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The Scientific and the Pseudo-Scientific in the Works of Luigi Capuana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Hilda L. Norman
Hilda L. Norman*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Luigi Capuana has experienced in his literary reputation what the philosopher-father of Pirandello's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore experienced in his moral reputation: just as the Pirandellian character became “fixed” in the mind of his step-daughter as a highly immoral man because of one unfortunate contretemps, so Capuana has become “fixed” in the minds of most students of Italian literature as a verista because of a few years of ardent enthusiasm for Zola and his materialistic methods. In Italy, verismo (naturalism) appeared first in Sicilian dress in the works of Giovanni Verga and Capuana. This new type of local literature dealing with the peasant classes, and well-named campanilismo, then spread to many other Italian provinces and was developed by a large group of authors. It is true that Capuana was indeed the banditore del verismo, loudly proclaiming the excellence of Zola's theories and the brilliance of their exemplification in Verga's Nedda (1874) and succeeding stories. But what is too often forgotten is that Capuana is of equal importance in other literary movements, and that he himself rebelled at being too narrowly thought of as a verista.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 1938 , pp. 869 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

1 “Domando la parola,” Cronache letterarie (Catania, 1899), p. 248.

2 Libri e teatro (Catania, 1892), p. 75.

3 Domando la parola, op. cit., p. 248.

4 A. Momigliano, Storia della letteratura italiana (Milan, 1936), p. 600.

5 First published in Florence in La Nazione (1865).

6 (Rome, 1892). Gli “ismi” contemporanei (Catania, 1898), pp. 273 ff.

7 For bibliographical details see A. Pellizzari, Il pensiero e l'arte di Luigi Capuana Biblioteca rara, 2a serie (Naples, 1919).

8 Luigi Capuana (Catania, 1922).

9 W. H. Hammond's principal works are: Diseases of the Nervous System (New York, 1876), translated into French in 1879 and into Italian in 1880; Spiritualism and Allied Causes and Conditions of Nervous Derangement (New York, 1876); Cerebral Hyperaemia (New York, 1879). Unless Capuana read English, which I have not been able to ascertain, he could not have used the second or third works mentioned, as there is no evidence that they were translated either into French or Italian.

10 Seven Famous Novels (New York, 1934), p. 113.—This story appeared originally in English in 1896 and was translated into French by Davray in the Mercure de France (1901). Capuana turned it to account again in composing his Re Bracalone, romanzo fiabesco (Florence, 1905). The King visits the forest of the great Magician, where scientific experiments are carried on, where the animals seem human, and grotesque varieties of plants are scientifically created.

11 Ibid., p. 513.—First Published in 1901, this story was translated into French in the same year and into Italian in 1910.

12 Was it necessary for Capuana to have known English to have had access to Wells' books? In almost all instances of probable imitation, Capuana could have read the work in a French or an Italian translation. It is difficult to be sure of this in the case of a few of the short stories, as it is difficult to ascertain what stories were grouped in the various collections or were published sporadically in foreign periodicals. Translations of Wells' short stories began appearing in collections in France in 1901 with Une histoire des temps à venir, suivie de Récits de l'age de pierre, doubtless Tales of Space and Time (1899), by H. D. Davray (Mercure de France). The same publishing house brought out another translation by Davray in 1902 entitled Les pirates de la mer et autres nouvelles, probably containing the stories collected in English under the title The Plattner Story and Others (1897). In 1905 appeared in Italy Novelle straordinarie (Treves) which contains part of the stories from the Stolen Bacillus and the Plattner collections. In the same year appeared another collection called I predoni del mare, translated by P. de Luca (Milan, Vallardi) probably containing other stories from the above-mentioned collections. A collection with the same title appeared in 1929, translated by G. d'Arezzo (Venice, Nuova Italia) but this contains a selection of stories from four English collections and probably is unlike the earlier one. In 1909 was published in France a translation by A. Laurent called L'Ile de l'Aepyornis: nouvelles (Ollendorf) and probably containing the tales from the Stolen Bacillus. In the same year was published a translation by Davray and Kozakiewicz, Douze histoires et un rêve (Mercure de France), evidently the same as Twelve Stories and a Dream. In 1911 the Mercure de France published Effrois et Fantasmagories, by the same translators, and probably a general selection of stories.

13 The Short Stories of H. G. Wells (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929), p. 822.

14 Ibid., p. 816.

15 (London, 1895).—An Italian translation appeared in 1908.

16 Reviewed by Capuana in Libri e teatro (1892).

17 No difficulty arises as to Capuana's access to this story if he read English, for it appeared in 1895 and his own story was written the next year and published in 1897. Possibly the story had appeared in a French magazine. See note 12, above.

18 In The Time Machine and Other Stories (1895). I do not know when this particular story first appeared in French. The Time Machine was translated into Italian in 1902 as Un'esplorazione del futuro, and it seems likely that it suggested to Capuana that part of Re Bracalone (cf. note 10) in which the King projects himself into the future and views our twentieth-century civilization. His Coboldi recall the Morlocks of the Time Machine. There are other elements coming, I think, from Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), which appeared in French in 1905.

19 I sogni (Turin, 1899), p. 153.

20 “Ricordi d'infanzia e di fanciullezza,” Gazetta letteraria (30 Sept., 1893).

21 Lettere alla assente (Rome, 1904), pp. 19 ff.

22 “Le rève et la réalité,” Revue des deux mondes (Jan. 15, 1898), 424 ff.

23 In Twelve Stories and a Dream. Cf. note 12.

24 Lettere alla assente, op. cit., p. 28.

25 Op. cit., p. 349.

26 This story was written in 1873.

27 Diseases of the Nervous System, op. cit., p. 349.

28 In Twelve Stories and a Dream (1903). Cf. note 12.

29 Hammond, Diseases of the Nervous System, op. cit., p. 353.

30 First published in 1883. The text used here is that of Everyman's Library.

31 In Twelve Stories and a Dream. Cf. note 12.

32 (Everyman's Library), p. 20.

33 The Short Stories of H. G. Wells, op. cit., p. 953.

34 Figure intraviste (Rome, 1908), p. 196.

35 (New York, Nelson, 1905), iii, 131.

36 (Turin, 1909).

37 The Plattner Story and Others (1897). Cf. note 12.

38 The article, which is cited on p. 187 of De la Suggestion mentale, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1889) and from which an extensive quotation is made, appeared in the Medical Record, June 21, 1877, and in the Gior. intern, delle scienze mediche, anno v, p. 193.

39 Là-bas (Paris: G. Crès et Cie, 1928), p. 216.

40 In The Stolen Bacillus (1895). Cf. note 12.

41 In Tales of Time and Space (1899). Cf. note 12.

42 First published in the Nuova Antologia cxlii–cxliii (1895). Later published separately (Milan, 1897).

43 In Twelve Stories and a Dream. Cf. note 12.

44 The Short Stories of H. G. Wells, op. cit., p. 882.

45 Later published as La maga in Voluttà di creare.

46 First published in English in 1897. It was translated into Italian by A. Calvino (Rome, 1900), and into French by A. Laurent (Paris, 1901).

47 In Twelve Stories and a Dream. Cf. note 12.

48 For further information on Capuana as a verista, see Paul Arrighi, Le Vérisme (Paris, 1937).