Piccolo mondo antico: Italiaans boek voor gevorderden (C1)

Woordenlijst

Ceresio · Ceresio ((sin. Lago di Lugano, specchio d'acqua))

Il nome antico del Lago di Lugano.

The ancient name of Lake Lugano.

In the book the Ceresio is always called simply «the lake»: in the valley the word needs no further specification. Like the word «home»: it is that one, no other.

Risorgimento · Risorgimento ((sin. rinascita, unificazione))

Il movimento politico e culturale che, fra il 1815 e il 1861, portò all'unità e all'indipendenza dell'Italia.

The political and cultural movement (1815–1861) that led to Italian unification.

The novel is set in the years immediately before the Second War of Independence (1859). Franco is a patriot, the marchesa is pro-Austrian: and the political quarrel is layered on top of the family one.

Valsolda · Valsolda ((sin. valle, distretto))

Piccola valle in provincia di Como, sulla riva orientale del Lago di Lugano, ai confini con la Svizzera. È la terra d'origine di Fogazzaro.

Small valley in Como province, on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano, along the Swiss border. Fogazzaro's own country.

The Valsolda in this novel is not a backdrop, it is a character. The villages (Oria, Albogasio, Cressogno, Casarico) have an exact geography, and Fogazzaro counts the distances between them in minutes of rowing. It is a small world, and an old one.

angoscia · anguish ((sin. inquietudine, affanno))

Un'inquietudine profonda, con un fondo di paura, per qualcosa che si sente ma non si sa nominare.

A deep unease, tinged with fear, of something one senses but cannot name.

For pages and pages before the tragedy, Franco feels an anguish he cannot explain. Fogazzaro will not let him say why: because the reader is not to know yet, either.

austriaco · Austrian ((sin. imperiale, asburgico))

Del regno austriaco che, all'epoca del romanzo, occupava il Lombardo-Veneto.

Of the Habsburg empire, which at the time of the novel occupied Lombardy-Venetia.

The Valsolda is divided: part borders on free Switzerland, part is Austrian. The Austrian police are there, the censorship too. Fogazzaro rarely shows them: but the air of the book is always heavy with them.

bigotteria · religious hypocrisy ((sin. falsa devozione, ipocrisia religiosa))

La religiosità ridotta a forma esteriore, fatta di gesti, di scandalo per le piccole cose e di indifferenza per la carità vera.

Religion reduced to outward gestures, alert to small scandals, blind to real charity.

The marchesa and her friends are the very portrait of bigotry: they count the signs of the cross, and never see the hunger of their own kin. Fogazzaro, a Catholic himself, draws them severely.

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