SOURCE: "The Novels of Franscesco Jovine," in Italian Studies: An Annual Review, Vol. XXIII, 1968, pp. 138-55.

[In the following essay, Moloney argues against the common critical analysis of Jovine's novels as strictly political works, contending instead that they are works of psychological, sociological, and emotional complexity.]

Of all the so-called 'neo-realists' who flourished in the 1940's, Francesco Jovine (1902-50) is one of the most interesting and, in spite of his comparatively small output, one of the most complex. His first novel, Un uomo provvisorio (1934), is a psychological study, and in his last, Le Terre del Sacramento (1950), he succeeds in welding into a unified whole psychological analysis, description of his native province, and vigorous social protest. If he has not yet received the attention he deserves, it is because his complexity has led to his being interpreted in a variety of ways by critics who seem determined to pin on him descriptive labels which are manifestly inadequate.

The element of social criticism in his writings and his membership of the communist party inevitably made him the darling of the Marxists, and both they and the anticommunists have in common an inability to see anything other than the political aspect of his work. G. Rimanelli, writing under the pseudonym of A. G. Solari, for example, states:

Per chiudere su Jovine, diremo che è nostra convinzione che uno scrittore (e della razza, poi, di Francesco Jovine), quando diventa partigiano e propagandista di un'idea, e quest'ideologia sopravanza su tutto, polemicamente, è destinato a perdere sempre qualcosa della sua arte e della sua indipendenza artistica.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile this attitude with that of Pancrazi:

Il carattere o tono dominante dei due romanzi . . . (i.e. Signora Ava and Le Terre del Sacramento) .. . è il pittoresco .. . un pittoresco se mai patetico, sfumato, di colori teneri.

Pancrazi is here laying an excessive and exclusive emphasis on the element of the favoloso which other critics have also seen in Jovine and exaggerated at the expense of the political element. This attitude derives largely from Luigi Russo, who insisted on the favoloso, the canto, and the coralità. In other words Jovine, for Russo, is a latter-day Verga, and just as in his discussion of Verga he neglected the economic factor, so in his discussion of Jovine he neglected his contemporary relevance and the element of social protest. 'Talvolta si può avere il sospetto che la rappresentazione sia realisticamente esatta e felice, ma mancante di una vena di canto,' he observes of Le Terre del Sacramento. De Castris, on the other hand, not only sees the importance of the psychological themes, but specifically and repeatedly compares Jovine's characters with those of Svevo. He sees Jovine as 'l'unico nel suo tempo' to understand 'la vera sostanza della lezione di Svevo,' which in its way is as exaggerated as other interpretations, partly because other novelists, D'Annunzio and Borgese, demonstrably influenced him, partly because others, notably Moravia, also learnt from Svevo.

These different critical attitudes to Jovine all derive from the multiplicity of his themes—the study of the disorientation experienced by the poor young provincial intellectual in the big city, the poverty of the peasantry and their hunger for land, the inertia of the provincial gentry and their almost feudal power. De Castris vaguely suggests that this multiplicity is only apparent, and that maturity merely brought a change of perspective. Sapegno, too, sees 'la stretta coerenza di uno sviluppo, che ha le sue radici nella fondamentale onestà dello scrittore, nella sua fedeltà a certi temi, a certi ambienti, a un certo linguaggio originario ed autentico: fedeltà che non esclude, nel suo ambito, uno sforzo costante di progressiva chiarificazione e semplificazione. . . . ' Certainly there is coherent development and fidelity to certain themes; the means by which equilibrium was reached will be the subject of the following pages.

Jovine's first novel, Un uomo provvisorio, was published in 1934. It is the story of a young doctor, Giulio Sabò, who leaves his province, the Molise, and goes to Rome. There his scepticism and introspection reduce him almost to suicide. Sabò in this respect resembles nothing so much as one of Svevo's early characters, but unlike Alfonso Nitti and Emilio Brentani, Sabò is saved—saved by a return to his native province, by the resumed practice of his profession, forced on him in an emergency, and by love, all of which bring him an involvement with life which he had never had before. The analysis of Sabò the introspective dreamer is conducted on a superficial level, characteristics are asserted by the narrator rather than shown in action, and the solution is arbitrary and external. At the same time, there are other themes—the observation of life in the Molise, the life of the gentry and the professional classes, which Jovine depicts as decadent, and glimpses of peasant life. These become prominent only in the second half of the novel, when Sabò returns home because of his father's illness, and are reported rather than made alive, while there is only the most tenuous connexion—in that memories of childhood help his recovery—between them and Sabò's return to health.

