FROM FACT INTO FICTION: THE SHORT STORIES OF

RENATO FUCINI

Denis Vincent Reidy

FROM FACT INTO FICTION:

THE SHORT STORIES OF RENATO FUCINI

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Royal Holloway University

of London

DECLARATION

I Denis Vincent Reidy hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration with any other scholar. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. I declare that it does not exceed 100,000 words, including footnotes, but this figure excludes the bibliography, glossary and appendices.

Signed:

Date: 30/10/2014

Abstract “From fact into fiction: The short stories of Renato Fucini”

The Tuscan regional writer Renato Fucini (Monterotondo, [Grosseto], 1843-1921 Empoli), an almost exact contemporary of Giovanni Verga (Catania, 1840-1922 Catania), is principally remembered for his two collections of short stories Le Veglie di Neri (Florence: Barbèra, 1882) and All’Aria Aperta (Florence: Bemporad, 1897) which are set in Tuscany, in the Appennino Pistoiese and the Padule di Fucecchio. When interviewed by the literary critic Pietro Pancrazi, Fucini was asked why his stories were so popular? Fucini replied – “Forse è perchè sono vere” – (“perhaps because they are real”). Since Fucini was writing when the naturalism of Zola had been ‘translated’ into “verismo” (realism) by Verga and Capuana, this thesis explores whether Fucini’s statement could be interpreted literally and whether some of the characters and events described in his stories could have actually existed in real life or really did take place. Apart from other formative influences on Fucini, his official school-inspector’s notebooks are examined for extra ‘unofficial’ jottings which formed the ‘DNA’ of some of his stories and an attempt is made to trace and identify some of the real-life characters on whom the stories were based. Fucini’s close and fruitful relationship with the Tuscan proto-impressionists, the Macchiaioli school of artists including Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini and Francesco Gioli, who produced the first illustrated edition of Le Veglie, (1890) is also examined. Fucini’s major themes, attitude to his characters, their social classes and their interaction and his social engagement are also assessed. To show how accurate and faithful Fucini’s portrayal of life in nineteenth-century Tuscany is in his novelle, his use of language is also analyzed. The thesis is accompanied by illustrations and a Glossary to provide further evidence of the fidelity of Fucini’s Toscanità, and of placing him more prominently within the birth and development of the Italian realist school.

Acknowledgements

My sincere and profuse thanks should be extended to many - in particular, to Dottoressa Giovanna Lazzi of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Dottoressa Maria Teresa Fogolari of the Biblioteca della Diocesi di Livorno, Dottor Maurizio Vivarelli of the Biblioteca Fortiguerriana at Pistoia, and also to Professor Jane Everson for her encouragement and support in attempting to put my research on Fucini into the public domain. Last, and by no means least, my sincere and special thanks are due to Dr Giuliana Pieri for her unfailing support and encouragement and very sound and practical advice, in short, for displaying all the qualities one would expect in the ideal supervisor.

Last, and again, by no means least, I would also like to record my sincere and grateful thanks to my wife Mariella, and to our children Timothy and Francesca, for their patience, support and understanding while undertaking this stimulating project.

Table of contents

Declaration

Abstract

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter One: Renato Fucini (1843-1921) - An introduction and formative influences

1.1. Fucini and literary criticism to date

1.1.1 The Sonetti in vernacolo pisano

1.1.2 Napoli a Occhio Nudo

1.1.3 The Poesie in lingua

1.1.4 The short stories Le Veglie di Neri and All’Aria Aperta - Le Veglie di Neri

1.1.5 All’Aria Aperta

1.1.6 Fucini’s autobiographical works Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento

1.2. Fucini’s place in the Italian realist school

1.3. The spread of realism and the rise of verismo/realism in Italy

1.4. Fucini and Verga

Chapter Two: The principal themes in Fucini’s short stories, his treatment of social classes and his socio-political engagement

2.1. The circumstances which led Fucini to embark upon a literary career

2.1.1 Fucini in the Appennino Pistoiese and his School-Inspector’s notebooks

2.2. Principal and recurrent themes in Fucini’s novelle

2.2.1 The theme of Hardship

2.2.2 The theme of Death

2.2.3 The effects of external factors and external forces on small, tightly-knit communities in rural Tuscany - The effect of military-service

2.2.4 The effects of migration and other external factors on communities

2.2.5 Superstition and religious fervour of Fucini’s lower-class characters

2.2.6 The general exploitation of the lower orders by the middle classes

2.2.7 Fucini’s anticlericalism

2.2.8 The faults of Fucini’s lower-class characters

2.3. Was Fucini politically and socially engaged in his novelle?

Chapter Three: Some aspects of Fucini’s narrative techniques, his Language and his portrayal of nineteenth-century Tuscany in the novelle

3.1. Fucini’s narrative techniques in the novelle

3.2.1 Fucini’s technique of the novella rinarrata

3.2.2 The use of more veristic techniques in the novelle

3.2.3 Non first-person singular narration in Le Veglie and All’Aria Aperta

3.2.4 The role and function of the ‘informant’ in the novelle

3.2.5 Fucini’s use of the flashback technique

3.2.6 Literary echoes in the novelle

3.2.7 Fucini’s use of the indirect and the direct free style

3.2.8 Fucini’s language in the novelle

3.2.9 How accurate a picture does Fucini paint of fin-de-siècle Tuscany in the novelle?

Chapter Four: Fucini and the Macchiaioli School of artists

4.1 The foundation of the Macchiaioli as a Movement and as a School

4.2 Fucini and the Macchiaioli

4.3 The first illustrated edition of Le Veglie di Neri

4.4 Fucini’s impressionistic narrative technique

Conclusion

Introduction

The Tuscan regional writer Renato Fucini (1843-1921) is principally remembered for his two collections of short stories, Le Veglie di Neri (Florence: Barbèra, 1882) and All’Aria Aperta (Florence: Bemporad, 1897). Fucini was an almost exact contemporary of Giovanni Verga (1840-1922), the greatest Italian realist writer of his generation. Although there is no record that both writers ever met, tangible evidence exists to show that they admired each other greatly and held each other’s works in very high regard. They held a brief correspondence and, as one would expect, Fucini informed Verga that he had read and admired the latter’s novelle in Vita dei Campi (1880) which contains the famous letter to Salvatore Farina prefacing L’amante di Gramigna, in which Verga expresses some of his views on writing. Fucini had clearly read Verga’s novelle and was probably influenced by them when writing his own stories. However, Verga’s genuine admiration of Fucini’s novelle, particularly those in Le Veglie di Neri and the debt that Verga owed to Fucini, a debt which Verga acknowledged publicly, is generally, far less known.

The literary critic, Pietro Pancrazi, was granted an interview by Fucini in 1919. This interview was important and informative, if not seminal, but was not published until 1937, a full sixteen years after Fucini’s death. At one crucial point during this interview, Pancrazi asked Fucini- ‘Com’è, che le sue novelle piacciono quando si ha quindici anni, e poi piacciono di più a trenta?’ After a few moments of reflection, Fucini replied – ‘Forse è che son vere’. Since Fucini was writing at a time when the Naturalism and Realism of Zola had been adapted by Verga and Capuana, and knowing that Fucini had read their views on writing, as soon as I read this interview I immediately wondered whether Fucini’s reply to Pancrazi, that his novelle were real, ‘vere’, could be interpreted literally. As we will see in Chapters Two, Three and Four and the Conclusion of this thesis, in ‘Come nacque la Scampagnata’ Fucini confirms that many of the characters and original ‘types’ and many of the events, anecdotes, phenomena and aspects of life in the Tuscan contado such as the migration of flocks to Maremma, the Tuscan system of mezzadria, the presence of battelli in the Appennino Pistoiese as well as Tuscan modi di dire and Tuscan dialect words which he recorded in his official notebooks during his tours of duty as a school inspector, in the Appennino Pistoiese, were based on characters he had encountered in real life and that similarly, some of the events described in his novelle were also based on events which had actually occurred in real life. Some of these characters and events jotted down in Fucini’s notebooks, inspired or were incorporated, at a later stage, into some of his stories including Lo spaccapietre, Vanno and Tornan di Maremma, Il battello, Passaggio memorabile, Sereno e nuvole and La pipa di Batone (to name but a few) in a similar fashion to the process described for Scampagnata:

Ero pieno di ricordi, di scene, di aneddoti e di tipi originali incontrati nelle mie deliziose escursioni sull’Appennino pistoiese; ma non avevo mai pensato a scriverli... Avrei voluto fare di più, ma forse avrei fatto male. Avrei voluto aggiungere tante e tante pennellate vivacissime che mi rimasero, prudentemente, nel cervello e nella penna. Ho detto “prudentemente” e ho adoperato il vocabolo giusto perchè molte, anzi quasi tutte quelle pennellate, sebbene colte dal vero, [my italics] sarebbero sembrate non soltanto non vere, ma neanche verosimili.

In my opinion, this affords us considerable insight into what Fucini means by ‘vero’- for Fucini ‘vero’/‘vere’signifies that some, or part of his stories, are based on real life characters, that is to say on characters who really existed and he had actually met in real life, and on events which had taken place or had really occurred in real life, ‘colte dal vero’ on the one hand, and ‘verosimili’ which can be most accurately translated as verisimilar, on the other. In other words, Fucini implies that by attempting to gild the lily by adding extra or even unnecessary, excessive or even superfluous ‘pennellate’, a writer and, in particular, a realist writer, can run the risk of compromising il ‘vero’ and imparting inverisimilitude to a character or to events which even have their basis in fact- or in Fucini’s view, on events and characters which are real- ‘vero’/‘vere’. We will examine the two words ‘vero’ and ‘verosimili’ throughout this thesis as and when appropriate in our assessment of Fucini’s place as a Tuscan verista in the tradition of the Italian realist school.

No other literary critic appears to have considered the possibility that some of Fucini’s novelle may well have their basis in fact which forms a major theme and emphasis of this thesis. Since few are aware that Verga owed a public debt of gratitude to Fucini, and mindful of the fact that no monograph on Fucini exists in English, an examination of the ‘verità’ of Fucini’s novelle (or their verisimilitude) and the re-establishment of his rightful and correct place as a Tuscan realist writer in the tradition of Italian verismo is long overdue.

Even at this early stage of research, it was clear that locating and providing the evidence to sustain and prove this theory would be difficult and would entail considerable research in numerous archives in Tuscany. Each chapter of this thesis provides further evidence that Fucini was a Tuscan realist writer who based many of his novelle on people who really existed, or on events which had actually occurred, and consequently, many of his stories which have their basis in fact, have been adapted, or slightly altered into fiction, for various reasons, which we will examine. Moreover, if this can be established, Fucini’s novelle could be regarded as ‘vere’or perhaps, even verisimilar snapshots of life in northern Tuscany, especially in the Appennino Pistoiese and in the nearby Padule di Fucecchio, the setting for many of the novelle, during the latter part of the Ottocento.

Verga and Fucini had much in common. Apart from firmly embracing veristic principles and sharing the general disillusion many Italians, particularly contemporary Italian artists and writers, experienced after the Unification of Italy had been achieved, since many believed that a high proportion of the changes and reforms promised before Unification had neither been fulfilled nor delivered - both writers came from relatively comfortable backgrounds and both received a university education; Verga read law at Catania, Fucini agriculture at Pisa. Both served in the Guardia Nazionale. Both lived and worked in Florence - Verga in 1865 and then periodically, from 1869 to 1871 - Fucini from 1865 to 1872. Both were members of Florentine literary salons and both often visited the Caffè Michelangiolo, the celebrated literary cafè frequented by the Macchiaioli school of artists by whom they were both befriended. Both wrote their first short story in Florence; for Verga this was Nedda, bozzetto siciliano in 1874, while Fucini published his first novella, Il Matto delle giuncaje, bozzetto padulano in 1876. In Fucini’s personal copy of Verga’s Vita dei Campi (held in the family library at their villa at Dianella, near Empoli) which contains the important letter to Salvatore Farina prefacing L’amante di Gramigna, I noticed Fucini had underlined some of Verga’s text in this letter and had highlighted the following sentences:

Caro Farina, eccoti non un racconto, ma l’abbozzo di un racconto. Esso almeno avrà il merito di esser brevissimo, e di esser storico- un documento umano, come dicono oggi; interessante forse per te, e per tutti coloro che studiano nel gran libro del cuore. Io te lo ripeterò così come l’ho raccolto pei viottoli dei campi, press’a poco colle medesime parole semplici e pittoresche della narrazione popolare, e tu veramente preferirai di trovarti faccia a faccia col fatto nudo e schietto, senza stare a cercarlo fra le linee del libro, attraverso la lente dello scrittore.

This was tangible proof that Fucini had not only read Vita dei Campi but had also read Verga’s letter to Farina and was profoundly influenced by it. After teaching at the Scuole Tecniche at Pistoia from 1876, Fucini was promoted to the post of Inspector of schools in the Appennino Pistoeise and the Padule di Fucecchio area in 1879. This new post, which he held for twenty-one years, required him to visit schools under his jurisdiction and in his Circondario, and to make extensive notes in his official school-inspector’s notebooks on schools (particularly on their physical condition), on teachers, and school-children and their performance. Fucini adopted some of Verga’s views on writing as his own personal manifesto, or modus operandi, for his own writing because, he too, adopted the theory of the bozzetto / abbozzo. Moreover, Fucini must have soon concluded that during his lengthy tours of inspection, which he conducted for the most part, on foot, ‘pei viottoli dei campi’, – he was meeting, at first-hand, real people living in this area of Tuscany and was listening to and recording in his notebooks the ‘parole semplici e pittoresche della narrazione popolare’ from the lips of the humble orders of society he saw, heard and spoke to on a daily basis.

The second substantial piece of evidence came to light in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, on the undersigned’s discovery of Fucini’s unpublished school-inspector’s notebooks, complete with his manuscript annotations. These had been mis-shelved and, consequently, had lain undetected since Fucini’s manuscripts were donated by his grandchildren to the Riccardiana in the 1950s. I discovered that while making extensive official notes on the shools he inspected, Fucini also added unofficial notes and jottings in the very same notebooks. Fucini recorded interesting anecdotes and details of people he met on his travels: a stonebreaker, certainly the inspiration for his story Lo Spaccapietre, groups of montanini migrating with their flocks and herds which were to inspire his Vanno in Maremma and Tornan di Maremma, and numerous other episodes, curious facts, dialect words, pistoiesismi, sgrammaticature, Tuscan modi di dire, and events from real life which were often later incorporated into some of his novelle. This was the first tangible evidence that some of Fucini’s stories could well have their basis in fact.

Research on Fucini was continued in archives at Massa Marittima, Pracchia, Cintolese, Cutigliano, San Marcello Pistoiese and at the Biblioteca Fortiguerriana in Pistoia and the Biblioteca della Diocesi di Livorno which provided firm evidence on the real-life identity of some of Fucini’s characters and how he transformed and adopted fact into fiction.

In Chapter One an examination is made of the formative influences on Fucini - and what initially led him to embark upon a literary career, and how, through adverse circumstances, he expanded his literary career on a more permanent basis. An examination is made of Fucini’s background and information is assessed on how these formative influences produced the DNA for some of his novelle. Fucini’s Sonetti in vernacolo pisano, Napoli a Occhio Nudo, his first major prose narrative work, his Poesie in lingua, and his autobiographical works Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento are also examined. This section also traces the critical fortune of these works with particular emphasis on his novelle in Le Veglie di Neri and All’Aria Aperta, and their reception by the most prominent literary critics. An attempt is then made to re-assess and to relocate more accurately Fucini’s place within the birth and development of the Italian realist school.

An account of how verismo came to Italy and Fucini’s relationship with Verga is then given. The impact of Verga’s views on writing (outlined in his letter to Farina) on Fucini, is also assessed. An initial reference is also made to Fucini’s official school-inspector’s notebooks, but these are analyzed more closely in Chapter Two.

Chapter Two examines the principal and recurring themes in Le Veglie di Neri and All’Aria Aperta, together with Fucini’s treatment of the various social classes in his novelle and his socio-political engagement. An assessment is made as to how his themes such as death, hardship, military-service, superstition, poverty and migration impacted on tightly-knit communities in rural Tuscany at the time. Apart from illustrating the extent to which the unofficial jottings in his inspector’s notebooks show how keen and accurate an observer Fucini was of life in rural Tuscany, the chapter will also reveal how some of these jottings – which include notes on interesting types, anecdotes and characters he met in real life on his tours of inspection – were later incorporated into several of his novelle; or how, in several instances, Fucini transformed fact into fiction. His depiction of Tuscan society, divided into lower, middle and upper-class characters, in a strictly social hierarchy, and how these social classes mutually react and interact upon each other, is also assessed. The varying views of critics and their interpretations of Fucini’s relationship with his characters are also analyzed. An assessment is also made of Fucini’s socio-political engagement in his stories.

In Chapter Three a brief account of how verismo came and spread to Italy and how Verga became the greatest exponent of verismo is provided. A brief analysis of Verga’s language in his novelle, especially his use of Sicilian dialect, but particularly his use of toscanismi and fiorentinismi in his novelle is also given. A few of Fucini’s narrative techniques employed in the novelle, especially his use of the novella rinarrata, are analyzed. Fucini’s use of language, particularly his use of Tuscan and various Tuscan dialects, pistoiesismi, Tuscan modi di dire and sgrammaticature, are also examined. In order to assist the reader in evaluating just how authentic Fucini’s use of Tuscan language and Tuscan dialects is, an extensive Glossary has been provided, together with a colour-coded breakdown of the dialects, for the convenience of the reader in Appendix Three. The Glossary has also been expanded to include not only language but any example of local currency, weights, measures, periodicals, customs, etc., which are peculiar, even unique, to Tuscany, which serve to confirm just how genuine Fucini’s Toscanità in his stories really is. An assessment is then made of how accurate a picture Fucini paints of life in nineteenth-century rural Tuscany at the time, based on internal evidence in the novelle and on other external factors, and whether it is an objective description of what life was like during this crucial period of Italy’s history.

