Focus: Sicilia e migrazioni

La Merica for children: Emigration in Luigi Capuana’s Gli «americani» di Ràbbato

Chiara Mazzucchelli University of Central Florida

Tortu nun ci nni fazzu a chisti amici Chi partinu pi la merica mischini Chi cca si fa una vita infilici Di scarsizzi e miserii senza fini. Domenico Azzaretto, «La partenza dell’operaio per l’America»

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, leaving became a significant part of the life of Sicilians. For reasons that are both geographical and historical, which ultimately caused the economic collapse of the island, at the beginning of last century experienced a massive displacement of its people to the United States, a movement that resembles that of Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth century and Puerto Rico since World War II. In his 1963 study L’emigrazione in Sicilia, historian Francesco Renda reports that in 1900, about 29,000 migrants left Sicily, 21,000 of whom headed to the United States. Only six years later, in 1906, the number of Sicilians leaving the island had grown to more than 127,000, with 70 percent of them directed to the New World (p. 48). Born in 1839 in , in the province of , Luigi Capuana witnessed first-hand the effects of the Sicilian diaspora on the families and communities left behind, so much so that he made emigration the topic of his 1912 children’s book Gli «americani» di Ràbbato. In this short novel written toward the end of his literary career and life, Capuana combined two of his lifelong preoccupations: the necessity of constructing a national

60 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 identity in post-Unification and the crucial role played by education in this process. In this paper, I look at how Capuana reflects on these themes and intertwines them with the issue of the increasing migratory movement from Sicily to the United States in Gli «americani» di Ràbbato, with the purpose of teaching children a lesson on the importance of one’s roots while, at the same time, encouraging young readers to broaden their life experiences.

Capuana and Children’s Literature in the Post-Unification Years Together with fellow Sicilian writers and , Capuana is credited for being an early exponent of Verismo, a movement that blossomed in late nineteenth century Italian literary and artistic circles, which aimed to re-create «objective» and «authentic» representations of the life of the working classes. In fact, Capuana’s 1879 novel Giacinta – which the author dedicated to Emile Zola, arguably the leading figure of French Naturalism – is generally considered the manifesto of Verismo. In reality, Capuana was a very eclectic author whose sundry interests are reflected in the many genres in which he engaged, rather successfully, throughout the years; he was at once poet, playwright, journalist, essayist, and prolific writer of children’s literature.1 In an 1894 interview with Ugo Ojetti, Capuana described how his engagement with youth fiction began when his nephews asked him for a fairy tale:

Le mie prime fiabe furono scritte così. Ero a Mineo, in Sicilia, nella casa paterna, e i miei nipotini (che adesso sono grandi e grossi) una sera mi chiesero una favola. La mattina dopo ne avevo scritta una [«La reginotta»]; e così via, una per giorno per dodici giorni. Le riunii in un volume del Treves, rièdito poi dal Paggi-Bemporad di Firenze. (Capuana, 2010, p. 7)

The volume to which he referred is the 1882 C’era una volta, the first of many collections the author wrote in which fairies and magicians grant the wishes of and cast their spells on kings and servants alike.2 But it is with his children’s short novels that Capuana makes a breakthrough in the genre, namely, Scurpiddu (1898), Gambalesta (1902), Cardello (1907), and, finally, Gli «americani» di Ràbbato.3 With these works, Capuana joined in the efforts of other Italian writers who, in the post-Unification years, resorted to young adult literature to instill in the new generation basic ethical principles such as kindness and honesty and, especially, to inspire in them the spirit of good citizenship in the newly born country.4 The now-classic Le avventure di Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (1883) and Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis (1886) paved the way for the adventures of Capuana’s Sicilian little rascals.5

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The so-called questione della lingua was also at the core of all these works that targeted school-age children and preteens. In his 1963 Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, Tullio De Mauro calculated that in 1861, only 2.5 percent of the Italian population was italophone, in the sense of being able to read and write in what was considered «standard» Italian without a significant effort (p. 37). Therefore, the linguistic homogenization of the country was seen as a necessary requisite to «make Italians» once Italy was made, to paraphrase the now-cliché dictum popularly attributed to Massimo D’Azeglio. To this end, immediately after his nomination to the Ministry of Public Education in 1867, Emilio Broglio formed a committee to take care of the much-debated questione della lingua. Presided over by Alessandro Manzoni, the committee produced the famous document «Dell’unità della lingua e dei mezzi di diffonderla,» in which it was suggested that contemporary spoken Florentine should be adopted as the national Italian language. The Sicilian Capuana had embraced that solution even before the Milanese Manzoni and his committee had formally concluded their work. In an 1864 poem tellingly titled La lingua italiana published in the monthly journal La Gioventù, Capuana reviewed the history of Italian language from the poetry of the scuola siciliana to his days through Dante, and he embraced the adoption of fiorentino parlato in the peninsula and its islands as the koine for the newborn state in the following octave:

Ed ecco; pellegrini innamorati A te venian dal siculo paese, E in un amplesso ci stringiam coi nati Del diletto toscan suolo cortese; E più cari gli abbracci e più beati Ci fa il pensiero dell’antiche offese, E i comuni perigli e la vittoria E la rinata al sole itala gloria! (pp. 380-81)

