Four Stories

Four Stories

Giovanni Verga's The Wolf

The She-wolf is dominated by a single, overriding passion that ultimately destroys her and those closest to her, yet it is a passion that remains true to its own nature throughout, giving her an exalted role in what might otherwise be an undistinguished rustic domestic drama. Nanni stammers out his final curse; he is unable to cry out with the same strength of resolve that characterizes the sure, determined movement of the woman who faces him. Does he kill her? The author does not say, because ultimately it is not important. What is important is that the She-wolf has no power over the forces that have brought her to this point, nor can Nanni resist her. They are both victims of a tragedy that is played out over and over again in every age and in all socioeconomic circumstances. There are crucial differences, however, between the two: The She-wolf is as proud in her strength as she is unswerving in her purpose; Nanni's weakness is as inevitable and inexorable as is the She-wolf's obsession.

Only the She-wolf ventures out “in those hours between nones and vespers, when no good woman goes roving around.” To express her feeling for Nanni, the She-wolf uses an old Sicilian simile: “It's you I want. You who are as beautiful as the sun, and sweet as honey.” After Maricchia and Nanni are married and the She-wolf is sick with longing, “the people were saying that when the devil gets old, he becomes a hermit.”

The brief descriptions focus on the inclement contrasts that dominate both the landscape and human passions. The cold winds of January are no harsher than the August sirocco, the thirsty and immense fields no more mournful than the howling dogs at night in the vast, dark countryside. Nor will the She-wolf sate her thirst while working next to Nanni in the fields, for she does not want to leave his side even for a minute.



Joao Guimares Rosa's The third bank of the River

A story of such open-endedness, in which characters have no names and nothing is explained, is naturally one that invites a great variety of interpretations. The story's lack of specificity is complicated by its title, which calls for the reader to identify a third bank, a process that would require an evaluation of the extant two to determine which is the first and which the second.

The easiest procedure for approaching the third bank phenomenon is to consider the story in the context of the volume in which it was published, which in the original Portuguese was entitled Primeiras estorias (first stories), although it was João Guimarães Rosa's fourth book. Although nothing more than authorial perversity may be the reason, it is true that ordering, numbering, and ranking are rational procedures that depend on a grasp of the external configuration of things, a perception of the real. However, the author is demanding a perception of essence, not subject to ordering, numbering, or ranking, because it ...