The very close and fruitful relationship between Fucini and the Tuscan school of proto-impressionist artists, working in Florence in the 1860s, referred to as the Macchiaioli, is examined in Chapter Four. We will trace how Fucini first met the Macchiaioli, some of whom included his life-long friend Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini, Francesco and Luigi Gioli, Vittorio Corcos and Eugenio Cecconi, at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence in the 1860s and also at Diego Martelli’s villa, at Castiglioncello. We will then examine the theories and the artistic aims of this school and how the Macchiaioli were partially influenced by members of the Barbizon school. We will also trace how the Macchiaioli were commissioned to illustrate Fucini’s literary bozzetti and novelle which were initially published, singly, in journals and newspapers, and later in the first illustrated edition of Le Veglie di Neri. We will also assess how Fucini, through the very ‘painterly’ narrative style and the visual images he conjures up in many of his stories, and by his use of literary brushstrokes or pennellate (much admired by Verga) produced mental descriptions which recall the images and painting style of many of the Macchiaioli artists who illustrated his Veglie. These artists were not only close friends of Fucini but the relationship, synergy and general interaction between artist and writer was a very fruitful, two-way process. Some of the illustrations by the Macchiaioli, specially commissioned to accompany the first illustrated edition of Le Veglie, in order to demonstrate this synergy between Fucini’s written word and the Macchiaioli’s images have been included in Appendix Four.

In the Conclusion an assessment is made of what evidence exists to establish whether Fucini was a close adherent of Verga’s views on writing and a faithful exponent of verismo, and whether he based some of his stories on events which had actually occurred and on people who had really existed. At this stage it will be possible to conclude whether some of Fucini’s novelle were real (vere) and had their basis in fact, and whether Fucini actually did turn fact into fiction in his novelle. On the basis of new evidence, an attempt is then made to re-assess and to relocate with greater accuracy Fucini’s place within the birth and development of the Italian realist school.

All references to Fucini’s manuscripts, unless otherwise stated, are to the manuscripts held in the Fondo Fucini at the Riccardiana, where Fucini was appointed Director in 1900. Similarly, all page references to quotations, unless otherwise stated, are to the edition of Fucini’s complete works Tutti gli Scritti, published by Trevisini, in Milan, in 1963. All quotations, whether from manuscript or printed sources, are faithfully reproduced as in the original – as are quotation marks, diacritics, or round brackets; however, any text in square brackets indicates text which does not appear in the original or has been subject to some editorial intervention by the undersigned.

Chapter One-Renato Fucini (1843-1921) - An introduction and formative influences

In this chapter the reader is provided with Fucini’s biographical details and background and an assessment is made of the formative influences which led Fucini to take up writing initially, as an amateur, and, later on in life, the circumstances which led him to take up writing on a more professional basis.

Renato Fucini was born at Monterotondo, near Massa Marittima, in the Province of Grosseto, on 8 April, 1843, while his father, David, a medical-doctor, was employed by the Commissione Sanitaria, on a project to attempt the subjugation and eventual eradication of malaria in Maremma, and other parts of Tuscany, together with another medical-doctor, Michele Carducci, Giosuè Carducci’s father. We should recall that malaria was prevalent in many parts of Italy at the time and was still a problem well into the twentieth century when Mussolini attempted to have the Pontine Marshes drained. David Fucini, who was a carbonaro as well as a patriotic liberal or, more correctly, a Garibaldino, and consequently, extremely anticlerical, was also by profession a medico condotto (a panel-doctor) in rural Tuscany, and is lovingly recalled in Fucini’s story Dolci ricordi which contains numerous biographical and autobiographical elements. Apart from a brief trip to Switzerland and Germany, his brief visit to Naples to write Napoli a Occhio Nudo, a trip to Sicily and the occasional visit to Rome, Fucini did not travel extensively outside his native Tuscany. Indeed, he appears to have spent most of his life in Tuscany: in Maremma, Livorno, Pisa and Pistoia, where he taught Italian at the Scuole Tecniche, and where, from 4 November 1879, for twenty-one years he was based as a school-inspector, and then in Florence and Empoli. The fact that Fucini worked for such a long period in the Appennino Pistoiese and the Padule di Fucecchio, where his novelle are set, confirms that he was very familiar with this part of Tuscany and, as we shall see, he relied heavily in his fictional work on his real-life experience of these areas and their inhabitants. In 1900, after his long career as a school-inspector and because of his fame as a writer, he was appointed Director of the Riccardiana. Fucini resigned from this post in 1906 and spent his retirement at his numerous properties - an apartment in Piazza San Lorenzo, in Florence, and houses at Empoli, Vinci and Castiglioncello (La Cuccetta). His later life, however, was spent principally at the family villa and estate at Dianella, near Empoli, until his death there on 25 February 1921.

Fucini’s literary education was not particularly remarkable; he read the Latin and Greek classics and was particularly fond of the works of Lucretius, and the Italian classics. Without wishing to detract from Fucini’s knowledge of foreign languages, since he knew some French, a little German, Russian and some Portuguese, he knew a little English, the works of foreign writers, with the exception of a few works by writers including Flaubert, De Maupassant, Zola, Camoens, Goethe, Shakespeare and Dickens, are not well represented in his library.

Even at the relatively young age of eleven, Fucini was inspired by his reading of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato. These readings clearly had a profound effect and proved to be a distinct formative influence on him, as we learn from a passage from Foglie al Vento:

Le mie prime letture furono i due poeti epici, Ariosto e Tasso, che io spesso portavo meco nelle mie gite campestri e che di preferenza andavo a leggere nei boschi scegliendo vallicelle remote e ombre solenni e spiazzi erbosi contornati da quercie antiche, le quali mi rammentassero i luoghi descritti nel canto che leggevo e dove mi sembrava vedere i miei eroi, sentirne le voci e il suono delle armi, tanto mi rappresentavo vive quelle scene alla immaginazione.

Fucini also refers to a manuscript poem, entitled La Betulia liberata, written in Livornese dialect, which was never published and is no longer extant, which he found by chance, which was, in all probability, a parody of Metastasio’s religious drama of the same name:

in un vecchio armadio, inciampai anche in uno sgualcito quaderno contenente un poemetto manoscritto, in vernacolo livornese, non mi ricordo se in sestine o in ottave, intitolato La Betulia liberata.

Era roba un po’oscena, ma dettata con molta facilità e con spirito bastante a dilettarmi grandemente. La lèssi e la rilèssi finchè non l’ebbi quasi tutta imparata a memoria. E forse quella lettura gettò nel mio piccolo cervello quei semi che poi fruttificarono coi sonetti in vernacolo pisano. In quei giorni, avevo circa undici anni oscillando nelle mie ispirazioni fra la Gerusalemme e la Betulia scrissi un poemetto in sestine intitolato la Soviglianeide dove rappresentavo gare e battaglie fra i due paesi vicini a Dianella: Spicchio e Sovigliana, e dove mettevo in scena a far parte di grandi eroi i più bassi e ridicoli idioti di que’ due borghetti.

This early work clearly inspired Fucini to write his Soviglianeide, his first juvenile work, at the tender age of eleven, taking as his inspiration the inhabitants of two rival towns, Spicchio and Sovigliana, which are close to Empoli. As one can see by the statement Fucini recalls in Foglie al Vento, these works were to sow the first seeds in his young mind of what were later to flourish and become his Sonetti in vernacolo pisano. This confirms a budding interest in the comic, if not ridiculous inhabitants of the hamlets and small towns with their campanilismo and petty rivalry, which can be found in stories such as La fatta and Scampagnata in Le Veglie and in Il monumento, Castore e Polluce, La fonte di Pietrarsa, La visita del prefetto and Fra due litiganti in All’Aria Aperta. Indeed, Sovigliana is specifically named by Fucini in La visita del prefetto, his novella from All’Aria Aperta.

On 10 November 1859, aged sixteen, Fucini visited the University of Pisa to try and enrol to read medicine there as his father had done. However, not having passed the requisite entrance exams in medicine, he was offered the choice of studying either veterinary science or agriculture. He opted for agriculture because the subject interested him greatly and he deemed it useful in assisting him in running the family estate and vineyard at Dianella which he knew he would eventually inherit on his father’s death. Fucini’s qualifications were not sufficiently high for him to read for a degree in agriculture, but he qualified nonetheless and graduated with a diploma (a licenza, in fact) and he later humorously described this licenza as being in ‘Agraria e concimi’. Fucini maintained that the four years spent at the University of Pisa were the happiest of his life. Here he met writers including Giuseppe Giusti, Domenico Guerrazzi, Luigi Guadagnoli and numerous other intellectuals and artists at the Caffè dell’Ussero, the celebrated literary Caffè in Pisa. While in Pisa Fucini also began writing poems in standard Italian, as opposed to dialect, imitating the style of Giusti and Guerrazzi, whose poetry, together with Carducci’s, was deemed to be the height of literary fashion at the time, together with several anecdotes and humorous verses on his fencing-master, Cesare Milloschi. Naturally, the seeds for his sonnets in Pisan dialect were also sown and began to take root during this period, and Fucini began learning Pisan dialect as well as any native Pisan. However, he appears not to have commenced writing his Sonetti in vernacolo pisano until he had left Pisa. Having obtained his licenza in agriculture in 1865, in order to live independently, Fucini had to find a job as soon as possible. Unfortunately, no opportunities presented themselves in Pisa. However, since the newly created capital of Italy had been transferred from Turin to Florence in June of that year, he found gainful employment at the Ufficio Tecnico Comunale in Florence working for a certain Ingegner Petrini. Like many similarly minded young men in Florence who held any intellectual aspirations, he began to frequent some of the more fashionable literary salons and cafés, principally the Caffè Michelangiolo and the Caffè dei Risorti, as he narrates in Acqua Passata. His sonnets, the product of a finely-tuned ear which fastened on to the descriptions of famished members of the Pisan lower orders (the popolino), stranded by the flooding of the River Arno, narrated, at first-hand, by Ingegner Olinto Squarcialupi, were successful because, apart from being tragi-comic and amusing, they were also considered to be ‘improntati d’un realismo da bassi fondi di Pisa’ and were felt to be real and true to life or what Fucini would have described as ‘vere’. Fucini might be suspected by some of having exaggerated slightly when he described the very positive reaction to his Sonetti in vernacolo pisano; however, there can be little doubt that the sonnets were very favourably received. Within a short time he was fêted and, perhaps, a little to his surprise, he was soon accepted as a promising writer with considerable literary potential by Giambattista Giorgini, Emilio Broglio, and later, by Giovanni Prati, Edmondo De Amicis, Aleardo Aleardi, Rafaello Foresi, Giovanni Procacci the Director of the Scuole Techniche at Pistoia and Giuseppe Rigutini.

Fucini began to be accepted by Florentine polite society and received invitations to the literary salons hosted by the Uziellis, the Puccis and especially to the literary salon of Ubaldino and Emilia Peruzzi, arguably the most celebrated Florentine salon at that time. It was at the Peruzzi’s salon where he was first introduced to Ferdinando Martini, who was writing for Il Fanfulla at that time, one of whose editors was Luigi Capuana whom Fucini was to meet later on in life. Martini later assisted Fucini in securing a teaching-post at Pistoia when he became Minister for Education in Giolitti’s Government. A few of Fucini’s sonnets began gradually to appear in Il Fanfulla and Il Fanfulla della Domenica. Martini later introduced Fucini to politicians and writers such as Gino Capponi, Sydney Sonnino, Leopoldo Franchetti and Pasquale Villari, who, in turn, introduced him to Giambattista Giorgini, Manzoni’s son-in-law. Indeed, Fucini records that Manzoni liked his sonnets when Giorgini brought Manzoni a copy of them. Fucini recalls that Manzoni was very complimentary about his Sonetti in vernacolo. Fucini was later to meet the Martelli brothers, Diego and Roberto, from nearby Vinci, who, in turn, introduced him to the Macchiaioli artists, many of whom were to remain life-long friends. The close relationship between Fucini and the Macchiaioli is examined in Chapter Four.

1865 proved to be a momentous year for Florentines in general and for Fucini in particular. It was the year that the capital of Italy was transferred from Turin to Florence, for six years, until its final move, to Rome, on 8 July 1871, in accordance with Cavour’s original plan. The period when Florence was the capital of Italy was one of great opportunity for Florentines and it provided Fucini with his first job. However, the period was also one of enormous challenge and great upheaval. Ministries, embassies, archives, new housing for civil servants, ancillary workers and their families, schools, the national library, theatres, and a new market and abattoir had to be built in order to accommodate the new government departments. Indeed, in the decade between 1861 and 1871, the population of Florence grew by a full thirty-three per cent. Giuseppe Brogi, the principal architect of the very ambitious project, was faced with a daunting task. His solution was to look to the previous capital, Turin, and also to Baron Haussmann’s ample boulevards for Paris. In order to provide Florence and the newly created State of Italy, which, at precisely this time ‘was a State looking for a Nation’, with a capital worthy of a newly created modern European country, Brogi was forced to create the large ‘viali di circonvallazione’. This ambitious new building-programme, given the limited time available, entailed the systematic and piecemeal demolition of a large proportion of the city’s main mediaeval walls and gates, and the clearing of some parts of the centro storico, especially the area around the Mercato Vecchio, lovingly captured in the paintings of Fabio Borbottini, and Telemaco Signorini, most of which had not changed since the time of Dante, was completely razed to the ground as was the charming old Jewish Quarter near the present day Piazza della Repubblica. Piero Bargellini was not alone in considering the whole project to have been mere architectural philistinism which had served only to cause ‘lo sventramento della città’.

When the capital was finally transferred from Florence to Rome, in 1871, the funding which had supported the expansion of Florence was promptly withdrawn and transferred to the Eternal City. The Comune of Florence, under the direction of the patrician, Ubaldino Peruzzi de Medici, was bankrupted and Peruzzi faced personal financial ruin. Not only were many proud Florentines disillusioned by the transfer, but many felt ashamed - the eyes of the world had been trained on the new Italian capital and many interpreted the transfer of the capital to Rome as a personal affront and a vote of no confidence in them. More seriously, many lost their jobs when the Comune was bankrupted. Fucini was one of the numerous casualties. We will see in Chapters Two and Three that this personal disaster may well have coloured Fucini’s opinion of some classes and members of society when he represented them in his novelle.

1.1 Fucini and literary criticism to date

1.1.1 The Sonetti in vernacolo pisano

One of the first opinions expressed and recorded on Fucini’s work comes from the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, who, writing in a letter dated Florence, 31 May 1871 to his friend, Caroline Ashurst in London, stated:

Vi prego di dare all’Emilia [Ashurst] l’accluso Sonetto. È di un architetto per nome Fucini di Pisa che potrebbe benissimo essere un altro Giusti se avesse una meta che temo non abbia. Egli afferra il lato comico ovunque lo trova e lo reproduce con garbo. I suoi sonetti circolano ms ovunque. Il dialetto che egli usa è il pisano e forse questo non vi permetterà di rilevare la comicità che è finissima.

It would appear that Emilia Ashurst did not appreciate, or may even have misunderstood Fucini’s sonnet entirely, since Mazzini wrote to Emilia soon afterwards, again from Florence, on 5 June 1871:

Carissima Emilia,

E come è mai possible che non afferrate la fine comicità del sonetto di cui vi mandai copia? Già bisognerebbe lo sentiste leggere da un pisano stesso, e sono certo che allora vi parrebbe lapidaria, evidente, calzante. Ma non proprio di scorgere nella quarta strofa l’ufficiale che si desta ad un senso della propria importanza e del proprio potere, e il cane che se ne rimane impassibile dinanzi a tutte quelle minacce osservando quei due e commentando il tutto con uno sprezzante sbadiglio? Ogni piccolo incidente vi è reso in modo caratteristico… .

Mazzini is, perhaps, a little harsh in stating that Fucini has no political engagement in his Cento Sonetti di Neri Tanfucio in vernacolo pisano (an anagrammatic pseudonym of Fucini’s name) and it might be unfair to compare the first attempts of a poet in fieri, who, initially, wrote sonnets in Pisan dialect, primarily for his own amusement and that of his friends, with Giuseppe Giusti, one of Italy’s foremost poets. However, the fact that Fucini’s Sonetti, although only circulated in manuscript in Florence at this time (the first edition, was published in Florence by G. Pellas in 1872), should even have come to Mazzini’s attention and that he should have found time to read them, given his other onerous duties, is, in itself, an eloquent testimony to and confirms the popularity of the Sonetti. It also confirms that Fucini’s account of the great success of his sonnets recorded in Acqua Passata is accurate.

Fucini’s Sonetti were initially published singly in local newspapers and magazines from 1865 onwards. A considerable honour was accorded them when a few were published in Nuova Antologia (May 1871) together with a humorous ‘lezioncina di grammatica pisana’, written specially by Fucini, ‘ad uso degli studiosi’. As soon as the Sonetti were first published, in 1872, they were immediately well received and admired for their charm, freshness, gaiety, realism and originality. They were also appreciated for their humour, simplicity, spontaneity and the tour de force in their closing lines. Ironically, Edmondo De Amicis, whose credentials as a writer and a literary critic were, doubtless, more valid than those of Mazzini, did see similarities in Fucini’s sonnets to the Roman dialect poetry of Belli and compared them favourably with Belli’s:

I sonetti del Fucini sono piccole commedie o piccoli drammi, nei quali due, tre e fin quattro personaggi non solo parlano, ma operano, si muovono, spariscono e ritornano come in una commedia…L’apparizione di questi sonetti a Firenze, fu come lo scoppio d’un fuoco d’artifizio. I primi giraron manoscritti ed eran tutti faceti; i seri vennero dopo… Il Belli ha forse una facoltà d’osservazione più profonda; il Fucini mi par che l’abbia più rapida e più varia: che colga, cioè, una maggiore quantità di cose e di aspetti in un solo punto. Nel sonetto del Belli v’è più unità; quello del Fucini è più animato…Il Fucini ha un granello di più di pazzia artistica. Il Belli è più padrone di sè. I sonetti, il Belli li fa; al Fucini gli scappano.

