Verismo

VERISMO. - If by v. in literature one means an icastic representation of characters or situations, one may say that such a form has never been absent from the various literary genres and has postulated it as the condition for a more vigorous descriptive power.

In Homeric poetry, Thersites is portrayed: "bandy-legged, lame in one foot, his head was pointed at the top, from which sprouted sparse tufts of hair" (Iliad, II, 216 ff.). Nor are personal or veristic touches lacking in later lyric poetry: suffice it to think of Hipponax and of certain epigrams of the Greek Anthology. In the time of the Second Sophistic the rhetorician Alciphron, with his epistolary collection, offers a series of types and little scenes drawn from everyday reality and pertaining to categories of modest folk. In general, however, for ancient literature, whether Greek or Roman, it should be called realism or naturalism refined by a superior artistic sense rather than v. The unknown author of the little treatise on aesthetics, Περὶ ὕδους, prescribes: "that in descriptions of the sublime one must not descend into filthy and revolting particulars, unless we are constrained 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 poetry, like that beyond the Alps, does not shrink from humble or sometimes grotesque descriptions. One will recall Dante's encounter with the demons (Inf., XXI and XXII), the realism of François Villon's Balade des Pendus, certain poems of Cecco Angiolieri, and the burlesque counterfeiting of Cene da la Chitarra's sonnets on the months by Folgore di S. Gimignano. Romanesque sculpture too, in the allegories of the months or the virtues, would take as its subject representations of human activity (P. D'Ancona, L'uomo e le sue opere nelle figurazioni italiane del medioevo, Florence 1923). Even the candid prose of the Fioretti of St. Francis welcomes some laughable situation, especially in the life of Fra Ginepro and that of Blessed Giles, and a vividness of detail lends relief to the moving poetry of Jacopone da Todi. This healthy representational realism continues through the varied succession of literary production in different countries. One may cite as examples certain aspects of the Italian novella and of Renaissance comedy, some sides of humanistic production, and, where the trite and vulgar reality acquires the dignity of artistic representation, the Spanish picaresque novels of the 16th and 17th centuries: the anonymous Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, the Guzmán de Alfarache of Mateo Alemán, and the Buscón of Francisco de Quevedo (a collection and translations edited by F. Capecchi, Florence 1953).

A more marked inclination toward v. properly so called occurred instead in the second half of the 19th century. After the great Romantic flowering, the interest of the poet or the man of letters shifts toward situations or events that reflect the needs, aspirations and vicissitudes of particular social classes or of their protagonists. In France the novels of Balzac's Comédie humaine and those of Flaubert are somewhat the precursors of this tendency, but it is a reality still idealized under the Romantic influence. Similarly in England, Dickens. The most representative author of this type of social and "veristic" novel was instead Émile Zola with his grandiose cycle of the Rougon-Macquart, a true sociological epic. Taine's literary criticism too is inspired by positivist canons. Maupassant's short stories reflect the sometimes cruel or mocking aspects of reality, although the artist's soul "relaxes and softens very often into a sort of painful calm or calm pain, in the sentiment of pity" (E. Croce, Poesia e non poesia, Bari 1923, p. 311 ff.), and so do the sorrowful verses of Baudelaire. J. K. Huysmans, a disciple of Zola, followed the methods of the naturalist school in the novels where his religious interest predominates (La Cathédrale, L'oblat, Les Poules de Lourdes). Some narrators made use of the canons of v. for their attacks against the clergy; a typical example is the novel O crime do padre Amaro by the Portuguese J. M. de Eça de Queiroz. In general, in all the countries of Europe there flourished in that era a poetry or narrative that deals with social problems and, consequently, does not hesitate to display crude particulars. To limit ourselves to Italy, where the voice of the philosopher Francesco Acri had been raised in the Tre ragionamenti contro i veristi (1881), in philosophy, in politics and in poetry, veristic narrators were among others: Luigi Capuana, Federico De Roberto and Matilde Serao. Of the latter one should recall in particular the long novella Suor Giovanna della Croce, dedicated to P. Bourget, about the sorrowful vicissitudes of a cloistered nun who, driven from the convent and brought into contact with the ugliness of life, faces it with a gentle spirit and Christian resignation. While remaining within the sphere of v., indeed being its master, Giovanni Verga through a harsh prose knows how to elevate the hardships of his characters to suffering humanity. A group of Tuscan narrators stands apart, who, though starting from a common naturalist foundation, according to their artistic interests each arrived at different conclusions. Thus Mario Pratesi, Renato Fucini and Ferdinando Paolieri. To the art of these is linked, though in the early 20th century, the Sienese Federico Tozzi. A similar veristic predilection also belongs to the art of the early D'Annunzio (Le novelle della Pescara, Giovanni Episcopo, L'Innocente). Veristic themes or situations have subsequently been the inspiration of other European and non-European writers or poets, and in certain cases still constitute their preserve. But this does not prevent every literary history from now being able to delineate the merits and limits of v. as an artistic phenomenon.

Lanfranco Fiore