Giacinta: an Italian graded reader at level A1

Glossary

abbandonare · to abandon ((sin. lasciare solo, trascurare))

Lasciare solo qualcuno che ha bisogno di te.

To leave alone someone who needs you.

This is the mother's verb. Nobody beats Giacinta, nobody throws her out: they simply leave her alone. Capuana wants you to see that abandonment isn't an act: it's an absence, and it takes years to understand how much it weighs.

anello · ring ((sin. fede, cerchietto))

Il piccolo cerchio d'oro che si porta al dito.

The small gold circle worn on the finger.

On her wedding night Giacinta takes off her wedding ring and puts it on Andrea's finger: «This is my real wedding». The gesture is beautiful and terrible at once, and it tells you the whole book in two seconds: the truth is hidden, the lie stands in church.

balia · wet nurse ((sin. nutrice, chi cresce un bambino))

La donna pagata per allattare e crescere il figlio di un'altra.

A woman paid to nurse and raise another woman's child.

In the 1800s rich ladies sent their babies out to a wet nurse in the country, sometimes for years. Giacinta stays there until she is five and calls the nurse «mamma». The first wound of the book is here, and it makes no noise: a child who doesn't know who her mother is.

cameriera · maid ((sin. domestica, serva))

La donna che lavora in una casa: pulisce, cucina, aiuta la signora.

A woman who works in a house: cleans, cooks, helps the mistress.

Marietta is a maid and she knows everything about the house: the rooms, the letters, the lies. In a novel full of false gentlefolk, the only person who loves Giacinta without calculation is the one who serves her. Capuana means this, and in 1879 it is almost a scandal.

canarino · canary ((sin. uccellino, cardellino giallo))

Un piccolo uccello giallo che canta, tenuto in gabbia.

A small yellow bird that sings, kept in a cage.

Giacinta's canary sings in its cage right through the book, and nobody looks at it. It is there on the final page, and there it becomes the saddest thing in the novel. Whoever reads to the end never forgets it: a creature in a cage, inside a house that is a cage.

capriccio · whim, caprice ((sin. voglia, ghiribizzo))

Un desiderio improvviso, che dura poco.

A sudden wish that doesn't last.

«It's just a whim», they all say of Giacinta whenever she makes a choice. It's the easiest way of not understanding a woman: calling a decision a whim. The reader, though, knows that behind each of Giacinta's «whims» lies a pain twenty years old.

The glossary contains 21 entries in all