tone of the proceedings. Above all, the play lacks the extreme charm of the final two paragraphs of the story, in which the relationship of the two main characters is more lovingly described, and in which it is even possible to detect a delicious conspiracy against the reign of reason and the tyranny of truth.
1All dates given in the present volume are those of first publication (for stories and novels) or of first performance (for plays).
2One feature of Italian that cannot be reflected sufficiently in an English version is the variation in the second-person mode of address: from the intimate tu (with second person singular verb forms), through the mildly respectful voi (with second person plural verb forms; no longer in current use), to the fully respectful lei and super-respectful Ella (with third person singular verb forms). In “Lumie di Sicilia” (Citrons from Sicily) the servant switches from voi to lei and back depending on his appraisal of Micuccio’s status; Micuccio says voi to his fiancée’s mother, who says tu to him. In “Una voce” (A Voice), the Marchese’s companion no longer addresses him as lei but as tu after their engagement, whereas at one point she is addressed with a quite sarcastic Ella by the doctor. And so on. Wherever voi is a plural, however (that is, more than one tu), an attempt has been made to indicate this in the English by means of some such device as “the two of you.”
3The name Jeli had already been used in Verga’s important story “Jeli il pastore” (Jeli the Shepherd), in which, moreover, the hero’s wife is named Mara (compare Màlia in the Pirandello story).
4The above discussion of the story reflects what the translator believes to have been Pirandello’s intentions. There is ample evidence in the story, however, to suggest viewing Perazzetti as a homosexual, barely aware of his true leanings, whose “wild imagination” is a mental mechanism for avoiding marriage with at least a plausible excuse to society and to himself.
CAPANNETTA
BOZZETTO SICILIANO
Un’alba come mai fu vista.
Una bimba venne fuori della nera capannetta, coi capelli arruffati sulla fronte e con un fazzoletto rosso-sbiadito in testa.
Mentre andava bottonando la dimessa vesticciola, sbadigliava, ancora abbindolata dal sonno, e guardava: guardava lontano, con gli occhi sbarrati come se nulla vedesse.
In fondo, in fondo, una lunga striscia di rosso infuocato s’intrecciava in modo bizzarro col verde-smeraldo degli alberi, che a lunga distesa lontanamente si perdevano.
Tutto il cielo era seminato di nuvolette d’un giallo croceo, acceso.
La bimba andava sbadatamente, ed ecco … diradandosi a poco a poco una piccola collina che a destra s’innalzava le si sciorina davanti allo sguardo l’immensità delle acque del mare.
La bimba parve colpita, commossa dinanzi a quella scena, e stette a guardar le barchette che volavano su l’onde, tinte d’un giallo pallido.
Era tutto silenzio.—Aliava ancora la dolce brezzolina della notte, che faceva rabbrividire il mare, e s’innalzava lento, lento un blando profumo di terra.
Poco dopo la bimba si volse—vagò per quell’incerto chiarore, e giunta sull’alto del greppo, si sedette.
Guardò distratta la valle verdeggiante, che le rideva di sotto, ed aveva cominciato a cantilenare una delicata canzonetta.
Ma, ad un tratto, come colpita da un’idea, smise di cantare, e con quanta voce aveva in gola, gridò:
—Zi’ Jeli! Oh zi’ Jee …
E una voce grossolana rispose da la valle:
—Ehh …
—Salite su … ché il padrone vi vuole! …
LITTLE HUT
SICILIAN SKETCH
A dawn like none ever seen.
A little girl came out of the small dark hut, with her hair tousled on her forehead and with a faded red kerchief on her head.
While she buttoned up her plain little dress, she was yawning, still confusedly half-asleep, and she was gazing: gazing into the distance, with her eyes wide open as if she saw nothing.
Far away, far away, a long streak of flaming red was strangely interwoven with the emerald green of the trees, which extended a great distance until disappearing from sight a long way off.
The entire sky was spattered with little clouds of a flaming saffron yellow.
The girl was walking inattentively, and there! … as a small hill that rose on the right was gradually lost to her view, the immensity of the waters of the sea was displayed before her eyes.
The girl seemed impressed, moved in the face of that scene, and stopped to look at the small boats that were skimming on the waves, tinged a pale yellow.
All was silence.—The gentle little night breeze was still blowing, creating trembling ripples on the sea, and slowly, slowly a pleasing smell of earth arose.