All in all, the works of Collodi, De Amicis, and Capuana played a key role in the process of linguistic unification of the newly formed . The question of linguistic homogeneity was, obviously, one of the aspects of the much bigger issue of the construction of a unified national identity, for which Capuana strongly advocated. The roots of the writer’s patriotic spirit can be traced back to his participation in his hometown’s insurrection to win independence from Bourbon rule in 1859.6 Capuana infused many of his literary works for children with his personal experiences and childhood memories. For instance, Rosaria Sardo defines Gambalesta «romanzo ‘garibaldino’» (p. 366) because of its patriotic theme and points out:

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Alla grande avventura dell’Italia unita Cuddu parteciperà in modo fortuito e inconsapevole, col suo entusiasmo, con la sua incoscienza, con la sua gioia di vivere. Capuana stesso aveva vissuto a vent’anni questa grande avventura e mirabilmente riesce a renderla viva attraverso gli occhi e le emozioni di Gambalesta, il piccolo abitante di Ràbbato, Mineo. (p. 368)

«Viva la Talia,» Gambalesta exclaims at one point, although he is not com- pletely sure what that means. But the Risorgimento and its aftermath have a significant impact on the life of the child, and children’s literature becomes an ideal means for readers to gain an overall understanding of historical events and for the author to build the foundations of patriotic education.

Sicily and Emigration in the Early Twentieth Century The post-Unification bliss was short-lived and soon Sicilians started to leave the island in great numbers. It is easy to understand how the island’s finite geography translates into limited resources and, in most extreme scenarios, of access to decent standards of living, therefore encouraging emigration.7 Since the Unification, all of the aforementioned phenomena, exacerbated by the newborn state’s failure to adequately address the different realities of the Italian mosaic, caused the whole Italian South to experience periods of intense emigration flows to the other side of the ocean, mainly to Brazil, Argentina, and the United States. Historian Matteo Pretelli further notes:

Alla svolta del secolo i flussi migratori dalla penisola si modificarono. Sebbene nei precedenti vent’anni già 800 mila italiani fossero giunti negli Stati Uniti, adesso la repubblica statunitense divenne la loro meta privilegiata […]. La composizione del flusso fu prevalentemente meridionale, con una larga componente di siciliani spinti alla partenza da crisi vinicole e agrarie che portarono all’esplosione nel 1892-94 del movimento dei Fasci siciliani. (p. 87)

The movement soon spread throughout the island and evolved into a real diaspora.8 Sicilian authors who witnessed these periods of intense emigration flows were quick to use their literary platforms as ways to present and discuss what emigration meant for those who left as well as those who stayed behind. Giovanni Verga’s 1881 I Malavoglia, Domenico Azzaretto’s 1906 dialect poem La partenza dell’operaio per l’America, and some of Maria Messina’s and ’s short stories are infused with themes and motifs inspired by emigration. However, in his 2011 study of emigration in Vite ritrovate, Gianni Paoletti rightfully observes that:

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Fatto salvo per Capuana, tuttavia, nessuno dei narratori isolani che hanno toccata l’emigrazione ha scritto un’opera interamente dedicata al tema, lasciando, piuttosto, che esso emergesse come canovaccio novellistico, come accenno o come occasione per qualche breve racconto. (p. 41)

It is important to remember that Capuana himself was a migrant. The author was twenty-five years old when he left Mineo, the small town in the «Island of the Sun,» to move to the «continente,» as he used to call mainland Italy. In fact, De Roberto remarked in the eulogy he wrote for him that the small-town aspiring writer believed his literary vocation would wither away in Sicily: «Questo ingegno si sarebbe perduto se fosse rimasto nell’angusto luogo natale […] egli si sentiva soffocare in quella piccola Mineo […] Soffocava anche nella non grande Catania» (pp. 72-73). With the help of his mother and unbeknownst to his uncle Antonio, who managed the family’s financial affairs, Capuana organized his escape to Florence, the intellectual, linguistic, and soon-to-be political capital of the newborn kingdom of Italy.9 In his 2011 study L’ispettore di Mineo, Carli writes:

quando a metà degli anni Sessanta, Don Lisi decide per la prima volta di fuggire da Mineo, Firenze è da subito, senza esitazione alcuna, la meta prescelta, proprio per l’importanza assunta dalla capitale in fatto di cultura sociale e politica, umanistica e scientifica, pedagogica ed educativa, nel senso più ampio del termine. In Tosca- na, Capuana avrebbe trovato ben altro, rispetto ai sospirati primi riconoscimenti di pubblico e critica. Firenze era, semmai, una palestra intellettuale, dove il prossimo scrittore consegue la patente necessaria per occupare il proprio posto nel sempre più largo teatro dell’Italia colta di allora. (pp. 43-44)

During his years in Florence (1864-1868), Capuana was a frequent patron of the famous Caffé Michelangelo, of Cesira Pozzolini Siciliani’s home, and he worked as a theatre critic for «La Nazione». In 1868, Capuana would return to Mineo, where he would stay longer than expected due to his father’s sudden death and his family’s financial instability, to which his own stay in Florence had contributed. A few years later, he left Sicily again to spend time in important centers of the Italian literary editorial scene such as Milan and Rome. Certainly, Capuana’s reasons to emigrate were of a different nature than the reasons of the hundreds of thousands who were leaving Sicily at the beginning of last century. Capuana belonged to a well-to-do family of the local agrarian bourgeoisie, as revealed by the honorific title of «Don» which preceded the Sicilianized version of his first name, so that he was known in town as Don Lisi.10 His uncle was mayor of Mineo when Capuana started his own political career in the town’s administration, occupying different roles such as school inspector and consigliere comunale before he, too, became mayor, in 1872. While the writer’s experience

64 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 hardly compares to that of the «huddled masses yearning to breathe free» in the United States and, to a minor extent, in Argentina,11 Capuana had a good sense of the push and pull factors that caused many of his fellow Sicilians to abandon everything they knew for a world they knew very little about. The author’s personal experiences as a Sicilian migrant, a school inspector, and a mayor inform his 1912 Gli «americani» di Ràbbato.

