VERING, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH. — Canonist, born at Liesborn in Westphalia on 3 March 1833, died at Prague on 30 March 1896.
He studied law at Bonn and Heidelberg, where in 1857 he became a Privatdozent in canon and Roman law. In 1862 he was appointed extraordinary professor and in 1875 he transferred as full professor to the newly founded Catholic University of Czernowitz in Bukovina. In 1879 he moved to the University of Prague, where he remained until his death. In collaboration with May de Sons he began publication of the Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht (Mainz). For his scholarly activity, V. is regarded as one of the leading canonists of the past century. Among his most important works are: Römisches Erbrecht in historischer und dogmatischer Entwickelung (Heidelberg 1861); Lehrbuch des katholischen, orientalischen und protestantischen Kirchenrechts (Freiburg im Br. 1876, 3rd ed. ibid. 1893); Geschichte und Institutionen des römischen Privatrechts (Mainz 1865; 5th ed. ibid. 1887).
---
VERISMO. — Where in literature verismo is understood as a vivid representation of characters or situations, it may be said that this form has never been absent from the various literary genres and has indeed been a prerequisite for more vigorous descriptive power.
In Homeric poetry, Thersites is portrayed: “lame, club-footed... his head was pointed at the top, from which sparse tufts of hair sprouted” (Iliad, II, 216 ff.). Nor are personal or realistic touches lacking in later lyric poetry: one need only think of Hipponax and certain epigrams in the Palatine Anthology. During the Second Sophistic, the rhetorician Alciphron, in his epistolary writings, offers a series of types and vignettes drawn from everyday life and relating to modest social categories. In general, however, more than verismo—at least in ancient Greek and Roman literature—one should speak of realism or naturalism refined by a superior artistic sense. The unknown author of the aesthetic treatise Περί ψυχής prescribes: “in descriptions of the sublime one must not descend to filthy and revolting details unless compelled by some recognized necessity” (XLIII, 5).
Realistic elements abound in the songs of primitive peoples (E. von Sydow, Poesia di popoli primitivi, Italian trans., Modena 1951), and medieval Italian lyric, like that of lands beyond the Alps, does not shy away from humble or sometimes grotesque descriptions. One may recall Dante’s encounter with the demons (Inf., XXI and XXII), the realism of François Villon’s Ballade des Pendus, certain poems by Cecco Angiolieri, and the burlesque parody of Cene da la Chitarra of Folgore da San Gimignano’s sonnets on the months. Even Romantic sculpture, in the allegories of the months or virtues, took as its subject representations of human activity (P. D’Ancona, L’uomo e le sue opere nelle figurazioni italiane del medioevo, Florence 1923). The very limpid prose of Franciscan hagiography includes some striking scenes, particularly in the life of Brother Ginepro and that of the Blessed Egidio, while vivid details enhance the moving poetry of Jacopone da Todi. This wholesome representational realism continues through the varied literary production of different countries. Examples may be drawn from certain aspects of Italian novellistica and Renaissance comedy, some facets of humanist writing, and—where coarse and vulgar reality attains the dignity of artistic representation—the Spanish picaresque novels of the 16th and 17th centuries: the anonymous Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache, and Francisco de Quevedo’s Buscón (a collection and translations edited by F. Capecchi, Florence 1953).
VERISMO — TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD
A more pronounced inclination toward verismo in the proper sense emerged in the second half of the 19th century. After the great Romantic flowering, the poet’s or writer’s interest shifted toward situations or events reflecting the needs, aspirations, and vicissitudes of particular social classes or their protagonists. In France, Balzac’s Comédie humaine and Flaubert’s novels are somewhat precursors of this trend, though still idealized under Romantic influence. Similarly in England, Dickens. The most representative author of this type of social and ‘verist’ novel was instead Émile Zola with his grand cycle of the Rougon-Macquart, a veritable sociological epic. Taine’s literary criticism also drew on positivist canons. Maupassant’s short stories reflect the sometimes cruel or mocking aspects of reality, even if the artist’s soul “often relaxes and softens into a kind of painful calm or calm pain, in the feeling of pity” (B. Croce, Poesia e non poesia, Bari 1923, pp. 311 ff.), as do Baudelaire’s painful verses. J.-K. Huysmans, a disciple of Zola, followed the methods of the Naturalist school in novels dominated by religious interest (La Cathédrale, L’Oblat, Les Foules de Lourdes). Some narrators employed the canons of verismo in attacks on the clergy; a typical example is the Portuguese J. M. de Eça de Queiroz’s novel O crime do padre Amaro. In general, throughout Europe at that time, poetry or narrative dealing with social problems did not hesitate to present crude details. Limiting ourselves to Italy, where the philosopher Francesco Acri had raised his voice in Tre ragionamenti contro i veristi (1881), verist narrators included, among others, Luigi Capuana, Federico De Roberto, and Matilde Serao. Of the latter, particular mention should be made of the long novella Suor Giovanna della Croce, dedicated to P. Bourget, concerning the painful vicissitudes of a cloistered nun who, expelled from the convent and brought into contact with the squalor of life, faces it with gentle spirit and Christian resignation. While remaining within the bounds of verismo—indeed being its master—Giovanni Verga, through his austere prose, elevates the trials of his characters to suffering humanity. A separate group consists of Tuscan narrators who, though starting from a common Naturalist foundation, according to their artistic interests, arrive at different conclusions: Mario Pratesi, Renato Fucini, and Ferdinando Paolieri. To their art, though in the early 20th century, the Sienese Federico Tozzi is connected. An early predilection for verismo also characterizes the art of the young D’Annunzio (Le novelle della Pescara, Giovanni Episcopo, L’Innocente). Verist themes or situations have subsequently inspired other European and non-European writers and in certain cases still constitute their hallmark. Yet this does not prevent every literary history from delineating the merits and limits of verismo as an artistic phenomenon.