Matilde Serao

A composite crowd, without distinction of sex, wealth, or social standing, gathers awaiting the lottery draw. That morning they feel > the need to eat, to drink, to smoke, feeding vividly on visions of Cockaigne in their imagination, dreaming (...) of a whole bellyful of rich, fatty feasts, devoured in imagination . While the Neapolitan populace, anxious, overexcited, deluded, follows the draw with increasingly wrathful voices up to "a final breath of anger," a young seamstress, delicate and tireless, continues to work; > she seemed so distant, so elusive, so absorbed, in a world utterly detached, different, that the imagination might suppose her more of an image than a reality, more an ideal figure than a living person . The novel intends to expose and deplore the devastating effects of the gambling habit on the material and spiritual conditions of Naples, despite the existence of forces and virtues capable of making this great city prosperous. How Matilde Serao would wish to be stern and realistic! Yet before the impetuous, joyous Neapolitan life, her indignation softens and dissolves into a vivid imagination, through which one can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality. Take, for instance, the second chapter of the novel: "The Baptism of Agnesina Fragalà, Daddy's Lovely Daughter." Two young newlyweds, happy shopkeepers on Via Toledo, throw a party in honor of their baby girl: it is a kaleidoscope of seductive colors, a clattering of saucers, spoons, glasses, a > union of things pleasing to the eye, good to the palate, delightful to the sense of smell . One is carried away by the expert description of sugary Neapolitan pastries, when, with a dramatic turn of events, the "assisted one" of the spirits appears, > a pale convulsionary, who eats a great deal, who feigns having or has hallucinations, who speaks in riddles (from *Il Ventre di Napoli*). And immediately the guests, even the wealthy loan shark, crowd around this wretched figure, all convinced that some trivial phrase uttered by the charlatan points to a lucky number, to be played in the upcoming lottery draw. Throughout the first part of the novel, Matilde Serao crafts admirable vignettes of Neapolitan life, leading up to the narration of the most sacred moment in the "great imaginary land of Cockaigne": the miracle of San Gennaro. A word of advice may be useful: savor these pages to the fullest without expecting to stand before an Italian Émile Zola, or seeking to trace Verga’s *verismo*. > But just as at the bottom of all the cheerful things of the land of Cockaigne there is an ever-flowing vein of bitterness, this carnival that swept away into buffoonery and masquerades all the gravest matters and people of the city—this carnival was a pitiful thing . Matilde Serao, in her "Neapolitan heart," cannot take cynical pleasure in the nonetheless evocative scenes of the Neapolitan crèche she herself created. The pedagogical and moralizing intent takes over. The second part describes the grim fate met by the novel’s various characters—the culprits of the disaster as well as their victims, yet all "so weak, so wretched, so infinitely unhappy." Such is the despondency that, like the author, we are seized by the > frenzy to flee, to flee, so as to see no more, to hear no more, to endure no longer the spectacle of the bitterest disillusionment . The book is a grand social fresco, yet there are also plotlines and characters from which one can discern other underlying themes, beyond the prevailing depiction of the land of Cockaigne. First and foremost, the female characters are generally the positive figures, even if there is no lack of usurers and swindlers among them. The women are steadfast, grounded, detached from or not wholly consumed by the widespread madness for gambling. What ruins them is their loyalty, pushed beyond all limits, toward the male figure—fiancé, husband, or father. One discerns in Serao a critique of women, all too often incapable of rebelling, of taking full control of their own destiny. The male characters come off poorly, even when, as with Antonio Amati, they possess a strong, sound, rational personality. A doctor and a scientist, he could save poor Bianca Maria, the victim of a mad and cruel father, but he fails to do so. Faced with the daughter's stubborn devotion to paternal authority, he abandons her to her fate, offended and humiliated that the father is placed before him; filial obedience runs too deep in Bianca Maria. > All compassion had vanished from his heart; he felt all the implacable selfishness of immense suffering . Love was fragile, weaker than pride, born of pity rather than true affection. And in this, the woman was once again a victim. The first part of the novel is a masterpiece. In the scenes of Neapolitan life, Serao’s rich and elegant prose finds its ideal setting to express itself at its finest. Granted, the characters lack depth, the plot is not cohesive; they are like so many short stories that seem not to belong to a single narrative. In the second part, the author attempts to pick up the overarching thread, but fails, and the whole remains fragmented. Furthermore, melodramatic and moralistic tones prevail, undermining the tension and dramatic weight of the human tragedies, rendering them predictable and pathetic. Even the account of Bianca Maria’s death, which closes the novel, is so sluggish and tearful as to leave an impression of cloying pietism. Why read it? The first part is a masterpiece.