The novel was badly received, but mainly for reasons extraneous to literature and art, although one should perhaps add that had the reasons been soundly based, its reception might have been equally bad. Sergio Lupi, writing in Roma Fascista on 18 July, 1935, rejected it 'perché noi abbiamo trovato una ragione morale per vivere, e non ci sembra che si possa vivere indifferentemente o provvisoriamente.' The second adverb is a cut at Jovine, the first a clear reference to Moravia, and to link the two together was perceptive. Like Gli Indifferenti, Un uomo provvisorio is set in Rome; the insistence of both authors on grey skies and rain provides an appropriate setting for the uniform dreariness of the central character's life and both novelists frequently use the word noia to describe their protagonist's condition. Like Michele, Sabò is tormented by a vivid imagination and excessive reasoning power: 'Aveva pensato di vivere infinite vite senza viverne una veramente.' (This assertion compares unfavourably with the way in which Moravia makes Michele live out his fantasy-life.) These resemblances make it clear that Moravia was another key figure in Jovine's formation.

His account of life in the Molise brought upon Jovine the anger of the Fascists and led to the banning of the second edition of the novel. Jovine had not intended to attack the structure of Southern society, but he had in fact done so indirectly, and the official reaction was not surprising in view of the way in which Fascism was reinforcing the power of the big landowners. Jovine's views on the problem of the South were well founded. He observed carefully the society in which he lived, and he had read widely, studying particularly the origins of brigandage and the history of the Risorgimento in the South. He was appalled by the feudal structure of Southern society, with its traditional hierarchy, which, as a Marxist, he interpreted as involving the systematic exploitation of the peasantry. It is not surprising that his second novel, Signora Ava, published in 1943, which takes its name from a personage in Southern folk-lore, should have been to a large extent a product partly of his historical reading and partly of his own observation, linked with memories of stories narrated to him by his father, who owned a small estate, as he took him round the countryside or which he had heard told on winter evenings.

Before this second novel appeared, however, Jovine published in 1940 a collection of short stories, Ladro di galline. It was the first of four such collections, which, taken all together, do not add up to an outstanding achievement. The stories are at times competently, even brilliantly, told, and contain vivid sketches of Southern life based on sympathetic observation, but the moments of insight, tension or drama, are the exception rather than the rule. Ladro di galline, for example, has only two memorable stories. The first of these is "Malfuta, o della fondazione di un villaggio," the story of the stratagem by which conservative peasants, suspicious of all authority, are compelled to move from their old village, which is slowly being carried downhill by a landslide, into a new settlement. The atmosphere of suspicion, conservatism, poverty and brooding violence is conveyed with compassionate accuracy and with some delightful humorous touches. The second is "Ladro di galline," in which Gentile, the illegitimate offspring of a village prostitute, becomes the husband of convenience of another prostitute. When the ignominy of his position penetrates his simple mind, he seeks revenge in the only way he understands; he tries to steal the hens of the man who is in bed with his wife, but in his drunken state he is detected, savaged by watchdogs, killed, and thrown into the river like so much refuse. But even in this volume, Jovine seems too preoccupied with a psychological analysis which is inappropriate to the peasant situations he is describing. This might not matter in the case of Gentile, but it is out of place in other stories, such as "Sogni d'oro di Michele" or "Ragazzo al buio," in which the analysis is external and intellectualistic, and in which there is too much bravura description, verging at times on the precious. The two sets of themes are not yet fused into an organic whole, and the style, in spite of Jovine's ability as a narrator, lacks a certain incisiveness.

In 1945, Jovine published two further volumes of short stories. They were L'impero in provincia, subtitled Cronache italiane dei tempi moderni, and Il pastore sepolto. The first of these is perhaps the more satisfactory. The Empire is the Fascist empire, the province the Molise; the volume consists of seven stories, arranged in chronological order, illustrating the effect on Guardialfiera of Fascism, war, the German occupation and the liberation. This use of a contemporary setting indicates that Jovine is looking for a period of violent change in which to situate his stories. In "L'impero," La vigilia shows the first influences of the march on Rome, with the gentry turning Fascism to their own ends. "Il monumento storico" is a comment on the absurdity of the attempts of local fasci to obey to the letter instructions issued by the central government. Orders are given to organize a march to a local monumento storico. After much perplexity, the only one they can think of—and they locate it only with difficulty—is the remains of an observation post built by the Neapolitan army in 1743. Best of all the tales, perhaps, is "Martina sull'albero," in which an old peasant woman protects her worldly goods—a bag of flour and a pig—from a pair of thugs by sitting up a tree and pelting the marauders with hard, unripe pears. These three stories have in common a rich vein of humour and satire, but in the others, Jovine is unable to strike the right tone, and in any case the concept behind the collection is too neat, too intellectualistic. In the second collection, Il pastore sepolto, I would single out the story which gives the volume its title, an account of village family life which strikes exactly the right note for a puzzled child's view of a family crisis, and also "Giustino d'Arienzo," in which Jovine returns to the theme of the young provincial's attempt to make his way in the big city. It is more satisfactorily handled here than in Un uomo provvisorio, and dealt with even more satisfactorily in the 'racconto lungo' "Uno che si salva," which is one of two stories in the volume Tutti i miei peccati, published in 1948. The title-story, a complicated and improbable intrigue of sexual fascination and blackmail left without a solution, is a failure, but in "Uno che si salva" the vanity and day-dreams of the anti-hero, Siro Bagnini, are ruthlessly exposed for what they are, and he comes to the very edge of disaster. As the title implies, however, he is saved, and the mechanism of his salvation is the disillusionment caused by the discovery that not only is his mistress a prostitute but that he is the only one not to know it—he is the intellectual counterpart of Gentile—and the presence of the sensible girl who packs him off home to the village where he was once a maestro elementare. His weaknesses are judged more sharply than were those of Sabò, but the solution is still, in part, external.