It is also reassuring to have confirmation in De Amicis’ introductory essay as to just how favourably Fucini’s sonnets were received by all classes of Florentine society. Giovanni Procacci also compared Fucini’s Sonnets favourably with those of Berni; Guido Capponi encouraged him to embark upon a literary career, just as Domenico Guerrazzi had done, endeavouring to persuade Fucini to adopt a more moralizing stance on contemporary society. Pietro Fanfani, Mario Foresi, Ferdinando Martini and later, Mario Apollonio praised Fucini, identifying in him the potential of being, or of becoming, a second Giusti. Croce in an important essay on Fucini wrote the following:

‘L’arte di Renato Fucini..è affatto libera da quegli sforzi ambiziosi, da quelle imitazioni letterarie, da quelle gonfiature e montature, che si trovano spesso anche in artisti grandi, giungenti malgrado o attraverso codesti errori all’opera sincera e geniale.’

Croce, like the earliest critics of Fucini’s work, De Amicis, Procacci, and later Fanfani and Pancrazi, held Fucini’s work in high esteem and was very complimentary about his Sonetti in vernacolo pisano and singled out for particular praise Fucini’s sonnets which describe the hardships and the general misery of the popolino:

E vi si notavano motivi più serii: le miserie del popolino, la madre che è riuscita col suo lavoro a nutrire il figliuoletto, lei digiuna; il padre che, tremante di freddo, si toglie la giacca per coprire il figlio che ha freddo; la morte di un bambino; l’orfano che aspetta la madre morta; la dura sorte dei lavoratori, come nel dialogo tra il maestro e il manovale:

Campà, si ‘ampa, nun lo nego, è vero;

Ma che vita è la nostra?…ah ! mondo ‘ngiusto !

Ci hai trattato da cani…acqua e pan nero.

Gino Raya, who probably appreciated the veristic qualities of the sonetti more than any other critic, wrote of them later stating that they have a: ‘valore documentario…Il pregio del Fucini…è proprio in questo star fuori della letteratura, nel cogliere la vita calda com’è…’ but goes on to affirm:

E questa è un’illusione veristica che ha fatto il suo tempo. Una letteratura fuori della letteratura non è possible, per la contraddizione che nol consente: a meno che non si voglia intendere “fuori delle artificiosità letterarie”; nel qual caso si casca senz’altro nella grande letteratura, la quale quando è veramente grande - supera e nega le artificiosità d’ogni genere.

Gli artisti mediocri, invece, non possono non avere le loro artificiosità, e ce l’hanno anche quando ne sembrano immuni, come succede al Giusti, al De Amicis, al Fucini, e ad altrettanti assertori di semplicità e di immediatezza.

Raya’s judgement might appear slightly severe, however, as we will see in Napoli a Occhio Nudo and also in the novelle, there are constant elements of both documentary and literary aspects to Fucini’s work and, on occasions, there is a tension between these two aspects in much of Fucini’s oeuvre.

1.1.2 Napoli a Occhio Nudo

Having been celebrated as the writer of the Sonnets in Pisan dialect, Fucini was much in demand in the literary salons of Florence, especially the salon presided over by Emilia and Ubaldino Peruzzi where he widened the circle of his friends and met the scholar and politician Pasquale Villari and Sydney Sonnino. Both appreciated the realism of several of Fucini’s Sonetti, so much so that in April 1877, on the advice of Emilia Peruzzi, Villari commissioned Fucini to travel to Naples to write a series of nine letters to a friend. Villari and Emilia Peruzzi wrote letters of introduction for Fucini and he was accompanied by the young Giustino Fortunato, from Rionero in Vulture. Villari’s commission which, as Fucini confirms, was intended to ‘studiare la miseria di quella virtuosa plebe’, resulted in the eventual publication of the letters which were intended to be written and addressed to Sydney Sonnino in Napoli a Occhio Nudo-Lettere a un amico, published by Le Monnier, in 1878. Villari’s commission intended the work to provide the reader with a semi-sociological account by a non ‘meridionale’, of life and the often abject conditions in Naples at the time, not dissimilar to Matilde Serao’s Il Ventre di Napoli (1884) or Villari’s own influential Le Lettere meridionali (1878). Indeed, some of Fucini’s descriptions of the public, daily mass-burials of corpses in the 365 communal-graves (one for each day of the year) in the Camposanto Vecchio and the conditions present in some of the rat-infested slums where vermin are described feeding freely on the contents of open sewers in the most destitute quarters of the city, are disturbing. Fucini’s description of the mass-burial procedure in the Camposanto Vecchio which took place regularly, at six-thirty each evening, is accurate but hardly dispassionate:

Iamm!- gridò uno di loro, e in un istante la lapide dell’immane carnaio fu sollevata. Un’ondata di tanfo nauseante buttò indietro in un momento le cento facce dei curiosi che vi stavano sopra, ma cento facce improntate di stupida curiosità, di ribrezzo e di paura si riaffollarono subito su la fetida buca. I monelli restati fuori gridavano facendosi largo fra le gambe dei curiosi; quelli rimasti serrati strillavano, sentendosi soffocare, ed intanto gli uomini addetti alla macchina non cessavano di raccomandarsi gridando:- Indietro! cascherete dentro! via! via! via! finiamo!- Bisognò lasciar correre un quarto d’ora buono per dare sfogo alla bestiale curiosità della folla e cominciò subito dopo la funebre operazione. Il sinistro ordigno fece cigolare le sue ruote e la cassa metallica sospesa alle sue catene venne a posarsi orizzontale sul terreno. In quel tempo mi affacciai alla tenebrosa apertura, ed arruotando gli occhi scòrsi nel fondo una massa informe di ossa biancheggianti e di panni muffiti. Il ribrezzo mi buttò indietro.

Il primo cadavere tolto dalla bara venne in pochi secondi collocato nella cassa metallica che sotto la forza degl’ ingranaggi fu sollevata qualche linea sopra il terreno e calata lentamente nella fossa. La folla vi si spenzolò sopra di nuovo per osservarne la discesa, quando ad un certo punto scattò una molla, il fondo della cassa si era aperto e la prima carogna umana, con un tonfo sordo, era andata ad occupare il suo posto nel letamaio assegnatole per ultima dimora… (pp.420-21).

Much of his description is couched in fairly dehumanizing language: ‘la lapide dell’immane carnaio’; ‘facce improntate di stupida curiosità’ (a phrase which some may find slightly patronizing); ‘bestiale curiosità’; ‘carogna umana’; ‘il suo posto nel letamaio assegnatole’. This dehumanizing language is again used by Fucini in some of his novelle when he describes Lo spaccapietre, the peasant labourer Menico, Il Matto delle giuncaie, Il battello and Tigrino. A human touch, clearly drawn from life, in which the monelli are warned by the crane-operators of the dangers of falling into the mass-grave, imparts a further degree of reality to the description and slightly attenuates the horror of the scene. Fucini also captures, very faithfully, the macabre fascination of the crowd gathered to watch the grim spectacle. Indeed, Luigi Baldacci refers to Fucini’s Napoli, especially to his descriptions of the mass burial scenes at the Camposanto Vecchio, to be reminiscent of and of the same literary worth as Émile Zola: ‘Si pensa insistentemente alla potenza rappresentativa di Zola, di cui il Fucini si dimostra qui, per affinità e non per dipendenza, pienamente all’altezza.’

We will recall that Fucini was commissioned by Pasquale Villari to provide a realistic and almost sociological account of Naples. Fucini achieves this in part, but one detects, on several occasions in Napoli a Occhio Nudo, that he strays slightly from his brief since he cannot resist the temptation to record an amusing anecdote or to make a personal comment or an artistic intervention on the scenes he witnessed and described. Some telling examples include one of his first impressions of the city:

‘Strano paese è questo! Quale impasto bizzarro di bellissimo e di orrendo, di eccellente e di pessimo, di gradevole e di nauseante. L’effetto che l’animo riceve da un tale insieme è come se si chiudessero e si riaprissero continuamente gli occhi: tenebre e luce, luce e tenebre.’ (p.339).

In Dove si parla di Sorrento, Amalfi e Pompei, on the natural beauty of Amalfi he states: ‘Se poi mi domandate in che consiste tanta bellezza, io vi risponderò come se mi aveste domandato: perchè i poemi di Omero sono belli? I poemi di Omero sono belli perché sono belli, e se qualcuno volesse provarvelo con altri argomenti, ditegli che non capisce nulla e non avrete sbagliato.’ (p.374).

His brief conversation with a Neapolitan tourist guide at Sorrento who believes he can identify from which Region of Italy any Italian member in his tourist-party hails from, is completely floored by Fucini: ‘e deridendo la sua presunzione, gli domandai come mai non mi aveva riconosciuto per tale [un Toscano] mi rispose:- Eccellenza, non avete bestemmiato il nome d’Iddio e non mi avete detto figlio d’un cane.’ (p.379).

Fucini’s interest in a curious fact or an amusing anecdote, formed part of his creative process and he annotated what he observed in his first notebook which he took with him to Naples. This Neapolitan notebook has been examined extensively and has been recently edited by Toni Iermano. Later in life when he was a school-inspector in the Appennino Pistoiese, Fucini continued to record amusing anecdotes, curious facts, dialect words and phrases and numerous other aspects which he wrote down in his official notebooks. We will see how some of this material was later incorporated into his novelle in Chapter Two.

Fucini’s visit to Naples lasted barely a month, so what he described was clearly restricted and selective since he did not know the city, nor its hinterland well, although he does describe brief visits to Amalfi, Capri, Pompei and Sorrento. Fucini, moreover, had lost his job in Florence the year before, and having married at the relatively early age of twenty-four and having fathered two daughters, Ida and Rita, he was doubtless preoccupied with securing gainful employment. On occasions, one suspects, Villari might have been a little disappointed with Fucini’s Lettere ad un amico and may even have found them slightly irritating since Fucini occasionally departs from his brief. However, although Napoli provides a good example of Fucini writing outside a region with which he was comparatively unfamiliar, unlike his native Tuscany, it is important in Fucini’s oeuvre because it is his first major attempt at prose narrative. Despite a surprising total silence on the work from Matilde Serao, it was appreciated by many as a good, early example of investigative and sociological journalism and was much admired by later critics. Paul Arrighi considered Napoli to be a valuable document of the verismo movement in Italy and one of the most interesting and important works Fucini wrote. This opinion is also shared by Carmelo Sgroi who considers Napoli to be: ‘un’opera fondamentale, più che non sia sembrata ai critici del Fucini, perchè lo scrittore nonchè uscire dal suo ormai logoro motivo caricaturale, dal suo ambiente di ciarle e di pettegolezzi, può attingere note di umanità più vasta.’

Despite having been very favourably received when published, Fucini resisted calls for a second edition and according to Ermengarda Caramelli, was reputed to have stated: ‘Sapete? Ho pensato di cambiargli nome; di chiamarlo Napoli a Occhi Chiusi e di lasciarlo dormire.’ Fucini appears to have been slightly embarrassed by his first substantial work in prose narrative and considered it to be a faute de jeunesse, since he referred to it as ‘un librettaccio.’ However, he did state, later in life, to Pancrazi that Napoli ‘Ė un vecchio librettuccio, son quasi le mie prime pagine. Però è un libro scritto, un libro scritto bene, questo sì. C’è della gioventù, ma anche dell’enfasi.’

Baldacci summarized the positive formative influence of Napoli on Fucini’s later oeuvre stating ‘L’amor di Toscana aveva finito per vincere nel Fucini l’interesse per l’Italia’. The work has been recently re-examined with the publication of a full critical edition of the text by Toni Iermano, who appreciates and re-assesses Fucini’s verismo in Napoli very positively. Mario Giordano, moreover, makes the extremely valid point that the very fact that Fucini was a Tuscan and, consequently,

estraneo a quella realtà meridionale che fu la vera matrice veristica, esordisce con… [Napoli] che si riferisce a quella realtà…anche se presenta i limiti connessi alla sua natura fondamentale giornalistica, non è priva di autenticità e di efficacia nella rappresentazione di una realtà umana e sociale e sopratutto è tale da rivelare come nello scrittore si sia ormai definito quel gusto del bozzetto e del particolare che costituirà una degli elementi più caratteristici di tutta la sua narrativa

actually enhances his view of Naples. The fact that he is a northern Italian, visiting and describing the Parthenopean city, a rare occurrence in itself, at the time, provides the reader of Napoli with the viewpoint of an outsider and adds greatly to its credibility as a verisimilar, and dispassionate description. The point is also reinforced by Toni Iermano. Indeed, the most recent appraisal of Napoli, by Claudia Lazzeri, is even more positive than that of any other critic who even asserts that Napoli a Occhio Nudo is: ‘oggi considerato forse l’opera più riuscita dell’intero corpus fuciniano, sicuramente una delle più lucide denunce sociali della nostra letteratura tardo ottocentesca.’

Fucini’s ‘denunce sociali’, albeit somewhat attenuated by his desire to adhere firmly to veristic principles, find their expression, more naturally, in his more mature prose narrative, the novelle. One should, perhaps, also reflect that to some extent, the seriousness of Fucini’s social critique in general, but particularly that contained in Napoli a Occhio Nudo and in his Novelle in Le Veglie di Neri and All’Aria Aperta, may well have been misunderstood or not fully appreciated in these works, possibly because of the presence of some degree of humour they contain and the Italian tradition, in the main, appears generally to be negative about humour and may well have affected Fucini’s critical reception at the time.

1.1.3 The Poesie in lingua

Like his Sonetti in vernacolo pisano, Fucini’s Poesie in lingua were also greatly

appreciated by the earliest literary critics of his oeuvre, De Amicis, Procacci, Pancrazi and Fanfani. After the success of his Sonetti, Fucini began writing poetry in standard Italian. His Poesie in lingua were published over a long period, first appearing in a selection of his Poesie in vernacolo pisano e in lingua in 1898 and went through numerous editions and reprints until they were finally published in Tutti gli Scritti di Renato Fucini in 1944. Unlike the earliest critics of Fucini’s Sonetti in vernacolo pisano who appeared to appreciate and prefer Fucini’s humorous sonnets, Croce and others preferred the sonnets describing the tragic circumstances and the trials and tribulations endured by the popolino. The opposite is true of Fucini’s Poesie in lingua. Whereas some critics preferred the more tragic or elegiac poems and continue to do so, Croce preferred Fucini’s more comic Poesie in lingua and singled out for particular praise Il dramma di ier sera in which a lady from the popolino enthusiastically describes her first visit to a theatre to a confidante:

Verdiana

Se ci siam divertite? Da impazzare!

Una cosa, mio Dio…c’è l’ultim’atto,

Quando lui trova lei…creda, un affare!...

Beppa

Su, su, mi dica…o in che consiste il fatto?

Verdiana

A un bel circa è così: Lui va per mare,

Ma invece finge e torna tutt’a un tratto,

E scopre che quell’altro, a quanto pare

Lei gli avesse già dato ‘l su’ ritratto.

Allora lui che fa? Va dal su’ zio,

Senza cappello… Immagini che scena!

E dice: “O morto lui o morto io !”

Lei, che risà ogni cosa, dalla pena,

Viene con un vestito come ‘l mio,

Ma che bellezza…nero! E s’avvelena.

Croce fully appreciated Fucini’s powers of observation, his eye for detail, his fine ear for language and his ability to capture the most important aspects of a scene and to reproduce them faithfully:

C’è qui tutto il caos d’impressioni che un animo incolto e grossolano raccoglie da uno spettacolo artistico. Del dramma non è restato in mente altro che la materialità del fatto, con la sporgenza di alcuni particolari infimi trasportati in primo piano: la mancanza del cappello, la foggia del vestito. Le commozioni sono ineffabili…E tutto è in tono perfetto di chiacchiera, senza stento e senza pesantezze.

As we have seen with the Sonetti in vernacolo Pisano and in Napoli a Occhio Nudo, and as we will see in further examples of his Poesie in lingua, in his school-inspector’s notebooks and certainly in his Novelle, Fucini had an extremely sensitive ear for dialogue and for language. He also had a particular gift for reproducing natural and realistic dialogue particularly in the Novelle which will be examined in Chapter Three. We should also recall that Fucini was considered to be an expert on Tuscan dialects and was consulted by Policarpo Petrocchi while the latter was compiling his Nòvo Dizionàrio Universale della Lingua Italiana. Moreover, in view of his expertise on Tuscan usage and on Tuscan dialects, Fucini was appointed a Cavaliere (1876) and later a Commendatore dell’Ordine della Corona d’Italia in 1906.

Despite a new edition of Fucini’s Poesie appearing as late as 1975, unfortunately, in more recent times, Fucini’s Poesie in lingua appear to have been confined to general anthologies of poetry, especially to those compiled for Italian secondary-school students and undergraduates and have been largely ignored by more recent critics. There are reasons for this lack of critical attention, for example, a few of Fucini’s Poesie in lingua lack some of the freshness and spontaneity of his more successful sonnets in Pisan dialect. His Poesie in lingua are not particularly remarkable, varying in range and subject matter from the simple epigram and the purely comic such as A pancia all’aria (p.987), which recalls the comic subjects of many of the sonetti in vernacolo, to the more elegiac poems such as Ad un cipresso (p.993), Cimitero in montagna (p.1013) and Vespero estivo (p.1016). Many of Fucini’s Poesie in lingua, moreover, are not particularly original and recall the style of the greatest Italian poets of Fucini’s generation: Carducci and especially Leopardi, the latter being profoundly influential on Italian Ottocento writers. Fucini’s A Giuseppe Giusti recalls the style of Carducci in his most patriotic vein and his Il pidocchio recalls Carducci’s anticlericalism. In Fucini’s Ad un cipresso the reader can detect both the influence of Carducci, especially with its Latin constructions, and also the lyricism and musicality of a Canto by Leopardi. Gino Raya singles out Fucini’s anticlerical line:‘O prete vegetale / Negromante cipresso’ and deems it to be ‘più spassoso di tutti i sonetti fuciniani con intenzioni facete’.

