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Sicilian Heart Has Its Reasons
| Article
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21938 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1993 |
1,792 Words |
| Author
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Roberto Severino
Roberto Severino was born in Catania, Sicily, and is
professor of Italian Literature and chair of the Italian
Department at Georgetown University. |
NOTTETEMPO, CASA PER CASA (By night, house by house)
Vincenzo Consolo
Milan: Arnold Mondadori, 1992
175 pp
In the popular imagination, Italy often is compared to a boot--a boot, one may add, that seemingly kicks a triangular island. This image has been construed as Italy's metaphorical rejection of Sicily, a part of itself without which it would not be the country we know but rather a cultural and sociopolitical entity amounting to much less than the sum of its parts.
A less frequent image, but perhaps more to the point when we speak of literature, likens Italy's shape to a stylized tree (perhaps on olive or a wind-bent Roman pine). Its deep roots sip vital lymph from the soil and nourish the vigorous branches and foliage that stretch toward the Alps and northern Europe.
Those who peruse a text on modern Italian narrative will be struck by the number of important Sicilian authors. For those familiar with Italian literature, the idea that Sicily stands at its roots, both synchronically and diachronically, is not farfetched. At the famed Palermo court of Frederick II (1194-1250), the extraordinarily sophisticated Sicilian School of poetry developed as the first center of vernacular Italian literature. After Frederick's death, the banner of Italian literature passed to central Italy, to Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the other great Tuscan writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Because of the number and brilliant contributions of its artists and men of letters, it could be said that Sicily is to Italy what Ireland is to England. Indeed, Italian culture owes an enormous debt to Sicilian authors and playwrights, much as English literature, especially modern literature, is greatly indebted to Irish writers. Sicilian authors, such as the father of Italian realism (a movement known in Italy as Verismo), Giovanni Verga (1840-1922), or Nobel laureate novelist and playwright Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), occupy a significant place in the development of contemporary Italian ethos. They have greatly influenced contemporary Italian writers, including Vincenzo Consolo, winner of the 1992 Strega Prize, Italy's most prestigious literary award, for Nottetempo, casa per casa.
Like the fifteenth-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Mesina, Consolo is a masterly craftsman who has succeeded in penetrating the
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