Italian Folktales Read Online Free Page B

Pitrè’s collection, the more beautiful they were, the easier my task turned out to be; I translated them literally or freely, as the text required.)
    As I have already indicated, Tuscany and Sicily have the choicest selection of folktales, both in quantity and quality. And immediately after, with its own special interpretation of a world of fantasy, is Venice, or rather, the entire range of Venetian dialects. The outstanding name here is Domenico Giuseppe Bemoni, who published (in 1873, 1875, 1893) several booklets of Venetian tales. These fables are remarkable for their limpidity and poetic power; although well-known types recur in them they always somehow evoke Venice, her spaces and light, and in one way or another they all impart an aquatic flavor; the sea, canals, voyages, ships, or the Levant figure in them. Bemoni does not give the names of the narrators, nor do we know how faithful he was to the original tales; but there is a distinct harmony overlying the gentle tones of the dialect and the atmosphere pervading various folktales, qualities which I hope are reflected in my transcription of the seven tales I singled out from his collection (stories 29 through 35).
    In the same period, Bologna’s contribution, through Carolina Coronedi-Berti, was a copious, first-rate anthology (1874), written in a dialect brimming over with zest and consisting of well-rounded, well-told stories shrouded in a somewhat hallucinatory ambience and set in familiar landscapes. Although the names of the storytellers are not given, one is often conscious of a feminine presence, who tends, at times, to be sentimental, at others to be dashing.
    In Giggi Zanazzo’s Roman collection (1907), the tale becomes a pretext for verbal entertainment. It is based upon knavish and suggestive modes of speech and makes for rewarding and pleasant reading.
    The Abruzzi have to their credit two very fine collections: the two volumes by Gennaro Finamore (1836–1923), a teacher and medical doctor. He collected texts in dialect from various localities and transcribed them with great linguistic precision; a vein of melancholy poetry occasionally emerges from these texts. The other Abruzzi anthology is the work of the archeologist Antonio De Nino (1836–1907), a friend of D’Annunzio’s, who recast the tales in Italian in very brief stories interspersed with short ballads and refrains in dialect in a playful and childlike style—a method of doubtful value from the scientific point of view as well as from mine. But the book contains many unusual stories (although a number of them are culled from the
Arabian Nights
) and curious ones (see my
Gobba, zoppa e collotorto
, “Hunchback Wryneck Hobbler”), that have an underlying irony and playfulness.
    Eight of the best tales I ran into are in Apulian dialect, in Pietro Pellizzari’s book,
Fiabe e canzoni popolari del contado di Maglie in terra d’Otranto (Popular Fables and Songs from the Country of Maglie in Terra d’Otranto
, 1881). They are familiar types, but written in a language so witty, in so racy a style, with such enjoyment of grotesque malformation, that they give the impression of having been conceived in that very language, like the excellent
I cinque capestrati
(“Five scapegraces”) the plot of which can be found in its every detail in Basile.
    In Calabria (mainly in the village of Palmi) Letterio Di Francia, the scholarly author of a history of storytelling, transcribed a collection,
Fiabe e novelle calabresi
(
Calabrian Fables and Short Stories
) published in 1929 and 1931, complete with the fullest and most precise notes ever recorded in Italian. The author names the different outstanding narrators, among whom there is a certain Annunziata Palermo. Calabrian storytelling exhibits a rich, colorful, complex imagination, but within it the logic of the plot is often lost, leaving only the unraveling of the enchantment.
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