Gli «americani» di Ràbbato As a school inspector in Mineo, Capuana was very familiar with the difficulties faced by the local children at a time and place in which education was considered a privilege for a very few and a waste of time and money for the vast major- ity. As a mayor, Capuana also became aware of the substantial demographic, social, economic, and cultural changes brought about by emigration. All these preoccupations are reflected in the story of Menu, the young protagonist of Gli «americani» di Ràbbato. The theories of Verismo infiltrate every aspect of this children’s book to create a sociological portrait of the life of a turn-of-the 20th century young Sicilian boy in Ràbbato, an imaginary small town modeled on Capuana’s hometown. Even though the story revolves around the Lamanna family, this book is about the whole community and, by extension, all of Sicily. Little Menu is a sweet nine-year-old boy, the youngest great-grandchild of zi’ Santi Lamanna, the ninety-year-old patriarch of the family, which also includes the boy’s older brothers Santi and Stefano, and their widowed mother ‘gna Maricchia. The daily routine of the Lammanas is shaken by the news of the arrival of an «americano,» which is the name given in town to the locals who have emigrated to the U.S. The Ràbbatano Carmine Liotta, also known as Coda Pelata, just came back to Sicily for the first time since he moved to New York a few years earlier. To his paesani, the former barber is unrecognizable: he looks healthier and sports a new suit and several gold rings on his fingers. The arrival of Coda Pelata sets in motion a series of events that will affect the life of all the townspeople and, especially, the Lamannas. The Ràbbatani listen with rapt attention to the americano’s tales of plenty in a country where land, cows, and horses are up for grabs. «Sembrano favole; ma quando si arriva là… […] Bisogna vedere coi propri occhi per persuadersi che là è davvero un altro mondo,» Coda Pelata explains (17-18). Like many others of their townspeople, little Menu’s brothers, Santi and Stefano, fall for Coda Pelata’s propaganda and decide they will soon leave for la Merica, much to their grandfather’s regret. Zi’ Santi, in fact, is skeptical of the barber’s claims, whom he repeatedly calls a charlatan. In her article «Emigration et fierté nationale,» Michela Toppano attributes the older generation’s mistrust of emigration to a

65 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 deep-rooted acceptance of their «destiny» in the form of inherited social status, something which the Catholic church strongly encouraged:

Au regard du grand-père et de certains paysans, l’émigration est condamnable car elle ébranle l’ordre traditionnel de la société. En effet, elle est interprétée comme le refus de la condition que Dieu a assignée à chacun et remet ainsi en cause le principe hiérarchique sur lequel se fonde la communauté villageoise. (p. 309)

Zi’ Santi often appears as the bastion of old-world values and a defender of the status quo. «Ai miei tempi,» he laments, «i signori erano i signori, e i contadini i contadini. Ora vogliono il mondo all’inverso; nessuno è più contento del suo stato» (p. 4).12 He reinforces this concept once again when he tells his neighbor Sciancatello: «il male e che oggi, chi piu chi meno, tutti siamo scontenti di quel che Dio ci da. Abbiamo troppa fretta di arricchire (p. 32). In the book, the old man’s nineteenth-century acceptance of destiny serves as a counterpoint to his great-grandchildren’s awareness of class inequality and belief in social mobility. However, zi’ Santi represents much more than an old man at odds with his great-grandchildren’s aspirations. Significantly enough, the author’s name choice for the family’s patriarch alludes to the role he plays throughout the short novel. Zi’ Santi provides quasi-holy sustenance to the whole family (Santi = holy and Lamanna = manna), especially to Santi and Stefano during their time away from home. Despite his initial resistance, in fact, zi’ Santi finally agrees to pawn his house and land to pay for the young men’s tickets. Menu, who is too young to leave with his brothers, stays behind with his nonno and his mother. However, ever since his brothers left for New York, the little boy is secretly obsessed with the idea of migrating to the United States. Zi’ Santi has a hard time controlling the young boy’s enthusiasm and worries about his future. Unlike his older brothers, who were raised to be farmers like their parents, grandparents, and ancestors for centuries past, Menu has only a faint familiarity with the stern realities of a farmer’s life since he is the first in the family to have completed the five-year cycle of elementary school. Zi’ Santi puzzles over what his future holds for him. «Menu, ora,» he wonders, «poteva più ridursi a fare il contadino dopo di essere andato tant’anni a scuola, e di aver fatto il signorino?» (p. 34). Zi’ Santi is conflicted about the value and importance of formal education for the younger generation of Sicilian children. Like most old timers, he is skeptical of the written word and blames schools for teaching kids to be mavericks and to trick others, as he complains to Dr. Liardo: «ora, per imbrogliare meglio il prossimo, s’insegna a saper leggere e scrivere. Ai miei tempi…» (p. 3). Also, in the predominantly agrarian Sicilian society of the beginning of the twentieth century, boys were considered an extra pair of hands in the fields that the school took away, which only nurtured the

