Benedetto Croce panned this novel, Fogazzaro’s first, observing that it lacked “the central intuition that dominates all others,” offering instead an irritating confusion.
One is tempted to agree with him if one allows oneself to be led merely by the plot, with its innumerable secondary episodes.
If, however, the book is read from the perspective of one of its protagonists, Corrado Silla, it becomes evident that one is faced with the narrative of a troubled spiritual journey, unfolding amid existential unrest and the quest for faith—the only thing capable of providing balance and serenity.
Silla, behind whom the author conceals himself, is an

intellect lacking lucidity, mystical in its tendencies, powerful through certain fleeting intuitions rather than by any steady, inherent vigor..
he had vague, unpractical ideas, an ardent spiritualist....
he loved, even in slight matters, to lean upon some grand general principle

.
He has written a short story, ignored by both the public and the critics, which has nevertheless aroused considerable interest in Marina di Malombra, a young aristocrat, orphaned and penniless, taken in on that account by a wealthy uncle.
The writer portrays her before the mirror:

from the ample dressing gown emerged, as from a white cloud, the slender, elegant neck, and between two torrents of dark-blonde hair, wherein shone two large, piercing eyes, fashioned for dominion and for voluptuousness...
with a toss of her head she cast behind her shoulders the two torrents of hair and who knows how many turbid thoughts

.
Silla and Marina share many affinities, above all a restlessness that manifests in impulsive actions and in disordered, hallucinatory meditations; yet poor Corrado, weak and insecure, is overwhelmed by the woman, who banishes him, seeks him out, desperately summons him, professes her love, and ultimately kills him.
Marina, on the other hand, is ruled by the phantoms of the past—specifically, by the mad determination to avenge the murder of an ancestress, the first wife of her uncle’s father.
She sees in Corrado the reincarnation of the murderer and, despite loving him, must nevertheless punish him with death.
The relationship between Silla and Marina has no rational, psychological foundation; it belongs entirely to the realm of the magical, the fantastic, and the dream.
Silla’s fault lies in succumbing to the dark allure of a spiritualism unanchored to faith, to rationality, and to the order of the Catholic religion.
Conversely, the other narrative thread, the pairing of Silla and Edith, develops around the search for faith.
Edith is a German girl who has come to Italy to be reunited with her father, an aging exile who had found refuge with Marina’s uncle.

She was graceful in her black dress, exceedingly simple, short but not excessively so, with a small bunch of violets at her waist....
in her delicate, faintly rosy face, the mouth and eyes bore a more pronounced expression of firmness.
It is strange how those eyes expressed an understanding of real life, tempered with goodness.....
as though another spirit infused into hers, a melancholic spirit, were somewhat revived by her gaiety

.
Faith governs Edith’s personality and directs her feelings and conduct.
“Edith’s elegant, dark figure, which he clothed in poetry,” captivates Silla, who yearns to find in her the balance he so desperately needs.

And he felt within himself a serene light, a warmth so distant, it seemed to him, from indifference as from passion, a rising of some indefinable faith

.
Yet the summons of Marina’s dark allure proves too potent for Silla, just as Edith is too confined within a religion of sacrifice and duty to fight with the necessary passion for the love she nonetheless harbors for Corrado.
And “the demon of somber voluptuousness” leads Silla to his death.
Edith is left with nothing but the memory of what her life might have been, a destiny she accepts with Christian resignation.
Meager consolation and a thoroughly hypocritical justification for a bloodless love, incapable of fighting for the beloved! And what kind of religion is it that leads to timid passivity, to being mere spectators of one’s own life and that of others?

Beyond the lack of cohesion underscored by Croce, the fundamental flaw of the book lies in the purely literary treatment of the characters, who rarely take on real life.
Moreover, the entire novel is steeped in, and weighed down by, lengthy philosophical and religious digressions, as abstract as the depiction of its protagonists.
The most compelling feature of the book is its landscapes.
Nature is painted in bold strokes—at times somber and tempestuous, at others luminous and serene.
Above all, nature possesses “a soul,” one that is indeed living and real: a soul that reflects and amplifies the characters’ emotions, thereby bestowing upon them at least a semblance of vitality.
Like mankind, nature is fraught with contradictions, admirably synthesized in descriptions of the landscape such as this:

a lake modest in size and fame, passionate, changeable; now violet, now green, now leaden; at times, toward the plain, even azure

.
The contemplation of the landscape captures the eternal yearning of the human soul:

oh amorous fury of blossoms reaching toward the omnipotent sun, exultant grasses, drunken with wind, what solace to be you, to live your single-day life, to feel memory fall silent, and the heart, and that wearying tumult of thoughts relentlessly battling together, making and unmaking the future

Why avoid reading it? It is a tedious, prolix, inconclusive book.