Fucini’s Notte (p.999) and Un anno dopo (p.1002) are probably the closest in style to Pascoli’s poetry - we should also recall that the works of Carducci, Pascoli, Leopardi as well as Fogazzaro, Zanella and D’Annunzio were present in Fucini’s personal library at Dianella and were certainly read by him and had probably influenced him. His final collection of poetry, Ombre, contains his best poetry in lingua. The collection is dedicated to nature and several poems recall images and concepts adopted previously by Leopardi, especially in Fucini’s description of the relationship between man and nature, in particular in Dedica (p.1005), Le stagioni (p.1007), Notte piovosa (p.1009), Montagne e vallate (p.1011), Cimitero in montagna (p.1013), A una cicala (p.1017), Ad una quercia (p.1020) and Fiore d’arancio (p.1025). The closing couplet of Fucini’s Dedica ends in the rather tantalizing statement: ‘A te, Natura, al tuo divino incanto / Questi sorrisi miei, questo mio pianto.’ This couplet which Fucini wrote towards the end of his life is, in my view, an important gloss on, if not the essential key to, all Fucini’s oeuvre, and is an illuminating autobiographical comment by Fucini on his life as well as his work. It also affords us a rare insight into the real Fucini, since he was by nature a somewhat melancholy man and possibly suffered from depression in later life. It should be noted that Fucini’s grandson, Professor Enzo Fucini, said of his grandfather: ‘Egli rallegrava, ma non era allegro. Rallegrava gli altri e, per riflesso, se stesso; ma per natura non era allegro.’

Fucini might have felt embarrassed by his early works the Sonetti in vernacolo pisano and, more inexplicably, by Napoli a Occhio Nudo. He might have also believed that critics remembered him principally for these earlier works and did not take his later works, especially his Poesie in lingua and his novelle, more seriously. One detects in Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento a distinct note of regret for not having been accorded more gravitas by literary critics in the phrase ‘Questi sorrisi miei, questo mio pianto’, which echoes what is another most telling phrase Fucini used about his oeuvre in general: ‘Ma forse, per chi veda il fondo delle cose, le favole e gli uomini che ho immaginato sono tutti pieni di dolore, e il mio riso è stato sempre colmo di lacrime.’

Croce was the first to identify and to comment on these two elements or characteristics of Fucini’s oeuvre. Indeeed, all Fucini’s works, even his most comic sonnets, are tinged with a slightly bitter-sweet undertone and contain an element of nostalgia or pathos. Many if not most of the characters in his novelle are sad characters, principally because of the hardship of their lives. However, despite their numerous difficulties they appear to be content with their lot. This will be examined in more detail in Chapter Three. These two elements of tears or pity and laughter, Croce suggests, could be used for an appraisal of Fucini’s entire poetical works:

‘Tali erano le due corde che sonavano poeticamente nell’animo del Fucini: il sorriso e la pietà; un sorriso, che non degenerava nella buffoneria; una pietà, che non si dilatava e falsificava nel tono pianoloso e nell’enfasi.’

In my opinion, the phrase could apply to Fucini’s oeuvre as a whole, since, as we will see in Chapters Two and Three, there are individual themes and characters that exemplify this.

Gabriele D’Annunzio, who met Fucini in the studio of a mutual friend, the Macchiaiolo artist, Vittorio Corcos, was clearly familiar with Fucini’s Poesie in lingua in the collection, Ombre, since he advised Fucini to publish them separately and even suggested a title for them: ‘Chiamatele Anella’. One can conclude from this that Fucini’s poems in Ombre were much appreciated by one of the finest Italian poets of his generation. Unfortunately, despite some of the insights of later critics who see some motifs in Fucini’s poesie in lingua which presage those of the Crepuscolari, they have been largely ignored by contemporary critics.

1.1.4 The short stories Le Veglie di Neri and All’Aria Aperta - Le Veglie di Neri

Unlike many Florentines who found themselves unemployed after the transfer of the capital to Rome, in 1871, Fucini was able, initially, to transfer to a teaching-post at Pistoia and, later, was able to develop his literary career. On 23 June, almost exactly one year after the transfer of the capital, he was appointed a socio-letterario of the Società per l’incremento del Teatro comico in Italia. Apart from writing the occasional play and book-review, he attempted to write his first novella in 1872, as we learn from ‘Come diventai prosatore.’ Fucini recalls how his first faltering steps in writing an introduction, in prose, to his Sonetti in vernacolo were met with howls of derision by friends and fellow-guests at the Peruzzi’s literary salon at L’Antella. Fucini records how he was shocked by the reaction of Edmondo De Amicis, Cecco Genala, and Gustavo Uzielli at his first attempt at writing in prose since writing Napoli a Occhio Nudo and by his own inadequacy in prose writing:

Me n’andai a letto con una spina nel cuore e nell’amor proprio; e mi proposi di arrivare a scrivere degnamente anche in prosa. Cominciai a scrivere di ogni cosa un po’: racconti, commedie, romanzi, tragedie…e tutto strappavo dopo poche pagine, e tutto riprincipiavo con un accanimento che non era punto della mia indole; ma il frizzore della puntura avuta era così forte che non mi fermai finchè non mi venne fatto di scrivere Il Matto delle giuncaie.

When the novelle in Le Veglie di Neri – which consist principally of novelle or bozzetti on life among the lower orders in rural Tuscany at the end of the Ottocento; and whose themes, language and narrative techniques will be examined in Chapters Two and Three, were published as a collection, in 1882, they were met with great critical acclaim. Giovanni Procacci, who wrote an important preface to the first illustrated edition, was also the first to establish the link between Fucini and the bozzetto, the ‘tocco descrittivo… macchiajolo’ (which Verga admired greatly in Fucini), the relationship between Fucini and Verga, and the affinities between Verga, Flaubert and Zola. Procacci’s comments on Verga and Capuana are also illuminating since they provide firm evidence that by the 1890s, both Verga and Capuana had made their literary reputations in Italy, and Verga was generally perceived by most Italian critics to be the principal exponent and leader of the Italian realist movement. In his introduction to the Veglie, Procacci states that the theories of the classicists, neoclassicists and Carducci on the one hand and, on the other, the historical novel, realism and realistic description (or ‘la descrizione verista’), had contributed to the establishment of two literary schools and to the creation of literary sketches called ‘Abbozzi’ or ‘Bozzetti’:

Ad ajutare il Risorgimento della virtù stilistica gioverebbe forse una larga e seria cultura di quel genere letterario che ha la radice nella piena realtà della vita, e di cui il Bozzetto è l’ultima e più semplice espressione. E non abbiamo dunque Bozzetti?... Tutti sanno che cosa è rimasto della recente fioritura del Romanzo storico.... .

Procacci comments on the close similarities between Fucini and Berni and is the first to highlight Fucini’s painterly narrative technique in his descriptions, which find their expression naturally in the bozzetto:

Il Fucini… è, come il Berni, sano ed allegro, ma non gli manca il sentimento dei mesti e gravi problemi dell’età sua. È democraticamente campagnolo... ma ha il tocco descrittivo più macchiajolo, e però più conveniente al bozzetto.

Qui si presenterebbe a tentarmi il tema dell’obbiettività dell’arte secondo le teorie del Flaubert, dello Zola e del Verga. Ma non farò al lettore un brutto tiro, nè mi metterò con sì poca vela in questo mare, dove naviga da padrone il mio vecchio amico Capuana. Basti qui riferire l’ultima conclusione, che l’illustre autore delle Nuove Novelle e dei Malavoglia trae dalla sua teoria in una lettera al Farina....“La scienza del cuore umano (Verga), che sarà il frutto della nuova arte svilupperà talmente e così generalmente tutte le risorse dell’immaginazione, che nell’avvenire i soli romanzi che si scriveranno saranno i fatti diversi”.

...Ci saranno sempre parecchi uomini impelagati nelle realtà miserabili della vita, che per ricrearsi con un po’ di studio psicologico, avran bisogno di comprarselo bell’ è fatto o al negozio del librajo o alla porta del teatro. Chi sa che [Verga] non sia d’accordo con me! Ad ogni modo, fino a codesto trionfo dell’arte nuova, rallegriamoci di pubblicazioni come questa delle Veglie di Neri.

Procacci was the first to identify Fucini’s ‘tocco del macchiajolo’ and the similarity between his impressionistic narrative technique with that of the impressionistic painting technique of the Macchiaioli school of artists, and particularly in the subject matter that both Fucini and the Macchiaioli recorded - life, especially the life of the lower orders, in rural Tuscany, especially en plein air, towards the end of the Ottocento. Fucini records this in his novelle and the Macchiaioli record this in their paintings. This very close and fruitful relationship is examined in Chapter Four.

After stating that Fucini also has much in common with Giusti and has even a certain ‘limpidità ariostesca’, Procacci makes the statement that no other writer could approach Verga’s ideals more closely than Fucini:

Se fondamento dell’arte obiettiva è la spontaneità e la chiarezza, nessuno più del Fucini potrebbe avvicinarsi all’ideale del Verga [my italics]. Addestrato agli scorci drammatici nel breve cerchio de’ sonetti dialettali, si sbizzarrisce talora nel racconto con qualche eccesso di forza e di compiacenza, ma conosce anche l’arte di fermarsi a tempo....Tra lui e l’oggetto della sua osservazione nessun’ombra, nessuna nebbia, nessun tremore crepuscolare…. Anzi, se un rimprovero può farsi al Fucini, è d’esser poco audace nell’appropiarsi le bellezze vive del parlare toscano, e massimamente le vigorose locuzioni di quel territorio pistojese che egli corre ogni giorno per lungo e per largo come cacciatore e come Ispettore scolastico.

Procacci’s important identification and establishment of a link between Fucini, the Macchiaioli, Verga and verismo was later re-iterated by Vittorio Vettori, Pietro Pancrazi, Piero Bargellini, and Luigi Baldacci. This will be examined in Chapters Two and Three. If one accepts Procacci’s earlier opinion that Fucini was a verista and a bozzettista, as Croce was later to do, Vettori, who was the first critic to provide an accurate definition of the bozzetto and the abbozzo, was also of the opinion that for Fucini, the bozzetto was the starting-point of his narrative, and was not: ‘un procedere dall’esterno, un raccontare per raccontare, un egocentrico manifestarsi ed esprimersi mascherato e “nobilitato” dalle solite buone intenzioni e dal solito compiaciuto vernacolismo.’ By this Vettori means that Fucini uses a painterly narrative technique in his descriptions in his stories, not dissimilar to the broad brush-strokes employed often, although not exclusively, by the Macchiaioli artists in many of their paintings which will also be examined in Chapter Four.

Bargellini refers to the term macchia and macchiaiolo and to its original use as a spregiativo by a member of the popolino in Florence (just as impressionisme and impressioniste were also originally employed as denigratory terms for the painting style by French critics) and far from being critical of the concept of the macchia, considers Fucini’s narrative technique and his realism to be enhanced and to be imbued with even more genuine Toscanità by his closeness to the Macchiaioli artists and their paintings in their mutual subject matter. The very considerable synergy generated by Fucini and the Macchiaioli when they collaborated closely over the first illustrated edition of Le Veglie di Neri, will be examined in Chapter Four. It is interesting to see how critics have differed in their perception or interpretation of aspects of Fucini’s narrative technique. After Procacci, Pancrazi appears to have been one of the first critics to identify similarities between the impressionistic style of the Macchiaioli school of artists. It is also interesting to see how critics have differed in their perception or interpretation of aspects of Fucini’s narrative technique. Pancrazi, for example, emphasizes the comic and jovial side to Fucini, and Vettori sees in him the ‘ideali del cacciatore’, whereas the Catholic critic, Bargellini, considers him to display sentimentality which tugs at the heart-strings and asserts that Fucini is compassionate to the characters in his novelle:‘Vedremo in seguito come la compassione per le disgrazie altrui e il rispetto per l’altrui dolore siano le due note dominanti della migliore arte fuciniana. E non sono note, queste, di universale risonanza?’

However, Baldacci, a Marxist critic, sees the social protester in Fucini, and Luigi Russo prefers to dismiss what he considers Pancrazi’s and Bargellini’s rather sentimental interpretation of Fucini completely, and considers Fucini to be rather cynical and even patronizing towards some of the characters in his novelle. These varying views and Fucini’s attitude to the characters and their sufferings in his novelle and his socio-political engagement, which will be explored more closely in Chapter Two, illustrate the complex and often problematic critical reception of Fucini’s prose writings.

Apart from the new edition of Fucini’s Poesie published in 1975, four editions of Le Veglie di Neri, two of which are reprints, an anthology of Fucini’s Racconti e memorie edited by Francesco Loi, the correspondence between Fucini and Emilia Peruzzi from 1871-1899, a new scholarly edition of Napoli a Occhio Nudo, by Toni Iermano, the proceedings of a conference held on Fucini and five articles in academic journals published since 1974 - and particularly after 1977, when Leonard Sbrocchi’s Renato Fucini appeared, no substantial monograph on Fucini has been published in Italian to date.

Outside Italy, with the exception of Paul Arrighi, French and German scholars appear to have largely overlooked Fucini and there is a general paucity of studies on him apart from works written in Italian. However, despite the absence of a substantial recent critical study or a scholarly monograph on Fucini, scholarship on him in English is not entirely lacking.

Fucini’s work first appeared in English in a brief anthology, edited by G. E. Greene, as early as 1893. Several anthologies followed in the early decades of the twentieth century which contained examples of Fucini’s sonnets, Poesie in lingua and the occasional novella, but the most important work which made Fucini’s oeuvre available to a wider English-speaking readership was Henry Furst’s edition of Fucini Sonetti, Novelle e poesie with an introduction, notes and vocabulary (in English), which includes the novelle L’oriolo col cucolo, Vanno in Maremma, Passaggio memorabile, Dolci ricordi, from Le Veglie; and La fonte di Pietrarsa, Temperamenti sani, Il monumento, Menico, Il professore and Pelliccia from All’Aria Aperta. Fucini’s La strega is included in the anthology Tredici novelle moderne, edited by K. T. Butler and B. Reynolds, in 1947. There are brief references to Fucini, Capuana and Carducci in L. R. Hawkes’ Before and after Pinocchio, Robert Hall’s citation in his A Short History of Italian Literature, E. H. Wilkins’ citation in his A History of Italian Literature, the citation in The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, the reference to Fucini in Brian Moloney’s Novels of Peasant Crisis and the undersigned’s two articles on Fucini. Moreover, All’Aria Aperta remained on the University of London’s Italian literature Advanced Level set-book list from the 1950s up to the 1970s.

The only major monograph to date, Sbrocchi’s Renato Fucini l’uomo e l’opera, is rather general since it examines all of Fucini’s oeuvre, including his works for children and Fucini’s autobiographical works Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento. Consequently, each section is rather jejune. Sbrocchi considers Fucini to be ‘un realista-romantico’ which, as the critic concedes, is Fucini’s own ‘definition’ of himself in Foglie al Vento:

Leggevo allora il Clasio, le favole e i sonetti pastorali: e tanto ero innamorato di quella lettura che detti allora il primo tuffo in quella specie di romanticismo realista che mi ha accompagnato per tutta la vita [my italics]. Questa incipiente passione sfogavo allora disegnando alberi che, secondo la mia intenzione, dovevano pensare e parlare fra di loro, e facendo pifferi e zampogne, a uso Tirsi, di tutte le canne che mi capitavano fra le mani.

However, by accepting Fucini’s definition of himself, Sbrocchi does not engage fully with the implications of such a statement which is further complicated by the use of the term Romantic in the Italian literary context. Fucini’s own definition of his romantic realism is, overall, less meaningful and central to any in-depth discussion of Fucini’s work than Sbrocchi suggests. As I shall argue in my thesis, Fucini should be placed more firmly within the context of verismo and he will emerge from my analysis as an important exponent of this literary style, the central one in Tuscany at the time. Moreover, as Procacci wrote: ‘Se fondamento dell’arte obiettiva è la spontaneità e la chiarezza, nessuno più del Fucini potrebbe avvicinarsi all’ideale del Verga’.

Apart from Procacci, all critics including Croce, De Amicis, Bargellini, Pancrazi, Baldacci, Vettori, Arrighi and every critic after Sbrocchi, including Luperini, Baldi, Pampaloni, Adami, Iermano, Ciccuto, Lazzeri, Bacchereti, Dombroski and Giordano all consider Fucini to be a verista and his place in the Italian literary canon is firmly that of a Tuscan verista.

Robert Dombroski cites Fucini in his essay ‘The borders of naturalism’:

‘Within the boundaries of Naturalism are to be located the works of numerous other writers of the time whose literary fortunes are linked to more regional rather than national concerns. In Tuscany, the tendency is to highlight the violence and hardships of country life, as in the stories of Renato Fucini’s…Le Veglie di Neri.’

Romano Luperini, one of the most authoritative writers on verismo, clearly states:

The main exponents of verismo were Sicilian - Giovanni Verga, its founder, Luigi Capuana, its most cultured and impassioned theorist, and their pupil, Federico De Roberto…Matilde Serao and Salvatore Di Giacomo wrote about the working class of Naples. In the Abruzzi the young Gabriele D’Annunzio followed verismo in Terra vergine and Novelle della Pescara. The Tuscan peasantry was the main inspiration for Renato Fucini and Mario Pratesi.

1.1. 5 All’Aria Aperta

Even the earliest critics of Fucini’s novelle appear to be unanimous in considering his first collection Le Veglie di Neri to be his best work, whereas the second collection of stories, All’Aria Aperta, has generally met with slightly less favourable critical acclaim. Carmelo Sgroi, uniquely, even suggests that Fucini makes a retrograde step with the publication of the second collection of novelle and reverts back to the form of the Sonetti in vernacolo pisano. One has to concede that there is a slight repetition of a well-tried and successful formula in All’Aria Aperta since, occasionally, the second collection imparts a rather dejà vu quality to some of Fucini’s novelle. For example, Pelliccia of All’Aria Aperta recalls Perla (Pillàcchera) of the Veglie, although the fate of Pelliccia is nowhere near as brutal as that of Perla at the hands of her new peasant owners. Il monumento recalls La fonte di Pietrarsa and, to a lesser extent, La visita del Prefetto, all from the second collection. Moreover, Temperamenti sani is barely nineteen lines long and Questione d’interessi is merely forty-six lines long. Il castagno della casetta recalls La giovenca rossa, both from All’Aria Aperta, and the sad outcome of the latter story is, perhaps, a little predictable.