In all these short stories it is possible to pick out Jovine's recurrent themes: the psychological study of the young provincial intellectual, rootless and uncertain, gullible and doomed to disappointment; the careful observation of life in village and provincial town, isolated, backward and stifling; and vigorous protest against social injustice. So far Jovine has not succeeded in fusing them into a balanced work on a large scale, and so far, except in a few short stories, his technique in the handling of episodes has been very uneven. It is only in his last novel, Le Terre del Sacramento, published in 1950, that Jovine gives them unity and finds a technique to match. Signora Ava, the novel which precedes it, has therefore to be read both in its own right and as marking an important stage in Jovine's development, namely the beginning of his maturity.

Signora Ava is a popular folk-figure, personifying an age fabulously distant from our own. (One of the peasants in "Malfuta" says, 'Caduta una casa? Non ne cadeva una dal tempo della signora Ava.') The novel is prefaced with a quotation from the Southern folk-song:

O tiempo della Gnora Ava
nu vecchio imperatore
a morte condannava
chi faceva a' 'mmore.

It was clearly this quotation and the dedication—'Alla memoria di mio padre, ingenuo rapsodo di questo mondo defunto'—which enabled Russo and others to insist on the element of the favoloso, and it may well have been this aspect of the novel which brought him fame in 1943, but in seizing on this aspect, critics have followed the obviously unsound procedure of applying to the author words which he uses to describe his characters:

I più vecchi si compiacevano di questa funzione di cronisti, e, senza volerlo, con quella operazione naturale alla mente che è volta a rendere armoniche le disarmonie del passato, davano ai semplici fatti narrati un ritmo di favolosa invenzione . . . Il passato cosi inconsapevolmente composto e armonizzato si coloriva di bellezza.

Signora Ava is set in Guardialfiera in 1860. Structurally, it falls into two parts, each of which focuses attention on a different character. The first part concentrates on Don Matteo Tridone, an elderly priest, unorthodox, ignorant, scraping a living as best he can, since he has no parish of his own, by performing ecclesiastical functions for which he is paid in kind, and by acting as a kind of domestic bursar to a private school. The most vivid and comic episodes—including what must be one of the best hilarious sequences in modern Italian literature—centre on him. Subordinate to Don Matteo in the first part, but the most prominent character in the second part, is Pietro Veleno, a young peasant who works as an odd-job man for the De Risio family, the village landowners. Pietro has grown up with, and falls in love with, Antonietta, the daughter of Eutichio De Risio and the favourite niece of old Don Beniamino, whose money she is destined to inherit. Pietro becomes increasingly conscious of the barrier of class, so that the more attractive Antonietta becomes, the more inaccessible she seems. Meanwhile, political disturbances are increasing; Pietro and another peasant are compromised when, on the orders of the De Risio family, they replace in the village church a portrait of the King of Naples previously removed by the revolutionaries, who now seem to be losing. But the redshirts return, the De Risio family make Pietro their scapegoat; he flees and ultimately joins a group of bandits. They attack a convent, which, by one of those coincidences which reveal the flimsiness of the novel's construction, is the very one at which Antonietta is convalescing after an illness. To save her from the rest, Pietro seizes her as his share of the booty and discovers that his love is returned. There follows a brief, tender idyll which culminates in Antonietta's pregnancy. They then attempt to escape to the Papal States which Pietro naϊvely conceives as an earthly paradise with pardon for all repentant sinners. Instead of reaching this promised land, Pietro is arrested as he is about to cross the border.

