Giovanni Verga, the unpublished letters to his grandchildren: “I write novels but I don’t eat them…”

“I love novels but I don’t eat them.” So she wrote Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) highlighting the difference between the sentimental (“pernicious”) novels that his niece Caterina wanted to read and the realist and naturalist novels that the father of Verismo, who had now reached a creative crisis, aspired to. An ideological and formal distance between the two novel genres, underlined by the author of The Malavoglia e Master Don Gesualdo through this statement: “The novel acts like a lens, it enlarges the view, it distorts the judgment of life”.

This is the content of the unpublished letter that the great Sicilian novelist wrote on 11 February 1905 and which has now become part of the volume Letters to grandchildren, with the critical edition of Giuseppe Sorbello published by Interlinea, the publishing house that is editing Verga’s complete correspondence, promoted by the Committee for the National Edition of Giovanni Verga’s Works and by Verga Foundation chaired by Gabriella Alfieriwith the Ministry of Culture.

When he wrote this letter, Verga had recently completed the narrative reworking of what will in fact be his last novel published, From yours to mine (1906). In that winter of 1905 the writer admonished Caterina as a gentleman of his time: “I have to tell you something else, dear niece, and let me tell you that I am your first and best friend. Uncle Mario told me that you want novels to read. I am into novels but I don’t eat them, and I know how pernicious they are, even the best ones, even the most innocent ones, and those that book speculation passes under the passport of the Library of Young Girls especially, for the tender and inexperienced imaginations. The novel acts like the lens, it enlarges the view, distorts the judgment of life”.

Giovanni Verga continued thus addressing his niece Caterina: “When you are older, and can judge better with your own head, you will find here as many novels as you want, which cannot harm you; but for now, listen to me, ask me for all the books you want on history, on travel, which are more entertaining more or less Jolande’s nonsense, and leave novels of this kind alone to concierges and silly girls”. Letters to grandchildren are collected 147 letters from Giovanni Verga to his grandchildren Giovannino, Caterina and Marco, children of his brother Pietro. The letters cover a chronological span that goes from 1897 to 1921: the season of masterpieces is closed and the long period of “literary silence” opens in which the artistic and existential parable of the mature writer intersects with the affectionate words, the reproaches and new duties towards his grandchildren, of whom he becomes guardian when both parents are orphaned.

The letters bring out a new point of view from which to observe Verga, as the various passages of his biography can now be reread in light of the writer’s private dimension, also in relation to travels and contemporary political events, in particular the drama of Great War. In one of the last letters (6 October 1918), the Spanish flu epidemic that followed the conclusion of the First World War made its appearance: and the flu was the cause of Caterina’s death in the first days of 1919.

Caterina’s mourning was certainly among the causes of Verga’s gloom, who in recent years had had to endure, in addition to the death of two grandchildren, the disappearance of dear friends such as Emilio Treves e Luigi Capuana. Solitude becomes Verga’s ultimate aspiration: “I who know life, and know myself, could only be alone, alone, alone”.