It should also be noted that in All’Aria Aperta, Fucini moves further up the social scale since more of his stories are located in small towns rather than in hamlets or in the more isolated rural setting of the novelle in Le Veglie. This examination of the middle and upper classes who, invariably, lead easier lives than the harsh conditions endured by the peasantry and the lower orders who dominate Le Veglie, automatically moves the balance and emphasis from the more tragic Veglie to the more humorous stories in All’Aria Aperta. Not surprisingly, one is also struck by a commensurate elevation in Fucini’s language in this second collection which contains considerably more standard Italian and is less dependent on Tuscan modi di dire, pistoiesismi, sgrammaticature and Tuscan dialect words which appear more frequently in Le Veglie. This will be examined more closely in Chapters Two and Three and in the extensive Glossary of Fucini’s language in Appendix Three. The general opinion appears to persist among some critics that Fucini’s tragic bozzetti in Le Veglie are his better work, and that the more humorous works in All’Aria Aperta are, consequently, not quite as good as the novelle from Le Veglie. Elisabetta Bacchereti is one of the most contemporary critics to maintain this view.

However, some of the earliest critics of the novelle appear to have liked the stories from both collections equally. Croce praised stories from both Le Veglie as well as All’Aria Aperta and refers to them on an equal footing, making no distinction from which collection they originate: ‘La Scampagnata, La fatta, Passaggio memorabile [from the Veglie] La fonte di Pietrarsa, La visita del Prefetto, [from All’Aria Aperta] sono meraviglie di rappresentazione festevole della vita pettegola e meschina’ and similarly: ‘Ma i bozzetti Vanno in Maremma, Tornan di Maremma, Fiorella, Lucia, Dolci ricordi, [Le Veglie] La giacchetta rivoltata, Il castagno della casetta [All’Aria Aperta], e altri ancora, che si aggirano tra emozioni di tristezza e di dolore, non sono inferiori ai primi’.

In the same article, Croce describes and analyzes Tornan di Maremma and Dolci ricordi, from Le Veglie, in greater detail, than the stories from the second collection, which might have led later critics to have assumed that Croce preferred the novelle from Le Veglie to those of All’Aria Aperta. This assumption could also have been further compounded when contemporary and later critics who, having read Verga’s letter to Fucini, thanking him for a copy of Le Veglie, (Milan, 2 July, 1882) - fifteen years before the first edition of All’Aria Aperta was published, may also have assumed the same was true of Verga. In this letter Verga only made reference to Perla, La fatta, Lucia, Sereno e nuvole, and Scampagnata, and similarly, critics might have assumed that Verga preferred or, indeed, only liked the stories in Le Veglie di Neri.

The same might also be said of Verga’s letter to Corrado Masi (1908) in which he only mentioned Fucini’s Sonetti, Perla and referred to a minor incident in Scampagnata - illustrating just how attentively Verga read Fucini’s novelle, - both stories are from Le Veglie. Since in all his correspondence Verga appears only to have singled out Perla, La Fatta, Sereno e nuvole and La scampagnata for particular praise and quotes from Lucia, his favourite novella, and since I have been unable to find evidence that Verga made any reference to any of Fucini’s stories from All’Aria Aperta, it is possible Verga might not have read any of the novelle from this latter collection.

Capuana’s favourite story was La fatta, also from Le Veglie, because of its impersonalità, as he informed Fucini in a letter dated Rome, 9 June 1882 in which he asks Fucini to send him some of his novelle for publication in Fanfulla della Domenica (to which he had been recently appointed director): ‘Carissimo Fucini, ti rammenti di me? Spero di si’ and recalls how they had previously met ‘in casa Franchetti’ (for the reading of Fucini’s Il Matto delle giuncaie) and renews his kind invitation to Fucini to send him ‘subito uno di quei buoni bozzetti toscani che non veggo l’ora di rileggere riuniti in un volume’. To which Fucini surprisingly, yet

intriguingly, replied:

Caro Capuana,

Come si fa a dimenticare Luigi Capuana? Non ti parlerò dei tuoi lavori ai quali ho tenuto dietro assiduamente...ma della tua bella faccia da galantuomo ingegnoso che ho sempre qui negli occhi ...Tu mi domandi del lavoro; la Domenica Lett.[eraria] mi domanda lavoro; la Rassegna mi domanda lavoro; cento altri giornali di minor conto mi domandan lavoro e io...non lavoro...; ossia lavoro troppo, vedo troppe scuole come ispett. scolastico, scrivo troppi rapporti e relazioni e statistiche, schiarisco troppi dubbj a maestri, sindaci e assessori, faccio, insomma, troppo il somaro come impiegato per far l’aquila come artista. Eccoti con molte parole fatto capire che io non penso più far nulla.

...Ho pubblicato l’ultima collezione dei sonetti, e ho chiuso coi sonetti; ora ho raccolto in un volume (te lo farò veder presto) i bozzetti. Non posso, non posso che a strappi dedicarmi alle mie geniali occupazioni e mi tocca sacrificare la mia più dolce passione [his writing] alla porchissima fabbrica dell’appetito.

Dato, però, che in un momento d’ozio mi venga fuori qualche cosa mi ricorderò tanto volentieri di te. Ma non ti faccia senso spiacevole se vedrai avanti qualche cosa sulla Rassegna perché ho con quel giornale impegni precedenti. Ti ringrazio di tutto e ti prego a confermarmi la tua buona amicizia

Tuo aff.mo R. Fucini.

Fucini kept his promise to Capuana and sent him a copy of Le Veglie as soon as the volume was published to which Capuana replied in June, 1882:

Caro Fucini,

sono stato colle febbri ed ancora non me le sono levate d’addosso; ecco perché ti ringrazio con ritardo del tuo stupendo regalo ed ecco perché non ho potuto scrivere io, come volevo, l’articolo sul tuo volume che è comparso nel Fanfulla della Domenica. Ti dirò che la novella più squisita, come fattura è La Fatta. Ė quell’impersonalità ch’io vorrei vederti raggiungere in tutte le altre che scriverai [italics mine].

Ringrazia per me l’amico Procacci per le gentili parole dette nella prefazione.

Fra giorni ti manderò un mio volume. Ti prego di accettarlo fin da ora come un segno della grande stima e del grandissimo affetto che ho per te.

Il tuo aff.mo Luigi Capuana.

Pancrazi continued to analyze stories in terms of the ‘macchia fuciniana’, that is to say, Fucini’s painterly narrative style in the novelle, and to explore his relationship with the Macchiaioli by examining bozzetti from Le Veglie including Il Matto delle giuncaie, Dolci ricordi and Vanno in Maremma. Baldacci, subsequently, was the first critic to analyze La strega from All’Aria Aperta, one of Fucini’s most successful novelle from this collection. However, Fucini’s novelle from All’Aria Aperta have been undergoing a revival in popularity among compilers of anthologies of Italian literature from the turn of the last century to date, especially in the 1990s. Henry Furst, for example, included only four stories from Le Veglie but six from All’Aria Aperta, while in Tredici novelle moderne only La strega is included, and Archibald Colquhoun and Neville Rogers’ Italian Regional Tales of the nineteenth century contains La strega and Il monumento both of which are from All’Aria Aperta. However, a more balanced representation between novelle from the Veglie and All’Aria Aperta is afforded the reader in more recent anthologies since stories from the latter collection continue to outnumber those in Le Veglie.

1.1. 6 Fucini’s autobiographical works Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento

Fucini’s autobiographical works, Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento, were written

principally at the suggestion of Guido Biagi. Fucini began writing Acqua Passata on 12 May 1918, three years before his death, in 1921. He continued writing Foglie al Vento up until his death, which was published one year later, in 1922. The manuscripts of both works were collected by Biagi from the papers in Fucini’s study at Dianella and both were edited by Biagi and were published posthumously with an introduction by him - Acqua Passata, in 1921, the same year in which Fucini died, and Foglie al Vento, the following year. For obvious reasons, early critics writing before 1921, were unable to refer to these autobiographical works which contain many details and descriptions of Fucini’s close friendships with some of the most important men and women in nineteenth-century Tuscany and also in Italy as a whole, including, for example, Ruggero Bonghi, Giambattista Giorgini, Ada Negri, Emilia and Ubaldino Peruzzi, Silvio Spaventa, Vilfredo Pareto, Pasquale Villari, Francesco Genala, Giosuè Carducci, Francesco Guerazzi, Giovanni Prati, Edmondo De Amicis, Raffaello and Alessandro Foresi, Gino Capponi, Olindo Guerrini and Giovanni Fattori. They also afford the reader with an accurate description of intellectual life in Tuscany, and, in particular, of life in the literary salons of Florence in the nineteenth century, and provide a richer and more detailed insight into Fucini’s fascinating life, and assist the reader in examining the background of his time, his formative influences and wide circle of friends. Bargellini clearly admires Fucini’s candour in his Preface to Tutti gli Scritti and uses it as a chronological basis for his introduction to Fucini’s life by citing the more telling quotations from both autobiographical works. Sbrocchi devotes a full twenty-three pages to these two works in his monograph. He is also of the opinion that Acqua Passata: ‘Non è un’opera stanca come è stata finora classificata’.

Sbrocchi concedes that Foglie al Vento is the product of a man who is aware that he does not have long to live and who is clearly nostalgic and, at times, even verges on the pessimistic. Even a brief examination of the opening lines of Foglie al Vento would confirm this:

Se mi accingo a scrivere i ricordi della mia vita, non lo faccio per vedere attoniti e a bocca spalancata i popoli del globo al racconto delle mie gesta. Per ingannare la noia dolorosa del momento, della stagione e della solitudine….Scrivo per voi soli, nipotini miei, scrivo per voi perchè, diventati adulti e sentendo parlare da qualche amico superstite di questo nonno al quale tanta gente ha voluto bene, possiate almeno correggendolo in qualche sbaglio di nomi o di date; e scrivo anche per voi, perchè so che dagli avvenimenti della vita di un uomo, chiunque esso sia, vi è sempre qualche cosa da imparare.(p.691).

Fucini constantly recalls his friendships and interjects the phrase ‘e anche lui è morto!’ the implication being, that he too, will soon be joining his friends.

In more recent times, Elisabetta Bacchereti delivered a fascinating lecture at the Biblioteca Comunale ‘Renato Fucini’, at Empoli, entitled Renato Fucini: autoritratto su sfondo toscano which provides an excellent introduction to Fucini the man, and gives some remarkable interpretations and insights into his character by quoting extensively from Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento. Toni Iermano revisits both autobiographical works and confirms how accurate they are in the most recent article on these works, published in 2002.

Few authors have provided posterity with such a detailed autobiographical account. Despite the occasional instance in which Fucini appears to be patronizing - for example, his reference to the inhabitants of Sovigliana and Spicchio in his Soviglianeide, or the reference to Capuana and the latter’s apparent jealousy at the success of Fucini’s Il Matto delle giuncaie when it was first read aloud by Augusto Franchetti, the Director of Nuova Antologia, compared to the cool reception given to Capuana’s reading of his own bozzetto - when Fucini appears to be a little biased, he seems to have been remarkably honest and accurate in what he recalls in Acqua Passata and Foglie al Vento. His accounts accord with the independent accounts of other friends and contemporaries. As we have seen, Giuseppe Mazzini’s description of the circulation of the sonnets in manuscript and their great success, described in his letters to Caroline and Emilia Ashurst, corroborates Fucini’s claims and confirms that he did not exaggerate the great success of his sonnets and their very enthusiastic reception. De Amicis’ version of life in the literary salon of Emilia and Ubaldino Peruzzi, although more detailed than Fucini’s, is remarkably similar to the descriptions Fucini provides in his two autobiographical works.

Fucini’s accurate autobiographism which is uncommon in many writers, is yet further evidence of his firm adherence to veristic principles and is further proof of his deep and passionate commitment to recording life as it really is.

1.2 Fucini’s place within the Italian realist school

Fucini was placed prominently within the birth and development of the Italian

realist school by Giovanni Procacci who, as we have seen, identified the great similarities between Fucini and Verga and especially by Croce when the latter wrote:

Racconti come La scampagnata, La fatta, Passaggio memorabile, La fonte di Pietrarsa, La visita del prefetto, sono meraviglie di rappresentazione festevole della vita pettegola e meschina dei paeselli. Il riso scoppia dalle cose stesse, non dai commenti o dai motti del narratore. Ma i bozzetti Vanno in Maremma, Tornan di Maremma, Fiorella, Lucia, Dolci ricordi, La giacchetta rivoltata, Il castagno della casetta, e altri ancora, che si aggirano tra emozioni di tristezza e di dolore, non sono inferiori ai primi; hanno la stessa forza, sebbene di diversa e più profonda origine. C’è nelle pagine del Fucini qualcosa di semplice e di virile, nel riso come nel pianto: una certa sprezzatura nel modo di atteggiare il racconto, come di un uomo di poche parole, che, parlando tra amici, si abbandona talvolta al ricordo di casi che gli sono accaduti o ai quali ha assistito, e si trova condotto al pathos senza che l’abbia avuto di mira, e, giuntovi, non v’insiste sopra, ma si arresta e tace.

As briefly evidenced above, there is compelling evidence that Fucini’s works were much appreciated by some of the leading Italian literary figures at the turn of the century. In 1908, on the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Napoli a Occhio Nudo, the literary critic Corrado Masi wrote to some of Italy’s most celebrated intellectuals including Croce, Arturo Graf, Fogazzaro, Marinetti, Guido Mazzoni and Verga, inviting them to contribute to a literary omaggio in Fucini’s honour.

Verga, who was not in Catania to receive the letter, replied to Masi:

Preg.mo Signore

Ebbi tardi, per la mia assenza da Catania, la circolare con cui mi si invitava ad unirmi all’omaggio che ci si proponeva di rendere a Renato Fucini.

Me ne duole, perchè avrei voluto dire io pure pubblicamente quanto ammiri lo scrittore, e da quanto tempo, fin da quando lessi Perla senza conoscerlo neppur di nome, e quanto gli volli bene dopo conoscendolo e stimandolo meglio, e quanto stimi altamente l’opera sua schietta, serena, e ammaestratrice anche per chi non si occupa di lettere, o per dir meglio non crede di fare della letteratura. Pochi libri ho gustato e riletti, e studiati come i suoi Sonetti e le Veglie di Neri. A lui non importerà nulla di sentirselo dire perchè gli basta aver legato il suo nome all’opera sua, e col sentimento dell’arte ha pure il rispetto e la dignità di essa, sicchè a certe americanate letterarie del giorno d’oggi riderà sotto i baffi e dirà “Andiamo!”, come fece Neri al sor Cosimo che gli mostrava la camera dove aveva dormito il sor Angiolo, ma se a Lei capita mi faccia il favore di dirgli che gli voglio un gran bene, e lo tengo mio maestro, [my italics] anche senza numero unico, e senza farmi vivo come avrei dovuto fare più spesso.

La ringrazio, e L’ossequio distintamente.

G. Verga.

In my opinion, this confirms how Fucini’s place as a Tuscan verista has been firmly embedded in the Italian realist school. Fucini’s works are still widely read and reprinted and continue to be discussed and written about. A conference was held, in 1993, to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth with extensive published proceedings, and another was held in 2013 to celebrate the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of his birth, whilst another, to celebrate the centenary of his death, is being planned for 2021, to be held at Monterotondo, near Massa Marittima, and also in London, showing that his place as a prominent Tuscan verista within the birth and development of the Italian realist school is firmly assured.

1. 3 The spread of realism and the rise of verismo/realism in Italy

The earliest evidence of a realist movement in Europe can be dated to the end of the eighteenth century, shortly after the end of the French Revolution of 1789, to be precise. Apart from the influence of the works of important writers such as Dickens, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev and Gogol, it was Stendhal who became one of the leading practitioners of realism which is evident in his Le Rouge et le noir (1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839). There is little doubt that Stendhal, together with Flaubert, De Maupassant, and Balzac, and particularly the self-imposed leader of French Naturalism, Émile Zola, were the greatest influence on realism and consequently, on the greatest Italian exponents of verismo, Capuana and Verga. Indeed, the latest research on the influence of French Naturalism and positivistic ideals on verismo italiano suggests that no other writer was more instrumental in disseminating the ideas of Naturalism among Italian writers, and influencing them with his theories, than the creator of the history of the Rougon-Macquart family. Federica Veglia, in two important essays, explores the influence of Zola on Verga and presents a very compelling case for the influence of Zola’s L’Assommoir on Verga’s I Malavoglia. She also produces a powerful argument that Verga was primarily influenced by Zola in his early period of writing, and particularly in the 1870s. In a letter which Verga wrote to Capuana, dated 9 February 1876, Verga states that, in his view, Zola is ‘… il più originale dei romanzieri viventi’ and refers to him as ‘… il Tiziano del romanzo’. Veglia also adds:

È vero che a partire dal 1877, ovvero dalla pubblicazione in volume dell’Assommoir, è difficile ignorare, in Italia, l’attività di Zola, tanto è consistente e diffuso il dibattito sulla sua opera, ma possiamo affermare che Verga senz’altro non si tira indietro, ed è fortemente e ‘personalmente’ interessato all’opera dello scrittore francese…egli è indubbiamente interessato a quello che succede nel mondo letterario, in particolare in Francia.

In the 1870s an Italian version of French Naturalism which had been principally inspired by the works of Zola and, to a lesser extent, by Flaubert, Balzac and De Maupassant, gradually developed and was referred to as Italian realismo or, more popularly, as verismo. Luperini pin-points the precise moment, when Verga and Capuana moved to Milan in 1877:

The two were deeply impressed by Zola’s L’Assommoir, also published that year, and decided to take it as a literary model. Thus, in late 1877 and early 1878, as a result of the encounter with French naturalism, verismo came into being as an avant-garde movement aiming to create the modern novel which Verga and Capuana felt Italy lacked. They made it a prerequisite that the writer should assume a scientific stance, as proposed by contemporary positivism; reality should furnish inspiration and the work of literature should be a document created with the impersonality that had already been theorized in France by Flaubert and Zola.

The first example of the new manner was Rosso Malpelo, a story written between spring and summer 1878.