Signora Ava is clearly unevenly balanced and badly constructed. Humour dominates in the first part, pathos in the second; there is too much caricature in the first part, too much melodrama and too little humour in the second. To compensate for these defects there is the evocation of a society and a way of life, and round Pietro and Don Matteo is grouped a rich gallery of vivid, living characters. These include Eutichio De Risio, the head of the household, who ruthlessly exploits the peasantry by lending them seed at exorbitant rates of interest and schemes to get possession of common land; his son, Don Carlo, slothful, ignorant, fat, newly qualified as a doctor and practising medicine, like Carlo Levi's Gibilisco, as a hereditary feudal right; Don Giovannino, a former Carbonaro, who runs a private school to prepare young men for university; his students, youthfully idealistic, vaguely dreaming of a new Italy and a better life; and a number of lesser figures, servants and peasants.

It seems reasonable to doubt whether this world is really thought of by Jovine as fabulous and remote. The love episode is indeed poetic in tone, invested with all the pathos of tragic young love. But although the novel is set in the nineteenth century, the society it depicts is not presented as dead or even remote. The observation of detail is too accurate and sympathetic for that. An example is provided by the attitudes of the different sections of society towards the Risorgimento. The landowners are on whichever side suits their interest, which might be defined as the preservation of the existing social hierarchy and the acquisition of the peasants' land. The intellectuals, cherishing vague ideals of liberty, side with Garibaldi, and while there is in their behaviour a good deal of romantic attitudinizing and a considerable absence of practical common sense, there is also nobility of mind. For the peasants, on the other hand, liberty is associated with freedom from feudal oppression and the right to land ownership. All these attitudes are authentic and convincing; all could equally well be set in the period of the so-called revolution of the Fascists which provides the background to Le Terre del Sacramento. Certain themes are, in fact, common to both works, and Jovine seems at this stage of his development to be looking for an appropriate historical setting for his themes, characters and situations. He needs a historical period in which the hitherto rigid and unchanging social hierarchy is being threatened both by violence and by new ideas.

Perhaps this might best be illustrated by reference to two episodes. The first, in Signora Ava, describes the distribution of grain to the peasants early on a cold wet November morning. The grain is lent by Don Eutichio at a 25 per cent interest rate, and as the contracts are signed with a cross by the illiterate peasants, they are checked by Don Matteo.

Don Matteo, naturalmente, che non aveva in testa che una idea alla volta, non pensava che in questo moltiplicarsi del grano oltre che alla collaborazione di Don Eutichio e del Padreterno occorreva anche un lungo lavoro di quelle povere braccia.

The narrative technique at this point is crude: the narrator is intervening to underline the pathos of the situation as unnecessarily and as irritatingly as Verga does in Nedda. In Le Terre del Sacramento the peasants of Morutri hold two meetings in the fondaco di San Carlo which until 1898 had been the site of the bank in which the corn loans were issued. In 1898, however, the peasants burned the bank and murdered its two administrators in one of those outbursts of what E. J. Hobsbawm has called 'primitive rebellion.' The warehouse in its new setting has therefore become a symbol of exploitation and revolt. Their first meeting is one in which they are exploited, by being induced to clear for cultivation land which is promised to them on perpetual lease and from which they are expelled once they have carried out their part of the bargain. The second meeting is one at which they decide to rebel by occupying the land from which they are about to be evicted.

The second episode concerns Don Eutichio in Signora Ava. He schemes to gain possession of communal lands by letting the peasants incur debts and taking over the land in lieu of payment. The scheme comes to nothing, but it is worth noticing that during a period of unrest the peasants occupy some of the De Risio land, only to be driven off by troops. Now the whole of Le Terre del Sacramento hinges on the scheme to induce the peasants to work land and then evict them; when they occupy the land they are driven off by carabinieri and Fascists. These two episodes are minor in Signora Ava, but there is nothing remote about them, and Jovine clearly sympathizes with the victims. They become major themes only in the later novel, in which Jovine has both set them in a similarly disturbed period and made them part of a recurrent historical pattern. Le Terre del Sacramento thus displays a historical awareness which is lacking in Signora Ava. The value-judgements passed in the latter novel often seem crudely anachronistic and inappropriate, as though the narrator, with his twentieth-century political and social sophistication were patronizing nineteenth-century characters whom one could not reasonably expect to share his insights. All these difficulties are avoided in La Terre del Sacramento. The period which saw the rise of Fascism clearly provides a more suitable setting for Jovine's themes not only because it saw much violence but also because the violence, unlike the banditry of Signora Ava, was politically motivated. Jovine's value-judgements are no longer imposed from without, but are those of Fascism's opponents, while Luca Marano is a more satisfactory protagonist than Pietro Veleno in that although he comes of peasant stock he is a university student, intelligent and articulate, faced with the difficult problem of making his way in the world.