The book is a collection of short stories published by a very young Matilde Serao at the age of twenty-two. In 1883, the twenty-six-year-old author, after "four years of militant artistic life," wished she could "change everything," finding these juvenile writings flawed in form, lacking "depth of impressions," and muddled by an "encumbrance of ideas." Reading them more than a century later, this judgment appears overly harsh: Serao approaches the world with surprising lucidity and a disruptive, mocking zest for life. In the story entitled *Per i bagni*, the author imagines a friend writing to Lulù, voicing a suspicion: > your bathing suit is too elegant. Of dark blue linen, embroidered with red thread, (...) the large straw hat with its cluster of poppies; the little straw-cloth shoes, tied with criss-cross ribbons—too much elegance to remain idle and ineffective. (...) Your bathing suit is too pretty for you not to want to show it to someone with your little figure inside it. Is it not so? (...) Do not smile, wretched creature, do not lose yourself in your dream: the cruelest disillusionment awaits you, the most horrible reality. (...) If you see a man in a bathing suit in the water, stripped of his unpleasant garments, he seems to you the most pitiable, the most lamentable thing on the face of the earth. (...) Oh Lulù, you who are neither an American, an emancipated woman, an old maid, a supervised wife nor a supervising one, but simply a fair, adorable creature, (...) Oh fair-haired, blue-eyed, gentle Lulù, oh my little woman, do not go swimming with those gentlemen and those ladies! Far removed from mere appearances, averse to the bourgeois destiny of woman, the young Matilde does not want a > fine, light, scented, subtle love, abandoned, resumed; (...) but nothing more than a shadow, a pale sort of love . Nor, however, does she intend to be swept away by passion, to become subservient to a man’s will; and she wonders, alongside the protagonist of her story *Fulvia*, whether she will be able and will know how to love. In truth, the writer wishes to experience social and cultural events intensely, rather than shutting herself away in a confined domestic sphere. Even when she sketches the "fleeting and sweet impressions" of the Campanian countryside and comfortable bourgeois settings, even before the sunset over Pompeii, the writer acknowledges that > we enter into life, pale and feverish pilgrims, with an ardent desire for great deeds, great passions, great horizons. (...) And tossed about, shaken, driven forward, jolted in the perennial struggle between idea and word, dismantling old ideals to forge new ones, (...) we are intimately happy . Where to stand? Serao asks herself in the story *Alla decima Musa*. > Above: a quiet, silent little room, with a softly warm atmosphere. A lamp sheds its steady, peaceful light over the pages of an engaging book; here and there a smile of friendship or love, the hours slipping by slow and placid, like beautiful, languishing figures. Below: the street, wet, muddy, slippery with mire, trampled by thousands of feet; (...) the coming, the going, the encounter, the jostling of a dense, continuous, ever-renewing crowd, speaking, laughing, shouting, clamoring, singing, yelling. (...) Then the reader is seized by a nostalgia for the street, for the fog, for the agitation; he feels a sharp desire to plunge into that tumult, to enjoy that spectacle, to contribute his share, to feel small, obliterated, absorbed: he fights no longer, he yields: and with a gigantic gust, the street vanquishes the little room . Perhaps, as Serao herself noted, there is too much of an "encumbrance of ideas," as is natural in an adolescent; yet the stories remain delightful because they exude, through the characters, the descriptions of settings, and the very words themselves, an irrepressible sensuality, a desire for fresh transgression. The narrative style is varied, shifting from tight dialogue to meticulous description, sustained throughout by a rich and elegant lexicon. The syntax is not always assured, the punctuation is at times rough, but the prose is effective, striking straight to the mark. Why read it? It is a wonderful discovery.