Verga, Giovanni | Robert Weaver (essay date 1953)
Robert Weaver (essay date 1953)
SOURCE: A review of Little Novels of Sicily, in The Canadian Forum, Vol. XXXIII, No. 393, October, 1953, p. 161.
[In the review below, Weaver praises the modern qualities of Verga's stories and the author's deft combination of sympathy for and detachment from his characters.]
His two novels and handful of stories about Sicily are enough to make Giovanni Verga rank as an important writer. In many respects, it seems to me, Verga should seem as important to us as, say, Balzac or Zola. And for some modern readers Verga will have an advantage over many of the writers of his own time: for although he belongs to the nineteenth century, his work has a strong contemporary flavor. There are few digressions in his novels, little moralizing, no heavy undergrowth of description. His dialogue is quick and revealing, his narrative prose firm, rapid and vigorous. His descriptive passages and metaphors are fresh,...
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