Jovine's last novel derives its title from the name of an estate which was confiscated from the church by the government of the newly united Italy in 1867. The action is set in the 1920's, and the land has now passed into the hands of the Cannavale family. The priests of the region still insist that the land rightfully belongs to the church and that any attempt to cultivate it is cursed by God. In the eyes of the superstitious peasantry, the estate's history seems to confirm this, for the chapel has twice been struck by lightning and now lies in ruins, and at least one former owner died a violent death, while the present owner, Enrico Cannavale, dissolute and in debt, known by reason of his goatee beard and his lechery as 'la Capra del Diavolo,' seems to be heading for much the same kind of fate. Not that this superstitious fear prevents them cutting down trees for fuel in winter. They also illicitly pasture their animals there and encroach on the estate when they plough. The plot of the novel is simple and has already been summarized in a few words. Its structure, however, is complex, for Jovine does much more than narrate an anecdote. He analyses the intricate structure of provincial society in order to expose the injustices on which it is based, and he explores the character and motives of his protagonists in such a way that his hero, Luca Marano, emerges as representative of a tragic generation.

There are three main characters in Le Terre del Sacramento. They are Enrico Cannavale, his wife Laura, and Luca Marano. The emphasis falls first of all on Enrico, then on the relationship between his wife and Luca, and finally on Luca and his peasant followers. The early appearances of Enrico characterize him well. In the very first chapter, he stampedes a flock of animals illegally grazing on his land, instead of discovering whose they are and taking effective steps to gain compensation, generally treating the matter as a joke; then he seduces his orphaned cousin Clelia, who has come to keep house for him. Then Laura appears on the scene. Young and beautiful, she has been studying music at Naples. As time passes, her Neapolitan life becomes more glamorous in retrospect than it was in reality, but she soon loses touch with former friends. When she and Clelia meet, the latter resigns herself to defeat. Laura, more sophisticated, more provocatively beautiful, makes herself indispensable to Enrico while at the same time keeping him at a distance. Unable to win her as easily as his previous conquests, Enrico proposes marriage. Laura accepts, her mind full of vague idealistic projects for setting Enrico's patrimony in order, giving work to the peasants and leading a calm and virtuous life. Around this developing relationship Jovine groups the little society of Calena, Enrico's household, his servants and estate manager, Laura's family, and behind them the empty trivial round of underemployed professional men, lawyers and teachers, all neatly introduced through Laura's father, the retired Presidente De Martiis.

The stage is thus set for the introduction of Luca Marano, who is to be brought into contact with Laura. Their meeting is effected with admirable skill and economy. Luca is the oldest son of a peasant family from the nearby village of Morutri. The village priest, impressed by his intelligence, sent him to a seminary as a candidate for the priesthood. But Luca has no vocation for the priesthood, and he realizes that his career has been imposed on him from without. Religious practices gradually lose all meaning and he accepts as natural a world without God. He continues his education at the University of Naples, where he reads law. He helps with the harvest at home, and during the winter months lives with his uncle, Filoteo Natalizio, the ufficiale giudiziario of Calena, and works in the office of the solicitor Jannacone. When, therefore, an I.O.U. signed by Enrico Cannavale is passed by a client to Jannacone for action he sends Filoteo Natalizio to the Cannavale house to make a legal attachment of goods to the value of the debt. Filoteo takes with him both witnesses and, since his eyes are not what they were, a clerk, who is naturally his nephew Luca. They arrive during one of Enrico's frequent absences, and it is Laura who pays the debt. In this episode Luca is a minor, and even a slightly grotesque, figure, dressed in a worn-out suit with an ill-matching tie, passive throughout, leaping clumsily his to feet, acutely embarrassed, when Laura asks if she is to give the cheque to him. His reaction is ambiguous; it could be a sign of social inferiority or of incipient sexual attraction, perhaps the uneasy mixture of both which is to characterize their relationship.