Not all the concepts of their French counterparts from Proudhon onwards, who asserted that Naturalism had a scientific basis and also served a useful social function, were embraced in their entirety by the earliest exponents of verismo. Both Verga and Capuana, but particularly Verga, like many other Southern Italians, had already become extremely disillusioned by the effect and influence that the Unification of Italy had on Southern Italy. Moreover, both had to establish a literary reputation quickly in order to achieve their goal of being able to earn their living by writing. Indeed, in the case of Verga, it is well documented that while he was in Florence in the 1860s, (and later in Milan, at the end of 1873 and the beginning of 1874), he was so depressed with his lack of progress in having his early work published (having had Tigre reale rejected by Treves), that in January 1874, he, like Fucini, seriously contemplated abandoning his literary career completely, and planned to return to his native Catania, for good. Both Verga and Capuana had to leave Sicily in order to pursue their literary careers in Florence and Milan and developed their own version or interpretation of French Naturalism which they referred to as verismo, and which they conceived of as being a true, faithful and realistic depiction of life, especially of low-life, as realistically and as naturally as possible. In order to achieve this added realism, they decided to use the down-to-earth or the more ‘plain-speaking’, natural language used by the characters they portrayed. Just as Verga’s accepted veristic principles by using the language of the popolino in his frequent employment of the paratactic use of che, sgrammaticature, sicilianismi, toscanismi especially fiorentinismi and his brilliant fusion of sicilianismi and toscanismi and the stile indiretto libero, previously used by Flaubert and Zola, and to a lesser extent, the discorso diretto legato, Fucini also embraced the principle of linguistic realism in his desire to produce an authentic voice for his lower-class characters in the novelle.

This quest for an authentic voice for his lower orders, was, perhaps, more difficult to achieve for Fucini since, being a native Tuscan, he was already familiar with many if not most Tuscan dialects, on which he was a recognized authority. Indeed, we should recall Fucini was elected an Accademico della Crusca, in 1916. Ever since the publication of Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia, from the oeuvre of Le tre corone through to the linguistic debates of Bembo and Trissino, in the centuries-old Questione della lingua, leading to the compilation of the Vocabolario della Crusca and the linguistic controversies between puristi and classicisti at the beginning of the Ottocento, ‘[Il] Fiorentino usato dalla gente colta’, or educated Tuscan, was finally granted its nihil obstat as Standard Italian after Manzoni’s sojourn in Florence ‘per risciacquare i panni in Arno’ in 1827, and after the assistance he received from Giovan Pietro Vieusseux (at his Gabinetto Letterario), Gino Capponi, Nicolò Tommaseo, Terenzio Mamiani, Giambattista Nicolini and Gaetano Cioni, coupled with the appearance of Pietro Fanfani’s celebrated Vocabolari and Policarpo Petrocchi’s Nòvo Dizionàrio - unlike Verga and Manzoni, who had to seek a lingua franca of educated Tuscan or, more precisely, of educated Florentine, to present their readers with linguistic authenticity, conversely, since the majority of Fucini’s characters are from the lower orders, he had to seek out dialect words, sgrammaticature, pistoiesismi, and Tuscan modi di dire on the lips of the popolino from the Appennino Pistoiese and the Padule di Fucecchio in order to impart an authentic voice to his characters and to differentiate the language of the popolino from standard Italian. This is certainly the case for characters in Il Matto delle giuncaie, L’oriolo col cuculo, Lucia, Fiorella, La fatta, Sereno e nuvole, Vanno in Maremma, Tornan di Maremma, La pipa di Batone, Lo spaccapietre, Dolci ricordi, Scampagnata and Nonno Damiano from Le Veglie and in particular, Il battello, Tigrino, L’eredità di Vermutte and Fra due litiganti from All’Aria Aperta. Il Matto delle giuncaie, Nonno Damiano and Tigrino (the latter from Alla’Aria Aperta) have their setting in the Padule di Fucecchio and as we shall see, contain the greatest number of dialect words, especially pistoiesismi of all the novelle, whereas L’oriolo col cuculo, Lucia, Fiorella, Sereno e nuvole and particularly Il battello and Fra due litiganti (the latter two stories from All’Aria Aperta) are set in the Appennino Pistoiese and contain the next most frequent category of dialect words and sgrammaticature. Other novelle such as La pipa di Batone, Scampagnata, L’eredità di Vermutte and Il professore contain references to the Appennino Pistoiese or the Padule di Fucecchio in which Fucini uses fewer dialect words to capture what can best be described as linguistic ‘leaching’ by using the occasional word from the dialects of nearby Pisa, Pistoia, Lucca and Florence and even the Senese and Livorno and, on rare occasions, even as far as Rome and the Veneto as we will see in the Glossary.

In order to achieve this accurate and realistic depiction and to produce this human document, there was to be no direct intervention or comment, especially no social comment, on the deeds and actions of characters by writers. In order to achieve a realistic or veristic human document, Verga insisted that no explanation or meaning of what was described in a story was to be offered to the reader. Indeed, the author’s intervention in a story was to be minimal and, ideally, non-existent, and a work should give the impression that it had been written by itself – ‘fatto da sè’, as Verga informs Salvatore Farina in his letter which prefaces L’amante di Gramigna, this letter being one of the documents which most resembles a literary ‘manifesto’ of verismo.

Following the fashion for serialization in many European countries at the time, Zola’s L’Assommoir began to appear in weekly parts in La République des Lettres in July 1876, and was first published as a complete novel early in 1877. This year was not only an important year for Verga, but, as Luperini states, was: ‘[un] anno cruciale non solo per la storia della sua narrativa, ma per la nascita del verismo in Italia’. Surprisingly, it appears that it was Capuana, at that time a literary critic working on the Corriere della Sera, who was the first to appreciate Zola’s narrative technique in L’Assomoir since he was the first to express this opinion in print. Capuana was able to show that as a result of close study (in the same way that Zola himself had studied the other great exponents of French realism, particularly Flaubert), Zola had developed his own narrative technique which was considered by many contemporaries to be new, exciting and revolutionary. Whether Verga appreciated Zola’s narrative technique more than Capuana at this time is unclear. However, it is certain that Capuana was the first Italian critic to write about it in his important article in the newly founded Il Corriere della Sera, on 11 March, 1877. What is also certain is that during the three-year period between the publication of Nedda - Bozzetto siciliano in 1874 and the reading of Capuana’s celebrated article, Verga appears to have changed his aims and views on writing quite radically, along with his own literary style. He might also have been influenced by Capuana’s change of attitude to Zola and the experimental novel, as outlined in Capuana’s La crisi del romanzo (1898). As early as 1876, Verga abandoned his plan to write Padron ’Ntoni, the Bozzetto marinaresco which was to become his masterpiece, I Malavoglia. Between 1865 and 1881, in an attempt to establish his literary reputation quickly, Verga decided to write and publish one of his most celebrated novelle - Nedda, which he wrote in only three days flat.

Nedda was followed by Rosso Malpelo (1878) Verga’s first veristic story, in which he experimented with his stile indiretto libero which, at the time, was unique to him, being the first Italian writer to use it, later to be emulated by Capuana, Fucini and others. This was followed by L’Amante di Gramigna, La Roba, Jeli il pastore and Pane Nero, each of which could be written more rapidily than a lengthy and ambitious novel. This assured Verga a steady income, an opportunity to evolve and to perfect his own style and narrative technique, gradually, leading up to the lengthier and more demanding later novels; and, equally important, ensured that his name became more widely known to an expanding reading public and to potential publishers such as Treves and Brigola.

The publication of Nedda was followed by Primavera (1876), Rosso Malpelo (1878) and Fantasticheria (1879). Several of these novelle were initially published in Il Fanfulla, Il Fanfulla della domenica and La Rassegna Settimanale, an example which Fucini followed, and were later published in the collections Vita dei campi (1880) and Novelle rusticane in 1882 (dated 1883). When I Malavoglia was published in 1881, it was cooly received by the critics. Indeed, Verga feared that his new novel and his veristic narrative techniques had ‘fatto fiasco’, as he wrote to Capuana from Milan, in a letter dated 11 April, 1881: ‘I Malavoglia hanno fatto fiasco, fiasco pieno. Tranne Boito e Gualdo, che ne hanno detto bene, molti, Treves il primo, ne hanno detto male.’ I Malavoglia went largely unnoticed by many critics - nemo profeta in patriae. However, Capuana, Boito, Gualdo, and particularly Procacci and a few other perspicacious critics did appreciate what Verga had achieved, and by the late 1880s, and early 1890s, he was already being hailed as not only the greatest exponent of verismo, but also the finest Italian narrative writer of his generation.

1.4. Fucini and Verga

Fucini was one of a growing number of admirers that Verga was steadily accumulating from home and abroad from the 1870s onwards. The two writers held a brief correspondence in 1882 in which they expressed their mutual admiration for each other’s work which we will see in the Conclusion. Verga’s sincere admiration and fulsome praise for Fucini’s Veglie in his letter in which he states ‘ho trovato tanto da imparare’ was possibly unexpected by Fucini who had sent Verga a copy of his Veglie. Verga also publicly acknowledged that he considered Fucini to be ‘il mio maestro’. These are probably the highest accolades which he could have been accorded.

Fucini’s personal and annotated copy of Verga’s Vita dei campi contains L’amante di Gramigna and the famous letter from Verga to Salvatore Farina which prefaces the story. In his copy of the book, Fucini has underlined the first paragraph of this letter. As we shall see, Verga’s words had a profound effect on Fucini:

Caro Farina, eccoti non un racconto, ma l’abbozzo di un racconto. Esso almeno avrà il merito di esser brevissimo, e di esser storico- un documento umano, come dicono oggi; interessante forse per te, e per tutti coloro che studiano nel gran libro del cuore. Io te lo ripeterò così come l’ho raccolto pei viottoli dei campi, press’a poco colle medesime parole semplici e pittoresche della narrazione popolare, e tu veramente preferirai di trovarti faccia a faccia col fatto nudo e schietto, senza stare a cercarlo fra le linee del libro, attraverso la lente dello scrittore. Il semplice fatto umano farà pensare sempre; avrà sempre l’efficacia dell’essere stato, delle lagrime vere, delle febbri e delle sensazioni che sono passate per la carne; il misterioso processo per cui le passioni si annodano, si intrecciano, maturano, si svolgono nel loro cammino sotterraneo nei loro andarivieni che spesso sembrano contradditorî, costituirà per lungo tempo ancora la possente attrattiva di quel fenomeno psicologico che dicesi l’argomento di un racconto, e che l’analisi moderna si studia di seguire con scrupolo scientifico. Di questo che ti narro oggi ti dirò soltanto il punto di partenza e quello d’arrivo, e per te basterà, e un giorno forse basterà per tutti.

(Rivista minima, February, 1880).

It is my thesis that Fucini clearly saw similarities between Verga’s views on writing in this letter and his own modus operandi. In my opinion, Fucini adopted some of Verga’s views on writing, outlined in the above letter, ad litteram, and adapted these views as his own personal model and as his own personal ‘manifesto’ for producing and for researching material and, eventually, for writing his own novelle. Fucini had clearly read Verga’s words in the letter to Farina and had also made a mental note of them. Fucini must have reflected on the words of Verga. According to Verga, the novella or rather, the abbozzo or bozzetto of the novella, was to be a depiction of life, particularly of low-life, as realistically and as naturally as possible, and life recorded in the abbozzo or bozzetto- in a literary sketch, was, in nuce, meant to be ‘storico’. Verga meant by this that it should have a basis in recorded fact - it was no longer meant to be a story per se, but l’abbozzo or il bozzetto of a story - a human document ‘come l’ho raccolto pei viottoli dei campi, press’a poco colle medesime parole semplici e pittoresche della narrazione popolare’. Fucini must have realized that he had been doing precisely this as a school-inspector and decided he would continue making unofficial notes, using the same, simple and colourful language used by everyday folk, while, literally, walking along ‘pei viottoli dei campi’ in the Appennino Pistoiese. The story was to be presented to the reader as ‘un fatto di cronaca’. Its tone should be unemotional and a feeling of detachment on the part of the author should be created. Fucini must have also thought that Verga’s words were possibly the key to success in writing - for what had worked for Verga, could also work for him- another valid reason for him to emulate his chosen mentor.

While Fucini was employed as a school-inspector in the Appennino Pistoiese and the Padule di Fucecchio and was making his official tours of inspection, he followed, ad litteram, some of Verga’s words in his letter to Farina. Some of his official duties as an inspector were to visit schools in his Circondario and to note down their physical condition as well as the performance of the school-teachers and their pupils. However, as we have seen in Napoli a Occhio Nudo, Fucini was constantly fascinated by anecdotes and curious facts, and, as we will see in Chapters Two and Three, he also jotted down dialectal forms of language, spropositi, sgrammaticature, and pistoiesismi in his official notebooks. With his keen ear for languge and his fascination with the anecdotal, he also made notes as aides memoire, on encounters with interesting people or types he met: the spaccapietre; charlatans who later appear in Passaggio memorabile; customs such as the annual migration and overwintering of flocks in Maremma recalled in Vanno and Tornan di Maremma; curious practices of peasants such as the superstitious practice of tying red cloth to cows which do not produce milk, believing them to have been bewitched; local musical instruments such as zufoli, or dances such as il trescone or the passacaglia which feature in Sereno e nuvole. He also listed words from the lower orders he met on his tours of duty and he recorded examples of sgrammaticature or their use of pistoiesismi, such as the use of the local dialect word ‘battello’, used exclusively by local montanini in the Appennino Pistoiese to describe a travelling-salesman, unique to the Appennino Pistoiese, and which inspired the bozzetto of the battello (All’Aria Aperta) (pp.186-188); ‘stradelli’ instead of the more common ‘viottoli’; ‘sinibbio’ (nevischio folto) which appears in Fra due litiganti and Vanno in Maremma instead of ‘fogno’; ‘rafa’ instead of ‘valanga di neve’; ‘barchino’ (a small punt); ‘bertuelli’ (fish-traps) – just as Verga had described their use: ‘press’a poco colle medesime parole semplici e pittoresche della narrazione popolare’. Even the very words which Fucini jotted down from the very mouths of the montanini and Tuscan peasants he encountered were recorded ‘pei viottoli dei campi’.

Fucini, I maintain, adopted Verga’s views on writing as his own personal ‘manifesto’ and modus operandi for providing the source and inspiration, in short, the very DNA of his novelle, hoping, perhaps, to find inspiration and a well-tried recipe for success by adapting this self-imposed formula to his novelle. We should also recall that just as Verga used the word bozzetto or abbozzo for some of his stories, Fucini followed his example. Verga used the term ‘abbozzo’ (di un racconto) to describe L’amante di Gramigna to Farina and ‘bozzetto marinaresco’ when making his earliest references to Padron ’Ntoni, and ‘bozzetto siciliano’ for Nedda (1874). Just as Rosso Malpelo was published with the sub-title Scene popolari (1880), before being reprinted in Vita dei campi, we should recall that Fucini also used the sub-title of Paesi e figure della campagna Toscana for Le Veglie di Neri and Scene e macchiette della campagna Toscana for the sub-title of All’Aria Aperta. Moreover, Fucini also referred to his novelle as bozzetti, a variant form of the word abbozzo, used, it would appear, as interchangeable synonyms by him and Verga. Fucini’s first story, Il Matto delle giuncaie, which was also first published in Nuova Antologia in 1876, (two years after Nedda appeared, which had Bozzetto Siciliano as its sub-title) carried the sub-title Bozzetto padulano, possibly in deference, or even in homage to Verga. Clearly, the bozzetto, or literary sketch, was fashionable at the time and was in constant demand from an avid reading-public, especially if they were brought to life through illustrations by popular contemporary artists. The bozzetto was also frequently requested by publishers and the genre was used by aspiring writers including Verga, Capuana and Fucini since they virtually guaranteed publication for their authors - a fact not to be overlooked in the early career of an aspiring writer, or in the new context of commercial publishing in Italy at the time. We should also recall that it was fashionable for writers in the nineteenth century to publish their works in weekly or monthly serialized parts, for example, the serialization of the works of Dickens, Zola, Capuana, Verga, Fucini, De Maupassant and Conan Doyle and there was an avid readership for this genre of fiction.

As we shall see more clearly in Chapters Two and Three, Fucini’s basic jottings, which record real facts, events and real characters, would often provide the inspiration for some of his stories or were later incorporated by him into some of his short stories.

Pietro Pancrazi, ‘Il Fucini poeta de’ Pisani e novelliere dei Macchiaioli’ in Scrittori italiani dal Carducci al D’Annunzio (Bari: Laterza, 1937), p.108.

The rise of verismo in Italy from Zola’s realism is examined in Chapter One of this thesis.

See Acqua Passata, pp.563-64, however, this is uncorroborated.

Nedda was first published on 15 June 1874 in Rivista italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti and was favourably received and reprinted at the end of the same month by Brigola, in Milan, with the subtitle Bozzetto siciliano.

Il Matto delle giuncaje was first published in Nuova Antologia in December 1876.

Denis V. Reidy, ‘Renato Fucini: Notebooks and short stories’ Association of Teachers of Italian Journal, Summer, 14, 1974, pp.13-19.

Piero Bargellini, one of the most important and influential twentieth-century Fucini critics, states Fucini’s oeuvre is authentic and has survived the test of time: ‘Visto che sull’autenticità dell’arte fuciniana non c’è da sollevare più molte riserve, dopo il collaudo centenario, vediamone la legittimità, oggi più di ieri...’ see his introduction to Renato Fucini Tutti Gli Scritti (Milan: Trevisini, 1963), p.I.. Bargellini also appears to accept Fucini’s accounts in his autobiographical works Foglie al Vento and Acqua Passata a cura e con Prefazione di Guido Biagi unquestioningly: ‘Si vuol sapere, per esempio, dove, quando e da chi nacque Renato Fucini? Si legga il primo capitolo di Foglie al vento’ see ibid. p.II. The undersigned has endeavoured not to accept all that Fucini writes as unquestioningly as Bargellini and points this out when and where appropriate. However, in fairness to Fucini, as we will see later in this chapter, Giuseppe Mazzini confirms the popularity of Fucini’s sonnets see pp.25-26 of this thesis, as does Pietro Fanfani in ‘Il poeta popolare’, Nuova Antologia, 17, (1871); see also Edmondo De Amicis’ article on ‘I sonetti del Fucini’ in Le serate Italiane, 3 January 1873 and Giovanni Procacci’s introduction to his edition of Le Veglie di Neri, (Florence: Barbèra, 1882). Edmondo De Amicis confirms the presence of Fucini in the Peruzzi Salon in his Un salotto fiorentino del secolo scorso (Florence: Barbèra, 1902), especially pp.140-44; Alfredo Chiti, confirms Fucini’s account of life at Pistoia in ‘Ricordi pistoiesi di Renato Fucini’ Bullettino storico pistoiese, (Pistoia), 45, (1943), (numero 1-2, January-June ) pp.3-28 (especially pp.11-15) and Elisabetta Bacchereti also confirms events in Fucini’s life while living at Empoli and much of what Fucini states in his autobiographical works in ‘Renato Fucini. Autoritratto toscano’ in Bulletino storico empolese, (Empoli) 41-47, 14, 1997-2003, pp.65-88. We should also recall Fucini began writing his autobiographical works at the suggestion of Guido Biagi, on 12 May 1918, three years before his death (in 1921) so few contemporary witnesses who would have been able to corroborate his statements were still alive.