66 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 farmers’ resentment. As much as zi’ Santi does not believe in education as a way to unlock potential in young children and prepare them for a better future, he is not entirely convinced that Menu would have a better future farming the harsh lands of Sicily. When his friend Sciancatello proclaims: «Io, se avessi un figlio di quest’età, gli metterei la zappa tra le mani. Contadini siamo e conta- dini dobbiamo rimanere,» zi’ Santi worries: «Si adatterà, dopo di essere stato a scuola?» (44). Then, with obvious pride, he adds: «Sempre coi libri in mano […]. Ha preso la medaglia di argento l’anno scorso, e credo che l’avrà anche quest’anno» (p. 44). Torn between his old conservative values and the modern developments of Sicilian culture, zi’ Santi fears he will not be able to help the young boy find his way in this new world. At no moment in the novel is the importance of formal education more underscored than when the Lamannas receive the first letter from la Merica. Penned by Santi, the letter is written in poor Italian that mimics patterns and structures of the Sicilian dialect. Addressed «A li mano del signori Santo La- manna, Rabbato Talia, Siggilia,» the letter is meant to reassure the family that the two brothers are doing well, but at the same time it betrays the cultural shock experienced by the recently arrived immigrants (p. 38). The envelope also contains 200 lire, the first of a number of remittances that zi’ Santi receives from his great-grandchildren, which allow him to repay his debt and take back possession of his house and land.

La Mano Nera, between Reality and Fiction At this point in the narration, the writer cuts to the camera on the other side of the ocean, so to speak, to show us how the two Lamanna brothers are really doing in New York. Paoletti notes that, of all the literary works on emigration written in Italy up until the last decade of the twentieth century, this short novel is «fra i pochissimi testi, se non l’unico, che è romanzo dell’emigrazione quanto lo è dell’immigrazione» (p. 51). In fact, five of the twenty-two short chapters are set in New York, a city Capuana reconstructed by his imagination, presumably thanks to the stories told by the «real» americani from Mineo. In New York, Santi Lamanna finds a decent job working the farm of a rich American banker. He also befriends the banker’s daughter, Miss Mary, who shows a keen interest in all things Sicilian, especially folk songs and tales.13 The eldest brother, Stefano, on the other hand, joins the much-dreaded Mano Nera. As an americano explains to zi’ Santi, Stefano «ha preso la mala strada, coi cattivi compagni […] C’è qualche mala persona là tra i siciliani. E nocciono agli altri che lavorano e si fanno i fatti loro» (p. 58). During the first decade of the twentieth century, the Italian-American extortion racket of the Black Hand had escalated and received a lot of attention from investigators and journalists

67 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 both in the U.S. and in Italy. In her 2009 study The Imagined Immigrant, Ilaria Serra devotes one of the chapters to the treatment of the Italian immigrant in the two major newspapers of the era on the east and west coasts – namely, the «New York Times» and the «San Francisco Chronicle». According to Serra, the Black Hand started appearing in the American press at the beginning of the 1900s and it remained the focus of much of what was written about Ital- ian immigrants in the U.S. in these newspapers between 1890 and 1924. «By 1909,» writes Serra, «the image of the Italian criminal is so strong in society that even the different experiences of hardworking Italians disappear and merge into a negative image» (p. 88). In Gli «americani» di Ràbbato, the two very different paths taken by the Lamanna brothers seem to exhaust all possible options conceived by the author for the poor and illiterate Sicilian immigrants in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century: work hard and earn the respect of the Americans or join organized crime and earn everyone’s contempt. As a Sicilian writer, Capuana was particularly sensitive to the issue of crime and its association with various aspects of Sicilian life. In 1898, he published L’isola del Sole, a pro-Sicily pamphlet that included a previously published es- say, «La Sicilia e il brigantaggio,» and a chapter by Sicilian folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè on the origins and meaning of the word mafia. In the pamphlet, the writer attempted an apology for the island by attacking first of all Sidney Sonnino and Leopoldo Franchetti, who were the authors of a famous 1877 investigation into the state of Sicilian society and the roots of the mafia.14 Capuana also launched an invective against representatives of the School of Positivist Criminology, such as Cesare Lombroso, who claimed that anthropological differences between the «Germanic» Northern Italians and the «African» Southerners accounted for the superior civilization of the former and the barbarity of the latter.15 Capuana believed that all the negative propaganda that had been unleashed recently against Sicily had distorted the image of the island, especially with regard to the mafia, which he considered just a «cliché,» the product of a «daltonismo morale che sovrappone il suo falso colore a quello della realtà» (p. 70). Only a few years later, though, even an apologist like Capuana could no longer deny the existence of the mafia and its nefarious activities nor its growing importance on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In her article «The Idea of America,» Rita Pitt observes that: «For a patri- otic writer like Capuana, it must have been particularly painful to admit the criminal activities of some of his compatriots in New York, where the Black Hand was known to be active at the time when the book was written». (p. 29). Pitt goes on to speculate that the presence of the Mano Nera in this children’s novel might explain the three-year gap between the book’s completion and its publication. In fact, Gli «americani» di Ràbbato was ready to be published in 1909, but New York police Lieutenant Joe Petrosino was assassinated that same