When, gradually, Jovine begins to focus our attention more closely on him, it is Luca's poverty which is emphasized. He has only one pair of shoes, so that he has to stay at home while they are being mended, and his shirt is multi-coloured, being composed of parts from two worn-out shirts joined together, 'in sé e per sé fatiscenti e inutili, ma decenti e valide nella loro ingegnosa unione,' as Filoteo puts it in his deliberately cultivated pompous manner. Luca again cuts a rather grotesque figure as he tries to solve the problem of how to wear trousers that are too short—whether to wear the waist at its normal height and expose his shins, or slacken his belt and make it look as though they are falling down. The latter is the solution he opts for, only to be told by his fellow-students firstly that his trousers are falling down—he naturally knows why—then that he has holes in the heels of his socks—which strikes him as possible—and finally that his shirt-tail is hanging out—which, in his present embarrassment and confusion, now seems quite likely. It is in this state of acute embarrassment that he again meets Laura who, 'come aveva fatto nel pomeriggio, lo squadrò dapprima con uno sguardo investigativo lungo tutta la persona, poi gli piantò nelle pupille i suoi occhi azzurri.' Jovine thus makes Luca's awkwardness and isolation visible; a similar idea in the earlier story "Tutti i miei peccati," for example, remains on the level of description and serves to illustrate the mature Jovine's improved technique in the episode described above:

Non riuscivo a fare amicizia con nessuna delle mie compagne; le rare volte che scambiavo qualche parola con qualcuna di loro, mi pareva di avvertire nel loro contegno qualcosa di canzonatorio che aumentava la mia diffidenza e la rozzezza sgarbata del mio linguaggio.

By this time, as far as Luca is concerned, things have gone beyond a joke. His shirt, he finds, is in place.

La camicia era tutto entro i suoi legittimi confini. Si calmò un poco. Era stato, ancora una volta, vittima di uno scherzo, ma non era disposto a ridere. Aveva i muscoli duramente tesi e sapeva che se Gesualdo o Elpidio gli fossero capitati tra le mani, li avrebbe picchiati a sangue.

The use of irony here is interesting. The boundary image refers back to the peasants' habit of encroaching on to the Cannavale estate, and the legal phraseology in which it is couched is appropriate both to the image and to Luca's employment in a solicitor's office. In this respect it is reminiscent of much of Svevo's imagery, as when, for example, during the course of his business partnership with Guido Speier, Zeno comments on the rivalry between the latter and Tacich for Carmen's favours.

Il Tacich, innamorato com'era, corse da noi e ci consegnò l'affare avendone in premio una bella, grande, carezzevole occhiata da Carmen. Il povero dalmata incassò riconoscente l'occhiata non sapendo ch'era una manifestazione d'amore per Guido.

The frequency with which imagery of this kind is used ironically by Svevo is undoubtedly one of the factors which contribute to the closely-knit texture of La Coscienza di Zeno. In Jovine, it is much less frequent and is used here to introduce a change of tone from the farcical to the serious. It is used more bitingly after the episode in which Enrico Cannavale is beaten up by a group of Fascists, mainly students. 'Giancarlo Pistalli sosteneva la tesi della provocazione.'

Luca's impotent rage at the practical joke is the first indication of something in his character other than gentleness, patience and humour. It is more than pique; it is, one comes to realize, the as yet unexpressed rage of a frustrated and disappointed generation. Luca and his friends are all law-students in a town which already has fifty under-employed lawyers, and underneath their facetious air, their cigarette-scrounging, their occasional gamble and their furtive fornications, all are uneasy about the future. Jovine portrays the period of post-World War I unemployment and unrest, when those too young to have served in the 1915-18 war were bitterly envious of those who did and who, because of their absence on military service, were awarded passes in examinations they had never taken. This resentment is extended to include the whole social structure. Gesualdo says:

Con tutti me la piglio. Bisogna spaccare tutto. Anche qui, questo lurido buco di Calena. Non ci pensi che succede? Tutto in mano ai vecchi. Aria ci vuole.

On their visits to Naples, some students quickly feel the appeal of Fascist violence, to which Luca is immune, mainly because of a residue of idealism surviving from his religious education.

Laura, like Luca, is also highly intelligent. She soon realizes that her marriage to Enrico is not based on love and that she will have to take over the task, which he is not capable of performing, of putting his estate in order. She is aware, too, of the enervating atmosphere of Calena, its stagnation and lethargy, and in order to make her escape she puts all her energies into rescuing her husband's finances before he can dissipate them completely. Realizing that she needs the help of the local people she seeks an ally in Luca Marano, who is respected and consulted by the peasants.

All Luca's meetings with Laura are uncomfortable. His first casual encounters in Calena are followed by another, this time in Morutri. Enrico and Laura, on a visit to the Terre, come across Luca, unshaven, barefoot and idle. Enrico treats him in a signorial manner, using the familiar tu: Laura uses the more formally courteous lei. When they leave, Luca is conscious only of resentment:

Per un quarto d'ora egli aveva rappresentato il pretesto della sosta in un luogo dove si è giunti per noia e nel quale si cerca qualcosa perché diventi memorabile.