See Glossary Appendix Three.

Quarta edizione e prima edizione illustrata da artisti Fiorentini, (Florence: Bemporad, 1890).

For further details of Fucini’s birth and early life see his autobiographical work Foglie al Vento, pp.691-700 and Acqua Passata also contains very useful information see especially pp.471-688. Unfortunately many of the details Fucini provides are uncorroborated since Fucini began writing these works three years before his death and many of his contemporaries had predeceased him.

David Fucini was a man of principle, a keen huntsman, a carbonaro and a fierce anticlericale. According to Carducci he was an eccentric, affirming that he would only practice medicine during the hours of darkness and having vowed that he would not see the light of day until Italy had been freed from foreign domination, see Carducci’s ‘Confessioni intime di Renato Fucini’, Fanfulla and Roma della domenica, (Naples), 24 April, 1943.

‘Su L’Etna’, Foglie al Vento, pp.765-78.

Fucini’s library contains the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio and also Sacchetti, Poliziano, Agnolo da Firenzuola, particularly the works of Tasso and Ariosto, (See Foglie al Vento, pp.724-25), Boiardo, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, Beccaria, Clasio and the works of more contemporary writers. It was unsurprising to see the works of Manzoni and Leopardi, the latter’s complete works in the definitive edition of Leopardi’s Opera omnia, (Florence: Le Monnier, 1845), in Fucini’s library, as well as the works of Foscolo, Carducci, Pascoli, Verga, Capuana, D’Annunzio, especially La figlia di Jorio and L’Alcione which were present in several editions. The works of Salvatore Farina, Luigi Pirandello, Emilio Praga, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Matilde Serao, Salvatore Di Giacomo, Federico De Roberto, Arrigo Boito, Emilio De Marchi, Carlo Dossi, Mario Pratesi, Antonio Fogazzaro, Tommaso Grossi, especially Grossi’s La Fuggitiva (1816) and Ildegonda (1820), Massimo D’Azeglio, Grazia Deledda, Edmondo De Amicis, Carlo Collodi, Dino Campana, Sibilla Aleramo, Vincenzo Monti, Vamba (Luigi Bertelli), Francesco Guerrazzi, Antonio Guadagnoli, Emilio De Marchi, Giuseppe Giusti, Giovanni Prati, Francesco Dall’Ongaro, Ardengo Soffici, Aleardo Aleardi and Neera (Anna Zuccari) were also present in his extensive library at Dianella. Fucini’s library confirms that his taste was eclectic but rather conventional and contains precisely what one would expect to find in the library of a well-read man at the time.

Fucini acknowledges this in ‘Sleeping-car!’ Acqua Passata, p.531.

Foglie al Vento, p.725. Fucini’s battello is described singing ‘una maliconica ottava della Gerusalemme’ p.188).

Ibid. p.725. The text of La Betulia liberata is by an anonymous writer.

Fucini had a great love of botany and began forming a herbarium while a student see Acqua Passata, p.487.

‘A Pisa ho passato i più begli anni della mia vita’, Foglie al Vento p.747.

The Caffè dell’Ussero, located on Lungarno Buonarroti, near the main buildings of Pisa University, was one of the most fashionable literary cafés at the time and houses a large collection of photographs and busts of celebrated Tuscan intellectuals - Fucini’s portrait photograph is present in this collection, see Acqua Passata, pp.495-7.

Ibid., pp.490-4.

‘Come nacque il mio primo sonetto pisano’, ibid., pp.501-3.

Ibid., p.502.

Giuseppe Mazzini confirms the popularity of Fucini’s sonnets in his letters to Caroline and Emilia Ashurst, his friends in London, dated Florence, see pages 24-25 of this thesis. However, Pietro Fanfani’s very positive and important article on Fucini and his sonnets which confirms their great popularity did not appear until 1871 see ‘Il poeta popolare’, Nuova Antologia, 17, (1871), pp.120-35 which was followed by Edmondo De Amicis’ equally positive article on ‘I sonetti del Fucini’ which did not appear in Le serate Italiane until 3 January 1873.

Emilio Broglio was a ‘Deputato di destra’ and Minister for Education from 7 October 1867 to 13 May 1869. He was a keen supporter of Manzoni to whom Manzoni addressed his celebrated Dell’unità della lingua italiana e dei mezzi di diffonderla in 1868.

See ‘Giambattista Giorgini, Emilio Broglio, Carlo Porta e Alessandro Manzoni’, Acqua Passata, pp.528-9. Unfortunately there appears to be no other independent evidence to corroborate Fucini’s statement.

Edmondo De Amicis confirms this in Un salotto fiorentino del secolo scorso (Florence: Barbèra, 1902), especially pp.140-44.

In view of Martini’s considerable power and influence it is possible that he assisted and even ‘pulled a few strings’ for Fucini given the climate of clientilismo which prevailed at the time, see Franco Andreucci ‘Vorrei procacciarmi un’occupazione proficua- Nemesio Fatichi e il clan Peruzzi fra clientilismo, raccomandazioni, politica’ in Ubaldino Peruzzi, un protagonista di Firenze capitale. Atti del convegno di Firenze, 24-26 gennaio 1992, a cura di Paolo Bagnoli (Florence: Festina Lente, 1994), pp.145-154, especially p.148.

See Acqua Passata, pp.528-29. Fucini informs us that he was first introduced to Carlo Porta’s poetry in Milanese dialect ‘in casa Peruzzi’ where he was first introduced to Pasquale Villari and Sydney Sonnino who were so impressed with Fucini’s sonetti and his concern for the poverty of the lower classes in Tuscany they commisioned him to travel to Naples and write Napoli a Occhio Nudo (p.528) this is confirmed by Domenico Proietti, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Milan: Treccani, 1998), Vol. 50, pp.674-78.

Ibid., p.529: ‘Il Giorgini mi si offerse di portare e di leggere al Manzoni, suo suocero, i miei sonetti. Glieli portò, glieli lesse e mi raccontò della festosa accoglienza che il Manzoni aveva fatto alle mie chiassate. Allora chiesi al Giorgini di poter avere, per suo mezzo, un biglietto dell’autore dei Promessi Sposi. Al suo ritorno, sentendo che non l’avevo avuto, restò maravigliato...Allora è nato un malinteso. Fra pochi giorni torno a Milano e il biglietto l’avrai.- Tornò a Milano; ma trovò gravemente ammalato il glorioso vecchio, il quale poco dopo morì. Quella carta col p. r. l’ho smarrita fra i tanti autografi preziosi che posseggo. Avrei la voglia, ma non ho la pazienza di mettermi a cercarla. Lo stesso m’è accaduto per una lettera del Carducci scrittami da Pieve di Cadore mentre scriveva (è detto in quella lettera) la sua ode intitolata Cadore. Cercheranno e troveranno tutto i miei successori, se ne avranno voglia’ (ibid. p.529). Unfortunately no independent evidence appears to exist to corroborate Fucini’s statement regarding a biglietto from Manzoni. As Fucini relates, Manzoni soon died after this episode (in 1873). Although there is no other independent evidence to corroborate Fucini’s statement regarding the lost letter from Carducci, it is quite plausible given his very close friendship with Carducci see Acqua Passata ‘Il Carducci e la Maremma’ (pp.539-542); ‘Il cappottino da estate di Giosuè Carducci’ (ibid., pp.644-645) in which Fucini asserts the same: ‘...mi scrisse press’a poco così: << Pieve di Cadore:...seduto dinanzi a una finestra spalancata dalla quale mi appare la statua del Vecellio, sto scrivendo un’ode al Cadore>>. E quella lettera l’ho smarrita! Vergogna!’(p.645) so Fucini at least appears to be consistent. See also ‘Il Carducci nell’intimità’, (ibid., pp.645-649). Although it would be naive on the part of the reader to accept each word written by Fucini as ‘Holy writ’ and consequently, unchallengeable, a high proportion of what he writes, especially in his autobiographical works Acqua Passata (1921) and Foglie al Vento (1922) has been confirmed and corroborated by other writers especially by Edmondo De Amicis in Un salotto fiorentino del secolo scorso; Pietro Fanfani ‘Il poeta popolare’, Nuova Antologia, 17, (1871); Edmondo De Amicis’ article on ‘I sonetti del Fucini’ in Le serate Italiane, 3 January 1873; Giovanni Procacci’s introduction to his edition of Le Veglie di Neri, (Florence: Barbèra, 1882) and Piero Bargellini’s introduction to his edition of Tutti Gli Scritti (Milan: Trevisini, 1963, pp.I-XVI). However, where the undersigned has doubts on the veracity of some statements made by Fucini in his novelle and in his autobiographical works, these are challenged, mainly in footnotes, at the appropriate point in this thesis.

The demographic figures show a steady rise in the population of Florence and are 150,864 in 1861; 201,138 in 1871; 236,635 in 1901; 280,133 in 1921; 304,160 in 1931; 321, 176 in 1936; 374,625 in 1951; 436,516 in 1961, peaking at 457,803 in 1971 and decreasing to 367,569 in 2008-source ISTAT.

Cosimo Ceccuti, La penna e la spada: L’unità d’Italia fra Torino e Firenze (Florence: Polistampa, 2010); Giovanni Spadolini, Firenze capitale gli anni di Ricasoli (Florence: Le Monnier, 1979); Patrice de Moncan, Le Paris d’Haussmann (Paris: Editions du Mécène, 2009) and Nicholas Papayanis Planning Paris before Haussmann (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (1860-1920) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p.1.

24 Fabio Borbottoni (1820-1902) is generally considered to be the best artist recording Florence at this time see Fabio Borbottoni, Firenze perduta: L’immagine di Firenze nei 120 dipinti di Fabio Borbottoni a cura di Giovanni Fanelli con una introduzione di Italo Calvino (Milan: F.M. Ricci, 1983), 2 vols..

25 See Signorini’s Una via del Mercato Vecchio, Via del Fuoco, 82, 83, Il Ghetto a Firenze, 84, Mercato Vecchio, 85, Borgo degli Albizzi, 86, Giornata di sole in via Calimala, 87, Mercato Vecchio a Firenze, Via Calimala, 88, in the catalogue of an exhibition of Signorini’s works held at the Palazzo Zabarella in Padua, 19 September 2009-31 January 2010- Telemaco Signorini e la pittura in Europa (Venice: Marsilio, 2009), esp. pp.168-72.

26 Giovanni Spadolini, Com’era Firenze 100 anni fa (Florence: Bonechi, 1998), p.35. The Tuscan builder Giuseppe Bianchi attempted to save the vault of Cosimo I from the barbaric ‘ox’, the Piedmontese ingegner Falconieri and his philistine helpers see the Florentine satirical newspaper Il Lampione: giornale per tutti, on 9 May 1865, reproduced in Spadolini, op. cit., plate 96.

27 Giuseppe Mazzini, Scritti editi e inediti (Imola: Galeati, 1901), Vol. 58, p.219. Mazzini’s correspondence to the Ashurst family was translated into English and was published under the title Mazzini’s letters to an English Family 1844-1854 edited with an introduction by E. F. Richards (London: The Bodley Head, 1920), 3 Vols. The letters cited above and dated [probably] 31 May 1871, appear in Vol. 3, p.278.

Mazzini, op. cit., p.220.

‘Come nacque il primo sonetto pisano’, Acqua Passata, pp.501-3.

Op.cit., p.502.

Later incorporated in Tutti gli Scritti, pp.805-18.

De Amicis, ‘I sonetti del Fucini’, Le serate Italiane, 3 January 1873 and ‘Le poesie di Renato Fucini’ preface to I Sonetti (Pistoia: Bracali, 1894). See also his ‘I sonetti del Fucini’, Tutti gli Scritti, pp.797-803.

Giovanni Procacci, Preface to Le Veglie di Neri (Florence: Barbèra, 1882), p.7.

Pietro Fanfani, ‘Il poeta popolare’, Nuova Antologia, 17, (1871), pp.120-35.

Mario Foresi, ‘Ricordanze Pucciniane’, Nuova Antologia, 16 October 1922, pp.340-48 and ‘Renato Fucini e l’Isola d’Elba. Lo scrittore. L’uomo. L’umorista’, Varietas, (Leghorn) 1 December 1921.

Ferdinando Martini, ‘Discorso per le onoranze a Renato Fucini’, Giornale d’Italia, (19 June 1909).

Mario Apollonio, Fondazione della cultura italiana moderna (Florence: Sansoni, 1961), Vol. 3, p.406.

Benedetto Croce,‘Renato Fucini’, La Critica, 4, 1906, pp.249-54 (p.249).

Sonnet 41 Miseria!, pp.871-2.

Sonnet 87 Povero’osino, pp.907-8.

Sonnet 47 La mòlte d’un bimbo, pp.865-6.

Probably sonnet 57 La mamma mòlta, pp.876-77 but more likely sonnet 66 Ha ragione! pp.885-6.

The sonnet quoted by Croce is surprisingly not included in Tutti gli Scritti.

Gino Raya, Ottocento letterario (Padua: CEDAM, 1961), pp.140-41.

Domenico Proietti, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Milan: Treccani, 1998), Vol. 50, pp.674-78 and Elisabetta Benucci, Introduction to E. De Amicis, Un salotto fiorentino... p.53. Emilia Peruzzi also provided Fucini with letters of presentation to the most illustrious families in Naples see Leonard Sbrocchi, ‘Fucini-Fortunato: Napoli a Occhio Nudo’, Critica Storica, 12 (March 1975), 1, p.168.

Foglie al Vento, p.640.

Matilde Serao, Il Ventre di Napoli (Milan: Treves, 1884).

Pasquale Villari, Le lettere meridionali e altri scritti sulla questione sociale in Italia (Florence: Le Monnier, 1878).

Luigi Baldacci, Letteratura e verità: Saggi e cronache sull’Ottocento e sul Novecento Italiani (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1963), p.85. Baldacci does not cite any specific passage from Zola but, perhaps, he had in mind the episode in Germinal (1885) when Étienne Lantier and the coal miners revolt violently against their employers and working conditions in the bleak mining town of Montsou.

Renato Fucini, Taccuino di viaggio. A Napoli e dintorni nel 1877 a cura di Toni Iermano (Altripalda [Avellino]: Mephite, 2003).

Toni Iermano ‘Prima del Ventre e dopo Costantinopoli: nell’ “altra” Napoli di Renato Fucini’, Critica Letteraria, 2006, 1, pp.73-92 and Giorgio Varanini, Renato Fucini: profilo critico (Pisa: Goliardica, 1955) and Vittorio Vettori in I Minori (Milan: Marzorati, 1962), Vol. 4, pp.3039-65. See also Elvio Guagnini, ‘Dalla prosa odeporica tradizionale al reportage moderno. Appunti su forme e sviluppi della letteratura di viaggio dell’Ottocento italiano’, Problemi, 1991, 90, pp.79-94 and M. Landolfi ‘Renato Fucini nella Napoli post-unitaria,’ Riscontri, 20, 1998, no.1, pp.80-4.

52 Paul Arrighi, Le Vérisme dans la prose narrative italienne (Paris: Boivin, 1937), pp.406-7.

53 Carmelo Sgroi, Renato Fucini (Florence: Sansoni, 1943), p.34.

54 Ermegarda Caramelli, Figure di altri tempi, (Florence: Le Monnier, 1931), pp.3-76 (p.34).

55 Ibid., pp.3-76.

56 Pietro Pancrazi, op. cit., p.321.

57 Baldacci, Letteratura e verità, p.85.

58 Napoli a Occhio Nudo a cura di Toni Iermano (Venosa [Potenza]: Osanna Edizioni, 1997).

59 Mario Gabriele Giordano, Il verismo, Verga e i veristi minori: storia, testi e critica (Naples: Conte, [1992]), pp.156-57.

60 Toni Iermano Esploratori delle nuove Italie. Identità regionali e spazio narrativo nella letteratura del secondo Ottocento (Naples: Liguori, 2002) [reprinted Naples: Liguori, 2013] (esp. pp.203-47 and pp.249-78).

61 Claudia Lazzeri, Un carteggio di fine secolo: Renato Fucini - Emilia Peruzzi (1871-1899) (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2006), p.13.

62 Edmondo De Amicis, ‘Le poesie di Renato Fucini’ introduction to I sonetti (Pistoia: Bracali, 1894); Benedetto Croce, op. cit., p.250; Giovanni Procacci, Preface to Le Veglie di Neri (Florence: Barbèra, 1882); Pietro Pancrazi, Scrittori d’oggi, (Bari: Laterza, 1946), Vol. 3, pp.305-25; Pietro Fanfani, ‘Il poeta popolare,’ Nuova Antologia ,17, (1871), pp.120-35. They were published in Tutti gli scritti di Renato Fucini (Milan:Trevisini) in 1944 and reprinted in 1946, 1956, 1963, 1965 (with a preface by Piero Bargellini) and in 1984 and later editions.

63 Fucini’s Poesie in lingua were first published in 1891, (Pistoia:Tipografia Cino) and reprinted as Le poesie con nuove aggiunte (Pistoia: Tipografia Cino); Poesie in vernacolo pisano e in lingua, (11a edizione) (Pistoia:Bracali, 1894); Le poesie con nuove aggiunte, 15ª edizione (Pistoia:Tipografia Cino, 1905); Le poesie con nuove aggiunte, 16ª edizione (Florence: Bemporad, 1915); Le poesie con nuove aggiunte, 25ª edizione (Florence:Bemporad, 1920); Le poesie con nuove aggiunte e Prefazione di Edmondo De Amicis, 26ª edizione, (Pistoia:Tipografia Cino, 1935); Le poesie di Neri Tanfucio: 100 sonetti in vernacolo pisano, 50 nuovi sonetti in vernacolo pisano Guazzabuglio – Mercanzia - Ombre, 28ª edizione, (Florence:Bemporad, 1925); Le poesie con nuove aggiunte, 26ª edizione, (Milan:Trevisini,

64 Pietro Pancrazi, Scrittori d’oggi (Bari: Laterza, 1946), Vol. 3, pp.305-25; Gino Raya, Ottocento letterario (Padua: CEDAM, 1961), p.141; Ferdinando Paolieri, ‘La morte di Renato Fucini’, Nazione Sera 26 February 1921; Vittorio Fabiani,‘Renato Fucini nel suo settantesimo compleanno’, Nuova Antologia 249 (1913), B, pp.42-53.