68 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 year in Palermo, where he planned to investigate the connections between mafia activities in Sicily and in New York City. A young Italian-American detective in the nypd, Petrosino had distinguished himself as a fierce enemy of the Black Hand since the early 1900s. Although he and his special squad had made great progress in the arrests of many high-profile members of the Black Hand, the Lieutenant himself remained convinced that the criminal organization could not be eliminated «until some restrictions are made in the admission of Italian immigrants to this country» (qtd. in Pitkin 93). He thus left New York on Feb- ruary 9, 1909, on a secret mission to personally check the judicial records of criminals who had recently been released from prison as well as those of current inmates who were going to be released soon in regions that were considered hotbeds of criminality. The secrecy of his mission was seriously compromised by leaks and even unpredictable encounters. «Have already met criminals who recognized me from New York,» Petrosino wrote in his notebook the day before his assassination, «I am on dangerous ground» (qtd. in Pitkin 112). The news of his execution in the very central Piazza Marina in Palermo on March 12, 1909, caused outrage in the United States and great consternation in Italy. This could very well have pushed the Palermo-based publisher Sandron to push the manuscript to a later publication date, from 1909 to 1912.16 In Gli «americani» di Ràbbato, Capuana delivers a strong condemnation of the Mano Nera and organized crime in general. Nevertheless, he depicts Stefano as a good man at heart who is driven to the extremes of blackmail out of sheer vulnerability. «Non è cattivo, è traviato,» the americano tells zi’ Santi, «Stefano è capitato male» (58). As a poor and illiterate Sicilian immigrant, Stefano becomes easy prey for the Black Hand, which recruits him to extort payments by force. Even little Menu will be one of his brother’s victims. Finally in New York, the youngest of the Lamannas finds a job keeping the books of zi’ Carta’s fruit stand. Stefano pays him a visit at work and tries to convince him to hand out some of the money. When the boy refuses, his older brother leaves a menacing letter for the owner on which a black hand is drawn. Zi’ Carta decides to place the matter in the hands of the local police. Menu, on the other hand, does not want to send his brother to jail and is reluctant to collaborate.

Children, Education, and Patriotism By refusing to bring his brother to American justice, Menu is obviously motivated by allegiance to his family and the mafia’s notorious code of silence known as omertà. Capuana seems to suggest that as much as he is intrinsically Sicilian in character, the boy is endowed with certain qualities that make him a better candidate for success in the United States than both of his immigrant brothers. Thanks to his albeit limited schooling, in fact, Menu manages to find a job as

69 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 an errand boy for Santi’s philanthropic American banker and to thrive in his new life, thanks especially to Miss Mary, who volunteers to be his «good fairy» and to teach him English (p. 92). His brother Stefano is eventually stabbed at a bar fight and later arrested for his criminal activities. Because of his detention, Stefano will not be able to make the trip back to Ràbbato with his two younger brothers. Once there, Menu and Santi both decide that they will not return to the U.S. Gli «americani» di Ràbbato revolves around the issues and themes that interested Capuana most as a turn-of-the-twen- tieth-century Sicilian writer, and little Menu’s final speech is where the writer exposes his ideology in a nutshell:

Voglio essere siciliano, italiano, non americano bastardo!... Sapete che farò, nonno? Prenderò la patente di maestro di scuola. Me lo ha consigliato il mio ma- estro di quarta. Insegnerò un po’ di americanismo qui: la gran volontà, il grande amore al lavoro. Ah, se la miseria non scacciasse via i nostri paesani!... Finirà anche questa. (p. 114)

First of all, after spending over a year abroad, Menu has finally developed a sense of national identity in addition to his self-identification as a Sicilian. Toppano argues that the experience abroad benefits the individuals and the entire country when the emigrants return, and that the quotation marks of the «americani» in the title draw attention to conventional assumptions on the identity of emigrants:

D’ailleurs, le mot «Americani» du titre est mis entre guillemets. Par cette convention typographique, L. Capuana souligne que ces émigrés de retour n’ont pas perdu leur italianité, alors que leur «americanité» n’est qu’un vernis temporaire. […] l’experience de l’emigration, chez L. Capuana, permet de prendre conscience de son appartenance nationale. Nous en trouvons un témoignage dans l’affirmation péremp- toire de Menu: «Americano di nome [...] ma siciliano, anzi italiano sempre!». Loin d’être responsable de la perte d’une identité nationale, l’expérience de l’émigration en revanche restitue au pays des Italiens plus accomplis. (p. 311)

In Gli «americani» di Ràbbato, the crucial changes brought about by the phenomenon of mass emigration from Sicily to the United States intertwine in significant ways with Capuana’s idea of nationalism, which is obviously informed by his own personal experience as a young Sicilian coming of age during the turbulent years that culminated in the Unification of Italy in 1861. The question of national identity was always at the center of Capuana’s life and the various roles he played in local and national education initiatives as it was at the core of his literary endeavors, especially young adult fiction.

