entry
Apr. 2003
Matilde Serao (1); also Vergil (4)
Today I set out to learn about Matilde
Serao, prominent Neapolitan journalist and writer
from the early 1900s in Naples. That is about all I knew
—that, and the fact that I still had an unopened copy of
her Leggende Napoletane (Neapolitan Legends)
lying in wait for me. As with most of these expeditions
of mine to find out stuff, I got distracted very easily.
But that's half the fun.
The biographical material
is straightforward. She was born in 1856 in Patrasso in
Greece, where her Neapolitan father, Francesco, a
journalist, had taken refuge during the Bourbon
reprisals in Naples following the political turmoil of
1848. Her mother, Paolina Bonelly, was Greek. The family
returned to Naples when the Bourbon dynasty ended and
the Kingdom of Naples became part of the larger state of
Italy.
Serao graduated from high
school in 1874 and got her first job as a telegraph
operator at the post-office. She wrote some early novels
of little consequence. She married the Neapolitan
journalist Edoardo Scarfoglio in 1885, with whom she
would eventually have four children. Together, they
founded three newspapers, one of which was Il
Mattino (still the largest Neapolitan daily). She
died in 1927.
Serao is best-remembered
as being the type of chronicler of Neapolitan life that
Grazia Deledda and Giovanni
Verga were for Sardinia and Sicily, respectively. She
was an intense and accurate observer of the
kaleidoscopic mosaic that was Naples at the turn of the
century, from the hard-pressed underclass to the more
affluent Neapolitan petite bourgeoisie, all of
whose lives were bent out of joint by the grand
confusion of the Risanamento,
the 30-year project to rebuild the city, as well as by
the problems of a newly unified Italy and the lingering
and bitter split between North and South. [More on Serao
and the Risanamento here.]
Besides her newspaper
work, she published 40 books. Historian and critic, Benedetto Croce said that she had
an "imagination that is limpid and alive"; Carducci
called her the greatest woman writer in Italy; and
D'Annunzio dedicated a novel to her. She was also said
to be on the Nobel committee's short list for the
literature prize, an award that ultimately went to her
contemporary from Sardinia, Grazia Deledda.
I already knew that the
Roman poet, Virgil, was said to be a magician. He
is connected with the "egg" in "Egg Castle" as well as
with at least one of the old Roman tunnels in Naples.
[Also, see the entry on Virgil.]
Perhaps that is why I was attracted to the section in
Serao's Neapolitan Legends that is called "Virgil,
the Wizard". Serao chronicles the many wonders
connected with the poet in Naples. For one, in those
days Naples was afflicted with a plague of flies; Virgil
made a fly from gold, breathed life into it, and sent it
on its way. Every real fly it then came into contact
with died, and the plague ended. Virgil also used his
powers to dry up the swamps; he caused the west-wind,
Favonianus, to change direction to help the local
vegetation thrive; and he drove away a giant reptile
that lived beneath the hill of Naples. Once, when
sickness threatened the horses in the region, Virgil
caused a large bronze horse to be cast; he infused it
with his magical powers, and any horse that would then
walk around the statue three times was cured. And so
forth. There are a dozen or so other legends all
connected with Virgil and all brought to life in Serao's
delightful book. (See this
entry for a more recent incarnation of the same
legend.)
[also see The Big Rock Cockayne Mountain and The Wizard's Secret]
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