65 Guazzabuglio, p.982.

66 Croce, op. cit., p.250.

67 Policarpo Petrocchi, Nòvo Dizionàrio Universale della Lingua Italiana (Milan: Treves, 1887-189), 4 Vols..

68 Renato Fucini, Poesie (Milan: Trevisini, 1975).

69 Gino Raya, Ottocento letterario [Second edition] (Padua: CEDAM, 1961), pp.139-44 (p.141).

70 Prof. Enzo Fucini informed Sbrocchi of this see op. cit., p.94 and confirmed the same to me in 1971.

71 Foglie al Vento, p.718.

Benedetto Croce, op. cit., p.250.

Vittorio Fabiani, op. cit., p.251.

74 Acqua Passata, pp.520-21.

75 Ibid., pp.520-21. This is uncorroborated by De Amicis and others.

76 Le Veglie di Neri-Paesi e Figure della campagna Toscana (quarta edizione, prima illustrata da artisti fiorentini) (Milan: Hoepli, 1890).

77 Giovanni Procacci, Preface to Le Veglie di Neri (Florence: Barbèra, 1882), p.7.

78 Le Veglie di Neri (Florence:Barbèra,1882) con prefazione di Giovanni Procacci.

79 Procacci cites Verga’s letter to Farina prefacing L’amante di Gramigna in Vita dei campi (first published in Rivista minima, February, 1880). Op. cit., p. 9.

80 Ibid., p.12.

81 Vettori, ‘Renato Fucini’ in Letteratura Italiana, I Minori (Milan: Marzorati,1962), Vol. 4. pp.3039-65.

82 Pancrazi,‘Il Fucini poeta dei Pisani e novelliere dei Macchiaioli’ in Scrittori italiani dal Carducci a D’Annunzio (Bari: Laterza, 1937).

83 Bargellini, Tre Toscani: Collodi, Fucini, Vamba (Florence:Vallecchi, 1952), pp.109-209.

84 Baldacci,‘Renato Fucini’ Belfagor, 15 (1960), no.1, pp.9-22.

85 Vettori, op. cit., pp.3039-65.

86 Bargellini, Tre Toscani, pp.109-209.

87 Pancrazi,‘Il Fucini poeta dei Pisani e novelliere dei Macchiaioli’ in Scrittori italiani, 1937. See also his Venti uomini, un satiro e un burattino (Florence: Vallecchi, 1923), his ‘Una visita a Fucini’, Il Resto del Carlino, (Bologna), 13 May 1919; ‘Renato Fucini’, Corriere della Sera, 15 September 1936 and Scrittori d’oggi (Bari: Laterza, 1946), Vol. 3, pp.305-25.

88 Pancrazi,‘Il Fucini poeta dei Pisani...’1937.

89 Vettori, Letteratura Italiana, 1962, I Minori, p.3057.

90 Bargellini, Introduction to Tutti gli Scritti di Renato Fucini, 1963, p. II.

91Baldacci ‘Fucini e Marx’, Il Giornale del Mattino (Florence) 21 November 1959.

92 Luigi Russo,‘Fucini scrittore sollazzevole?’, Il Mattino (Rome) 23 June 1943.

93 Claudia Lazzeri, Un Carteggio di fine secolo: Renato Fucini-Emilia Peruzzi (1871-1899) (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2006).

94 Napoli a Occhio Nudo ed. Toni Iermano, (Venosa: Osanna, 1997) [re-issued, Rome, 2004].

95 Leonard Sbrocchi, Renato Fucini, L’uomo e l’opera (Messina-Florence: D’Anna, 1977).

96 A chronological bibliography of works on Fucini and editions of his works (apart from those already cited above) published since 1973 to date, is provided in Bibliography One of this thesis see pp.301-2.

97 Paul Arrighi Le Vérisme dans la prose narrative italienne (Paris:Boivin, 1937), esp. pp.406-07.

98 A chronological bibliography of works on Fucini and editions of his works in English is provided in Bibliography Two, see pp.305-6.

All’Aria Aperta (Milan: Trevisini, 1944).

Sbrocchi, op.cit., p.254.

Foglie al Vento, pp.704-5.

102 Procacci, op. cit., p.12.

103 See footnotes 77-91 and especially footnotes 80-91 for bibliographical details of these works.

104 Robert Dombroski,‘The borders of naturalism’ in ‘Writer and society in the new Italy’, The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, ed. by Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.459-79 (p.470).

105 Romano Luperini, entry for ‘Verismo’ in The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature, ed. by Peter Hainsworth and David Robey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.620.

106 Carmelo Sgroi, op. cit., Renato Fucini, pp.51-52.

107 Elisabetta Bacchereti,‘Renato Fucini: autoritratto su sfondo toscano’, Intervento tenuto alla Biblioteca Comunale ‘R Fucini’ di Empoli, 1997, pp.1-12 and

http://www.comune. Empoli.fi.it./biblioteca/iniziative/ autori/fucini/bacchereti.htm

108 Croce, op. cit., p.252.

109 Letter from Verga to Fucini in which he thanks Fucini for the copy of Le Veglie di Neri. For the full text of Verga’s letter see the Conclusion of this thesis pp.293-4.

110 Corrado Masi, ‘Renato Fucini e l’arte sua’ – Conferenza tenuta il 16 marzo 1911 all’Asilo Garibaldi in Tunisi per incarico del Comitato per le conferenze popolari sotto gli auspici della ‘Dante Alighieri’, (Tunis: Tipografia V. Finzi, 1911), pp.1-25. Verga’s letter is on pp.4-5 and is reproduced in the Conclusion of this thesis on pp.295-6.

111 See Aurelio Navarria ‘Lettere del Capuana e del Verga a Renato Fucini’, Belfagor 15, (1960), pp.466-68.

112 A. Navarria, ibid..

The original manuscript of Fucini’s letter is located in the Autografoteca Piancastelli at the Biblioteca Comunale di Forlì.

Navarria, op. cit., p.466. The work which Capuana sent to Fucini later in 1882 was probably his Studi sulla letteratura contemporanea seconda serie (Catania: Giannotta,1882) published in that year.

115 Pancrazi, ‘Il Fucini poeta dei Pisani e novelliere dei macchiaioli’ in Scrittori d’oggi, (Bari: Laterza, 1946), Vol. 3, pp.305-25.

116 Baldacci, ‘Renato Fucini’, Belfagor, 15 (1960), 1, pp.9-22.

117 The stories included in Furst’s anthology are L’Oriolo col cucolo, Vanno in Maremma, Passaggio memorabile and Dolci ricordi from Le Veglie and La fonte di Pietrarsa, Temperamenti sani, Il monumento, Menico, Il professore and Pelliccia from All’Aria Aperta.

118 Tredici novelle modern edited with an introduction and notes by Kathleen T. Butler and Barbara Reynolds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947) which contains Fucini’s La strega from All’Aria Aperta [re-issued by the same publisher in 1949].

119 Archibald Colquhoun and Neville Rogers, Italian Regional Tales of the nineteenth century, (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), includes La strega, pp.145-54 and Il monumento, pp.155-65, both translated by Neville Rogers.

120 Renato Fucini, Tipi che spariscono, Prefazione di Riccardo Reim, (Rome: Lucarini, 1988) in which only five stories from Le Veglie- L’oriolo col cucolo, La fatta, Il merlo di Vestro, Passaggio memorabile and Scampagnata (pp.17-97) are included in the anthology compared to ten from All’Aria Aperta- La fonte di Pietrarsa, Temperamenti sani, Il monumento, Il professore, Questione d’interessi, Tipi che spariscono, La visita del Prefetto, Il signor cappellano, Il signor colonnello, and Fra due litiganti, pp.99-184.

121 Acqua Passata (Storielle e aneddoti della mia vita) a cura e con prefazione di Guido Biagi (Florence: La Voce, 1921) and Foglie al Vento (Ricordi, novelle e altri scritti) a cura e con prefazione di Guido Biagi, (Florence: La Voce, 1922). Both works were incorporated into Tutti gli Scritti, (Milan: Trevisini) in 1944, 1946, 1956, 1965 and 1984.

122 According to Fucini’s manuscript of Acqua Passata and the printed version of the work in ‘Ricordi lontanissimi’, Tutti gli Scritti, p.471.

123 Foglie al Vento (Ricordi, novelle e altri scritti) a cura e con prefazione di Guido Biagi, (Florence: La Voce, 1922). Both works were incorporated into Tutti gli Scritti, (Milan: Trevisini) in 1944, 1946, 1956, 1965 and 1984.

124 Bargellini, Prefazione a Tutti gli Scritti, pp.I-XVII; Sbrocchi, op.cit.,p.XX; Elisabetta Bacchereti, op.cit., pp.1-12.

125 Bargellini, op. cit., pp.II-III,V,VIII, X-XI, XIV-XVI.

126 Sbrocchi, op.cit., pp.185-208.

127 Sbrocchi, ibid., p.194 although he does not state which critics hold this view.

128 Fucini’s pessimism is evident in his final poesia in lingua, Il mio cavallo: ‘Ora anch’egli ha compiuto il suo viaggio, E mi dice, succhiando un beverone: - Siam finiti, padrone !-’ Ombre, p.1025.

129 Elisabetta Bacchereti, op. cit. pp.1-12.

130 Toni Iermano ‘Invenzione e aneddotica nella narrativa memorialistica di Renato Fucini’ Critica Letteraria, 2002, 2-3, pp.573-9.

131 Foglie al Vento, p.725.

132 ‘Come nacque il primo sonetto pisano’, Acqua Passata, pp.501-3.This statement is uncorroborated by others.

133 ‘Storia del Matto delle giuncaie’, Acqua Passata, pp. 522-23. This statement is corrobrated by Mazzini in his letters to Caroline and Emilia Ashurst see pp.25-26 of this thesis.

134 Edmondo De Amicis, Un salotto fiorentino del secolo scorso (Florence: Barbèra, 1902).

135 Benedetto Croce, op. cit., p.252.

136 Corrado Masi organized a literary Omaggio in Fucini’s honour which was published in Il piccolo corriere del Valdarno e della Valdelsa, [Empoli] Anno, 3 Number 23 on Sunday 7 June, 1908.

137 The Omaggio consisted of a Numero straordinario of Il piccolo corriere. dedicated entirely to Fucini. Some of the more important contributors included, Piero Barbèra, Guido Biagi, Benedetto Croce, Robert Davidsohn, Antonio Fogazzaro, Arturo Graf, Olindo Guerrini, F.T. Marinetti, Giovanni

Marradi, Ferdinando Martini, Giacomo Puccini and Arnaldo Zanella. Verga’s letter to Masi was published separately on 15 August, 1908 in the same journal and is reproduced above.

138 The episode Verga cites is from a minor incident in Scampagnata, (pp.136-37) when the narrator is shown round the rambling property owned by the proud Sor Cosimo and clearly illustrates how familiar Verga was with Fucini’s stories. This is confirmed in Verga’s letter to Fucini dated Milan, 2 July, 1882 in which he refers to Perla and quotes the final line of Lucia ‘Era uno stellato di paradiso’ which greatly impressed Verga. This is reproduced in full in the Conclusion to this thesis.

139 Verga’s letter to Corrado Masi, honouring Fucini, was published in Il piccolo corriere, no. 15-16 August, 1908 [see supra] and was later reproduced in Masi’s Renato Fucini, op. cit., pp.25. Verga’s letter to Masi appears on pages 4-5.

See Tullio Pagano, Experimental Fictions from Emile Zola’s Naturalism to Giovanni Verga’s Verism (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998).

Romano Luperini, Il verismo italiano fra naturalismo francese e cultura europea, (San Cesario di Lecce: Manni, 2007); see also Luperini’s Interpretazioni di Verga, (Rome: Savelli, 1975); his L’orgoglio e la disperata rassegnazione. Natura e società, maschera e realtà nell’ultimo Verga, (Rome: Savelli [1974]); his Pessimismo e verismo in Giovanni Verga, (Padua: Liviana, 1968); his Verga, (Rome: Laterza, 1975); his Verga: l’ideologia, le strutture narrative, il ‘caso’ critico, C. A. Augieri et alia a cura di R. Luperini, (Lecce: Milella, 1982); R. Luperini, Verga e le strutture narrative del realismo: saggio su Rosso Malpelo, (Padua: Liviana, 1976).

Federica Veglia, ‘L’Assommoir e i Malavoglia: “Combinazione” di punti di vista e polifonia’, Filologia antica e moderna, 11, 22, (2002), pp.111-40 and also her ‘Il “maestro” e il discepolo: su alcune immagini di Zola nell’epistolario di Verga’ in Il verismo italiano fra naturalismo francese e cultura europea, [a cura di] Romano Luperini, pp.23-53. Veglia’s view is also supported by Tullio Pagano, op.cit., especially pp.7-91. See also Pagano’s ‘L’Assommoir e I Malavoglia’ in The Flight of Ulysses: Studies in Memory of Emmanuel Hatzantonis, ed. by Augustus A. Mastri, Annali d’Italianistica, [The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill], pp.245-56 esp. p.245: ‘Chiunque si occupi dell’opera letteraria di Giovanni Verga non può non prendere in esame i suoi rapporti con il romanzo e le teorie di Émile Zola (e degli scrittori realisti francesi che lo hanno preceduto)…’. See also Francesco Nicolosi, Verga tra De Sanctis e Zola, (Bologna: Pàtron, 1986), p.64.

Letter from Verga to Capuana dated 9 February, 1876 quoted by Veglia, op.cit., p.26.

Veglia, op.cit., p.26.

145 Ibid., p.26.

146 Luperini’s entry for Verga in The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.617.

147 See Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Du principe de l’art, et de sa destination sociale, [Edited by J.A. Langlois et alia] (Paris: Garnier, 1865), especially chapter one.

148 See Pino Aprile, Terroni: tutto quello che è stato fatto perchè gli italiani del Sud diventassero meridionali, (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 2010).

149 The Milanese publisher Treves wrote to Verga rejecting Tigre reale on 20 January, 1874.

150 See Carla Riccardi, Giovanni Verga, Tutte le novelle, (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), Vol. 1, p.LV.

151 See Gino Raya, La lingua del Verga (Florence: Le Monnier, 1962).

152 For Verga’s use of the stile indiretto libero see Leo Spitzer, ‘L’originalità nella narrazione dei Malavoglia’, Belfagor, 10, no.1 (1956), pp.37-53; see also Spitzer’s ‘Discorso diretto legato in Renato Fucini’, Lingua Nostra, II, 1963, pp.39-42.

153 Vieusseux established his celebrated Gabinetto Vieusseux in 1919 and together with Gino Capponi, founded the influential Florentine journal L’Antologia in 1821 which lasted until 1832 which continued the linguistic debates on La Questione della Lingua into the nineteenth century.

154 Pietro Fanfani, Vocabolario dell’uso toscano (Florence: Barbèra, 1863), 2 vols., [reprinted anastatically (Florence: Le Lettere, 1976)]; Vocabolario italiano della lingua parlata, [a cura di Giuseppe Rigutini e Pietro Fanfani] (Florence: Barbèra, 1875) [e successive ristampe]...nuovamente compilata...e accresciuta di molte voci, massime e significati, (Florence: Barbèra, 1913-1914) ; Pietro Fanfani, Voci e maniere del parlar fiorentino, (Florence:Tipografia del Vocabolario, 1870) [reprinted anastatically (Florence: Le Lettere, 1976) e reprinted anastatically,[ s.n.], ([Bologna]: Forni, 1996)].

155 See Appendix Three, pp.9-407.

156 Luperini, Simbolo e costruzione allegorica in Verga, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), p.15.

157 The Corriere della Sera was founded one year earlier, by Eugenio Torelli-Viollier, in 1876.

Nedda was first published in Rivista italiana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti on 15 June 1874 and was subsequently reprinted after the publication of the novelle in Primavera (Milan:Brigola, 1877) and was the first story in the collection published in 1880, by Treves, under the new title of Novelle.

159 See Riccardi, op. cit., p.V. Without stealing any of Verga’s thunder, we should recall Fucini states

that he wrote his longer Scampagnata, in a single day, however, in fairness to Verga, Fucini wrote this novella which was based on events which really happened and on people he had encountered and really existed and, consequently, was at an advantage- see ‘Come nacque la Scampagnata’ in Acqua Passata, pp.563-64. However, there is no corroborative evidence to this statement.

Gino Raya, Carteggio Verga-Capuana, (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1984), p.23.

Luigi Russo’s important study on Verga was not published until 1920, Giovanni Verga, (Naples: Ricciardi, 1919 [1920]).

162 Luigi Capuana, Gli ismi contemporanei- verismo, simbolismo…ed altri saggi di critica letteraria ed artistica, (Catania: Giannotta, 1898).

163 Principal among these was Giovanni Procacci in his introduction to the first illustrated edition of Fucini’s Veglie, (Milan: Hoepli, 1890) esp. pp.7-8 in which he is the first to establish the link between Fucini and Verga.

164 Navarria, op.cit., pp.466-68. This correspondence is partially reproduced in the Conclusion.

165 Corrado Masi, op.cit., pp.4-5.

166 Navarria, op.cit., pp.466-68.

167 The term bozzetto had a wider sense in the figurative and the plastic arts at the time, implying not only a sketch or a draft, but in literary circles, it was often used in the sense of a literary sketch, see Carolina Invernizio (1815-1916) Il vagabondo, bozzetto sociale, (Milan: Treves, 1886).

(Rome: Patto di Fratellanza, 1880).

See ‘Storia del Matto delle giuncaie’, Acqua Passata, pp.522-3.