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Secondly, thanks to his time in New York, Menu has gained a full apprecia- tion of the importance of education and has decided to pursue his schooling for his own personal advancement and, eventually, to empower other Sicilian children to do the same for themselves. Pitt argues that Menu’s resolution can be tied to the writer’s intellectual honesty:

Capuana shows that while being polemically pro-Sicilian, he is not anti-Amer- ican; he is too honest not to admit that a bright young Sicilian like Menu would learn more away from his home village and away from his old-fashioned, perhaps inaccurate, schoolbooks. Although he is still very young, America has been a kind of finishing school for Menu, giving him knowledge and polish inconceivable in most Rabbatani. (p. 31)

Like his author, Menu believes in education and its potential to transform societies. During his time as a school inspector, in fact, Capuana became even more aware of the importance of formal schooling to overcome the adverse effects of poverty and disadvantage on children, their families, and the whole community.17 Some of his most important initiatives included: hiring more teachers for grades one through five and also for adult education; a campaign of conscientization against child labor, which precluded the way to school for many children; the education of young girls, which was considered useless since they were traditionally brought up to be good wives and mothers; and the con- struction of a public and free library. In Capuana’s view, school and education were the only means to alleviate poverty in the South and, thus, reduce social conflict by promoting economic growth and higher living standards for everyone. Finally, Capuana’s lifelong preoccupation with the formation of a national Italian identity, and his belief in the potential of education to bridge the cul- tural – and, eventually, also economic – gap between the North and the South of Italy, intersect with the theme of emigration in this children’s book. At the end of the short novel, Menu plans to do exactly what Capuana himself did as an emigrant--namely, to come back to Sicily to implement what he had learned during his experience away from the island. Bound by the canons of Verismo and of impersonalità, according to which the author had to remain an objective observer of reality without interjecting his personal ideas and feelings, Capua- na wished to provide a balanced view of the opportunities and challenges of leaving Sicily for la Merica. However, it is not difficult to identify Capuana’s spokesperson in one of the book’s characters – namely, Dr. Liardo. A liberal but cautious reformist, Liardo condemns the revolutionary theories of avvocato Marano, the local agitator who instills socialist ideas in the farmers; but, at the same time, he rejects the status quo and especially the injustices perpetrated on farmers by the galantuomini. Like Capuana, Dr. Liardo understands the

71 Altreitalie gennaio-giugno 2019 reasons that drive his fellow Ràbbatani to leave everything behind and sail to la Merica; and Liardo views with paternalistic benevolence the emancipation of the farmers.18 During a walk with zi’ Santi through the streets of Ràbbato, the doctor takes inventory of all the good changes that have taken place in town thanks to the remittances and investments of their fellow townspeople abroad. Addressing the Lamanna patriarch, he notes: «Io, che tesso e ritesso il paese anche nelle più remote viuzze, rimango maravigliato di questo senso di crescente benessere che osservo dappertutto» (70). However, Dr. Liardo understands emigration only as a temporary safety valve to alleviate economic hardships and not as a permanent solution to poverty. He even ventures to argue that if the farmers were paid more, there would be no reason for them to leave. When pressed by zi’ Santi on how this could be done, he simply replies «Non so, io faccio il medico. Ci devono pensare gli altri» (p. 70), thus evading the question altogether and, perhaps, betraying the writer’s inability to provide a concrete answer to some of the most pressing economic and social issues faced by the newly born Italian state. In conclusion, through the story of Menu Lamanna and his family, Capuana tackled the issue of emigration within a pedagogical framework with the goal of educating children on the issues facing a newly unified Italian nation and the most recent phenomenon of emigration. In the end, Capuana seems to suggest that the only way to improve the conditions of the working class involves the full cooperation of the young generations, who need to take responsibility not only for their lives but also for their country. The writer’s patriotic feelings coupled with a genuine faith in education as a means to overcome the adverse effects of poverty and disadvantage inspire this children’s book, which provides us with a better understanding of the social and cultural factors that shaped the history of the Sicilian diaspora to the United States.

Note

1 Capuana was also interested in philosophy, science, spiritism, and folklore. Addi- tionally, photography was a real passion of his and he left an estimated two hundred ninety photographs, including an early «selfie» with Giovanni Verga (see Federico De Roberto’s «Luigi Capuana nei cimeli fotografici»). The same eclecticism can be observed in the various jobs the author held throughout his life, including member of Mineo’s city council and, later, its mayor, school inspector, and, finally, college professor all the while maintaining his literary activities. 2 For an analysis of Capuana’s production in the genre of fairy tales, see Miele, 2009.