When he next meets Laura, in Casa Cannavale, this time at her invitation, it is once more to be made aware of his poverty and lack of social graces. His humiliation is conveyed in a series of delicate touches which are now allowed to speak for themselves—Laura's taste for expensive cigarettes, for instance, which immediately makes one think by contrast of the students cadging occasional cigarettes, and the 'infinita cautela' with which Luca puts down his wine-glass, which makes one realize how afraid he is of his own clumsiness. In spite of his embarrassment, however, Laura fascinates him, and he becomes her willing ally. His attempts to stop the illegal felling of trees are unsuccessful, but when Laura produces her scheme to induce the peasants to cultivate the land, he is completely successful. Laura is the brains behind the scheme: it is she who persuades her Neapolitan backers to employ labour on a day-to-day basis, it is she who has the idea of rebuilding the ruined chapel—this time with a lightning conductor—and of having it reconsecrated, in order to overcome the peasants' superstitious hesitations. Luca acts as her intermediary. Taking advantage of his prestige, and of the peasants' trust in him, he convinces them both because he is himself convinced and also because he seems to be one of them, 'sembrava uno di loro.' When, at the village meeting, a girl calls out 'Maci vuole uno che non ci tradisca. Tu non ci devi tradire, Luca,' she is voicing the sentiments of the whole group. This trust in Luca remains unshaken. A crisis arises when Luca is in Naples but they are confident he will return. 'Ma noi dicevamo che saresti tornato.' And when things go wrong, it is again to Luca that they turn.

In order to raise the capital necessary to clear the land, Laura and her backers float a company. When the land has been reclaimed cheaply, they issue eviction notices, offering to some of the peasants the less fertile land in order that they themselves may engage in profitable farming on the best land, employing other peasants on a day-labour basis. It is to this crisis that Luca returns. Laura, meanwhile, has fled to Sanremo, her plan of escape successful. Luca's reaction is significant. Although at first he says, 'Mi hanno tradito,' it is primarily of the peasants that he thinks. 'E il; il lavoro dei contadini.... Hanno grattato la terra per sei mesi!' Thus it becomes for him not simply a betrayal of himself, or of the peasants alone, but of a collective us, for he now identifies himself with them. 'Iosono tornato per dirvi che ci hanno traditi,' he tells them. They also exploited the peasants' religious scruples; 'Hanno ingannato Cristo e noi,' and all Luca's innate idealism is offended. Still ingenuous in spite of the deceit practised on him, he leads the peasants out to occupy the land as they did in 1898, but this time in a non-violent protest, to wait for justice to be done—real justice as opposed to mere legality. Justice is not done. They are attacked by a force of Carabinieri and Fascist irregulars, and in the struggle Luca and two others are killed.

Luca's part in this revolt is the expression of a maturity and a feeling of solidarity with the oppressed which he reached in Naples. There, he found many of his fellowm̵students prepared to compromise with society, ready to exploit and be exploited: others turned to Fascism, including, he noticed, those who already belonged to the privileged class, who were using Fascism for their own ends. He is appalled by this intricate web of self-seeking, and his first open gesture of revolt takes place in a restaurant frequented by students, when a group of Fascists attempt to 'purge' another student who had earlier led an act of resistance to their bullying. This time it is Luca who leads the resistance in defence of his friend. This incident follows immediately after the realization that he and the Morutri peasants have been betrayed and is a logical consequence of it, marking the step from disillusionment to rebellion and preparing the reader for what is to come.

In the narrative this act is separated from the realization that he has been betrayed by one incident which perhaps needs some comment. This is the episode in which Luca is persuaded by two street urchins to buy an umbrella which opens and closes automatically, albeit somewhat unpredictably. As he goes into the student restaurant, in which the brush with the Fascists is to take place, the waiter informs him that in view of the recent brawls, umbrellas, being potential weapons, are not allowed, and takes it from him. It promptly opens, much to the delight of the students. Neither the waiter nor the proprietress can close it, and the latter, enraged, throws it, open as it is, at the noisiest of them. It lands perfectly furled. This episode is delightful in itself, but it raises two questions. The first relates to the relevance of this and one or two other minor episodes, and the second relates to Jovine's use of humour. On the issue of relevance it is possible to argue that Jovine is here using farce to separate and to set off two serious and significant events and is at the same time commenting ironically on Luca's gullibility. In the structure of the novel, it could also be added that he is providing a counterpoint to an earlier episode in which the same pretentious waiter joked at Luca's expense. Other episodes cannot be justified in the same way, however. At the luncheon party given by Laura at the Frassino farm for her Neapolitan friends, who have come to see the work in progress on the estate, Luca's gaucheness and embarrassment are again revealed, but the episode after lunch, in which the Baronessa di Santasilia and Luca make love in the hay-loft, seems completely gratuitous, and it must be admitted that at times the narrative is not conducted with the strictest economy. The humour of the umbrella episode is interesting, since it shows that Jovine, for all his fundamental seriousness, is still capable of writing amusingly. He uses humour to bring his characters down to earth—in one case, at least, literally. Filoteo Natalizio and Luca at one stage discuss, somewhat flippantly, the sacrifice of Christ and elaborate the metaphor of a cheque which can be cashed only at the bank of heaven. On his way to the peasant revolt, Filoteo takes up the metaphor again:

Quando tu volevi presentare la cambiale in protesto dei nostri contadini alla Banca del cielo, io non ero d'accordo con te. Ma ora la presentiamo alla Banca della storia—concluse con voce trionfale, alzando il capo in alto.

Inciampò e cadde.

Then Luca has to pick him out of the mud and brush his clothes. Jovine, in other words, refuses to be carried away by rhetoric; he prefers to let events speak directly to the reader.

With the end of the revolt, a striking change comes over the tone of the novel. The three corpses are laid out on the ground where they fell. The women, including Luca' s mother, sit silently around. As night falls, the old men—the young ones have fled or been arrested—light a fire. The silence is broken by a cry of grief from Immacolata Marano, after which the women begin their traditional wailing and lamentations. This 'duolo' was a custom which had clearly made a great impression on Jovine, since he had earlier described it in Un uomo provvisorio.

Poi tra le teste delle donne se ne levò una che incominciò a fare il 'duolo' a voce alta, cantando le lodi del defunto, commisurando con estro inconsapevole il concetto alla monodia; le lasse del canto terminavano con un ah! svolto in un tema di tre note strazianti che le donne in circolo riprendevano in tono più rapido.

But in the first novel the description remains at the level of unassimilated folk-custom, reported rather than made alive. In Le Terre del Sacramento, on the other hand, Jovine lets us hear the women's lament with its litany-like repetitions, its rhymes and assonances; the narrator refrains from comment and adjectives like strazianti are suppressed:

Quando la notte divenne buia, i vecchi accesero i fuochi alle spalle dei morti. A un tratto Immacolata Marano urlò:

—Luca, oh Luca!—e si mise le mani intrecciate sul capo dondolando sul busto.

—Luca, spada brillante,—gridò una voce giovenile.

—Spada brillante,—ripeterono in coro le altre.

—Stai sulla terra sanguinante.

Via via le donne si misero le mani intrecciate sulle teste, altre presero le cocche dei fazzoletti nei pugni chiusi e li percuotevano facendo:

—Oh! oh! Spada brillante, stai sulla terra sanguinante!

—T'hanno ammazzato, Luca Marano.

—Non vuole la terra il tuo sangue cristiano.

—Difendevi le terre del Sacramento.

—Erano nostre, nostre le terre.

—Avevamo le ossa per testamento.

—Le avevamo scavate con le nostre mani.

—T'hanno ucciso, Luca Marano . . .

After this, the last sentence of the novel, rather than a mere factual observation, may perhaps be regarded as a symbol of hope:

La notte era buia e le voci si perdevano sulla terra desolata oltre il circolo di luce che faceva il fuoco, ancora vivo.

The revolution has failed, the darkness of oppression has again descended, but the protest which has been made is like a fire piercing the darkness, and is still alive.

The literature of protest often fails artistically, either because it remains at the level of local protest without achieving any wider significance and is without historical perspective, or because its characters are mere puppets, moved jerkily by the strings of dogma. These are dangers inherent in the subject-matter. A novelist cannot write about an abstract quality like 'injustice': he has to write about particular men who suffer or who perpetrate injustice. Since Jovine came to Le Terre del Sacramento via Signora Ava and his historical studies, and since he makes Luca Marano a representative figure, he seems to me to have avoided the first danger. The charge that he has imposed a political ideology on his subject also seems wide of the mark. Luca, for all his intelligence, is politically naïve, and the only politically articulate left-wing figure in the novel is the ineffectual Enrico Cannavale. Jovine's protest is thus humanitarian rather than political. The final impression left by the novel, therefore, is both of the inevitability of tragedy and of the sense of waste which derives from it, and also the feeling, implied by the final image, of an underlying optimism. Le Terre del Sacramento is Jovine's finest achievement. In this novel, his themes are at last coherently expressed and interrelated and find an appropriate setting. He has taken an inglorious incident and invested it with a significance which, in spite of Luca Marano's personal failure, is made by Jovine's treatment of it, implicit if not explicit, to reach far beyond the confines of the Molise and of the two decades of Fascist rule to become a symbol of revolt against injustice.