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3 Despite the great popular success of children’s books at that time, some critics would not acknowledge young adult literature as a legitimate genre. For instance, writing about Luigi Capuana and Neera in La Critica in 1905, Benedetto Croce argued that art for kids «non sarà mai arte vera,» insofar as kids are not equipped with a mind sophisticated enough to savor and appreciate art («Lo splendido sole dell’arte pura non può essere sostenuto dall’occhio ancor debole dei bambini e dei fanciulli» p. 353). Croce further added that in order for their books to be read by young kids, authors needed to add elements that go beyond the principles of aesthetics, such as adventures and acts of incredible courage, which are not features of «real» art. The critic, though, conceded that «le tracce dei motivi extraestetici, e della inceppata libertà artistica, si riscontrano anche in Scurpiddu e negli altri libri dello stesso genere del Capuana, che pur sono tra i migliori sforzi che si siano fatti per raggiungere ciò che è da stimare intrinsecamente irraggiungibile» (p. 353, my emphasis). 4 In addition to his many collections of fairy tales and short novels, Capuana’s work for children and young adults included, among other things, his collaboration with the weekly magazine Corriere dei Piccoli, the distribution of his own short-lived magazine Cenerentola (1892-1894), and the publication of various history manuals and textbooks for elementary school kids. 5 Unlike De Amicis, Capuana’s little protagonists are not the well-behaved privileged children of the ever-emerging bourgeoisie of Turin, like Enrico Bottini, the third-grad- er who keeps the journal-turned-book of his school year in Cuore. The tenets of Verismo inform Capuana’s children’s literature as much as they do his other works. Therefore, Capuana’s Scurpiddu, Cardello, and Gambalesta are, instead, barefooted little Sicilians, rebels dressed in rags, who learn about life not from textbooks read in class but by roaming the streets of Sicily. 6 Thanks to his active role in the rebellion, Capuana was among the few who had the honor of personally meeting with Victor Emmanuel ii on the king’s visit to Palermo in December of 1860 (Carli, pp. 78-80). 7 By the way of islands and migration, geographer Russell King points out that «the build-up of island populations has limits set within a particular economic and technological system. When this limit is reached, one of three outcomes occurs: malnutrition or starvation results; help has to be sought from outside, for example, in the form of food shipments or welfare payments; or, most likely, emigration takes place … Emigration may become institutionalized as part of island society, and necessary for its stable survival» (p. 23). 8 For a study of Italian emigration as a diasporic phenomenon, see Gabaccia, 2000. 9 According to De Roberto, when a friend announced to uncle Antonio that Luigi had arrived in Florence, the uncle exclaimed in disbelief «’Dda banna ‘o munnu! … Fora Regnu,» which can be loosely translated from Sicilian into English as «He’s on the other side of the world! Outside of the kingdom!» (De Roberto, p. 74). An autographed copy of Gli «americani» di Ràbbato is displayed at the Casa Museo «Luigi Capuana» with the following interesting inscription: «A Mineo, mia città natale, dove avrei dovuto vivere sempre per poi morire con qualche illusione, dedico affettuosamente, da figlio non immemore, questo libro denso di verità. 29 maggio 1912.»

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10 During the course of the author’s life, the Capuanas increasingly lost their lands and possessions. Capuana mentions his financial difficulties in many letters sent to friends as well as editors. In his eulogy to Capuana, De Roberto even attributes the writer’s prolific output to his ever-mounting debts: «egli conobbe la terribile pena di non poter comporre quasi mai liberamente, come l’estro dettava quando l’estro dettava, di dovere invece scrivere per forza, a data fissa, sotto l’assillo delle necessità; come il Balzac egli sopportò rassegnatamente, eroicamente, la condanna dei lavori forzati letterari a vita» (p. 64). 11 According to historian Francesco Brancato, in the fifty years between 1876 and 1925, 77.1% of Sicilians emigrated to the United States, and 16% to Argentina (Brancato 139). 12 Carli points out that zi’ Santi’s insistence on the acceptance of one’s own destinu is typical of Verismo: «Negli "americani" di Ràbbato, per certi versi, si nota l’insistenza sull’inamovibilità sociale perpetrata dai più anziani come tradizionale accettazione del proprio destino, secondo usi e costumi che il Verismo verghiano aveva saputo fotografare, ma che di sicuro non aveva inventato» (p. 252). The proverbs on which Verga’s Padron ‘Ntoni clings – «Sei quel che è stato tuo padre, e quel che è stato tuo nonno!» and «Più ricco è in terra chi meno desidera» (p. 317) – find an echo in zi’ Santi’s own popular pearls of wisdom, such as «Chi cangia la vecchia per la nova peggio trova» (p. 44) and his acceptance of everything life has in store for him, including the recently imposed taxes because, he wonders, «se Dio non avesse voluto, ci sarebbero forse le nuove tasse?» (p. 7). 13 Miss Mary’s love for Sicilian folklore is inspired by Capuana’s own interest, which was fueled by his collaboration with two important scholars of Sicilian lore – name- ly, Lionardo Vigo and Giuseppe Pitrè. Capuana started corresponding with Vigo in 1857 and the folklorist’s mentorship, along with his mother’s help, was crucial to the writer’s first trip/escape to mainland Italy. Capuana famously pranked Vigo when he gave him a few fabricated poems, which he alleged came from the oral tradition of Mineo. Among them, there was one that he passed for an original older Sicilian version of Dante’s famous «Voi ch’avete d’intelletto amore.» The unsus- pecting Vigo promptly published the poem in his 1870 Raccolta amplissima di canti popolari siciliani with a note that insinuated that Dante had «stolen» the verse from an unknown Sicilian poet (Miele «Luigi Capuana», p. 302). Capuana recalls the anecdote as follows: «Ricordo che in uno di essi [canti] m’ero appropriato un noto verso dantesco, voltandolo in dialetto: Donni ca aviti ‘ntillettu d’amuri. Seppi, parecchi anni appresso, quando svelai dopo la morte del Vigo la mia marachella giovanile, che il professor D’Ancona, dalla sua cattedra di Pisa, aveva a lungo dis- cusso intorno alla questione se Dante avesse tolto a imprestito quel verso da l’ignoto poeta popolare siciliano, o se il poeta siciliano lo avesse rubato all’Alighieri» (qtd. in Ghidetti, p. 131). For his folktales, Capuana drew inspiration from his friend Pitrè and his monumental collection Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani (1875). In Capuana’s Raccontafiabe, the Palermo-born physician-turned-folklorist is fictionalized by the writer as the «magician Tre-Pì,» who, like the real Pitrè, has warehouses full of tales that he guards jealously in drawers, arranged in categories and ordered by number.

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14 By the way of Sonnino and Franchetti and their inchiesta, Capuana writes: «Due giovani colti e disinteressati si lanciano un giorno in un’impresa affatto nuova tra noi. Il governo ha commesso lo sbaglio di decretare un’inchiesta intorno alla Sicil- ia, anticipatamente confermando, con la eccezionalità del fatto, che cose davvero eccezionali accadessero laggiù» (L’isola del Sole, p. 36). 15 For a good selection of the most influential theories of anthropological criminology on the inferiority of Southerners vis-à-vis Northerners, see Vito Teti’s 1993 anthology La razza maledetta: Origini del pregiudizio antimeridionale. 16 According to Pasquini, the delay in the publication of Gli «americani» di Ràbbato was due to the fact that the book was centered on the issues of emigration, which was a particularly controversial theme during the first decade of the twentieth century. The critic writes: «la forte valenza documentaria e di denuncia non aveva incorag- giato la pronta pubblicazione del testo nell’Italia umbertina del tempo, in difficoltà nel fronteggiare piaghe come l’emigrazione, soprattutto dal Sud, annoverata tra le tragiche conseguenze dell’Unità politica, tanto meticolosamente preparata dal punto di vista ideologico ma, in pratica, piena di risvolti dolorosi dal versante sociale» (Capuana Racconti per ragazzi, p. 12). 17 While he was school inspector in Mineo, Capuana delivered a short but important and telling speech on the state of local education and his plans in his new role. The speech was published the same year, 1870, with the title Il bucato in famiglia. 18 By the way of Capuana’s privileged social and economic status, Giuseppe Uzzo writes that once he came back to Mineo from Florence, the writer missed the «gioia serena della vita patriarcale d’un tempo,» «un quadro serenamente idilliaco del passato, turbato da profonde inquietudini del presente, perché, mentre prima i buoni contadini, lavoratori, non avvertivano le ingiustizie che venivano loro fatte e non si rendevano conto degli squilibri sociali, adesso l’ansia del rinnovamento nella giustizia è fortemente sentita nel loro animo» (p. 47).

Bibliography

Brancato, Francesco, L’emigrazione siciliana negli ultimi cento anni. Cosenza, Pelle- grini, 1995. Capuana, Luigi, «La Lingua Italiana.» La Gioventù. Giornale di letteratura e d’istru- zione, 3.6, 1864, pp. 379-81. –, Gli «americani» di Ràbbato, Firenze, Sandron, 1967. –, Il bucato in famiglia, Catania, Galatola, 1870. –, L’Isola del sole, Introduction by Roberto Ciuni, Palermo, Edrisi, 1977. –, Racconti per ragazzi (1901-1913): Inediti e rari. Ed. Luciana Pasquini, Lanciano, Rocco Carabba, 2010.

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Carli, Alberto, L’ispettore di Mineo: Luigi Capuana fra letteratura per l’infanzia, scuola e università. Villasanta, Liminamentis, 2011. Croce, Benedetto, «Luigi Capuana – Neera.» La Critica: Note sulla letteratura italiana nella seconda metà del secolo xix, 3, 1905, pp. 341-72. De Mauro, Tullio, Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita, Bari, Laterza, 1999. De Roberto, Federico, «Luigi Capuana: L’ultimo ritratto nei cimeli fotografici», Noi e il mondo, 1, 1916, pp. 58-85. Gabaccia, Donna, Italy’s Many Diasporas, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2000. Ghidetti, Enrico, L’ipotesi del realismo: Capuana, Verga, Valera e altri, Padova, Li- viana, 1982. King, Russell, «The Geographical Fascination of Islands», in Douglas G. Lockhart, David Drakakis-Smith, and Patrick Schembri (eds.), The Development Process in Small Island States, New York, Routledge, 1993, pp. 13-37. Miele, Gina, «Luigi Capuana: Unlikely Spinner of Fairy Tales?», Marvels and Talesi, 23.2, 2009, pp. 300-24. Paoletti, Gianni, Vite ritrovate. Emigrazione e letteratura italiana di Otto e Novecento, Foligno, Editoriale Umbra, 2011. Pitkin, Thomas Monroe and Cordasco, Francesco, The Black Hand: A Chapter in Ethnic Crime. Totowa, nj, Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1977. Pitt, Rita, «The Idea of America in Luigi Capuana’s Gli ‘Americani’ di Rabbàto.» As- sociation of Teachers of Italian, 47, 1986, pp. 18-32. Pretelli, Matteo and Stefano, Luconi (eds.), L’immigrazione negli Stati Uniti, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008. Renda, Francesco L’emigrazione in Sicilia, Palermo, Sicilia al Lavoro, 1963. Sardo, Rosaria, «Educazione linguistica e Risorgimento: La narrativa per ragazzi di Ca- puana», in Sorbello, Giuseppe (ed.), L’unità d’Italia nella rappresentazione dei veristi: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di studi (Catania, 13-16 dicembre 2010), Catania, Stampadiretta, 2012, pp. 361-80. Serra, Ilaria, The Imagined Immigrant: Images of Italian Emigration to the United States between 1890 and 1924, Madison, Fairleigh Dickinson up, 2009. Teti, Vito, ed., La razza maledetta: Origini del pregiudizio antimeridionale, Roma, Manifestolibri, 1993. Toppano, Michela, «Emigration et fierté nationale, ou le mythe du bon retour chez Luigi Capuana et Enrico Corradini». Italies: culture, civilisation, société, 14, 2010, pp. 305-20.

Uzzo, Giuseppe, Luigi Capuana: Profilo critico, Palermo, ila Palma, 1984. Verga, Giovanni, I Malavoglia, Milano, Rizzoli, 1978.

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