I promessi sposi: an Italian graded reader at level B2

Glossary

bravi · bravi, hired thugs ((sin. scherani, sicari))

Nel Seicento, uomini armati al servizio di un signore, pagati per proteggerlo, minacciare o eliminare i suoi nemici.

In 17th-century Italy, armed men in the pay of a lord, hired to intimidate or kill his enemies.

They are not soldiers, and they are not bandits: they are the private guard of the small provincial lords, who act with complete impunity. The opening scene of the novel (two bravi waiting for Don Abbondio on the road) sets up the whole system in a single image: quiet, technically illegal, in practice untouchable.

calunnia · slander, calumny ((sin. diffamazione, menzogna))

L'accusa falsa fatta a qualcuno per rovinargli la reputazione o cacciarlo nei guai.

A false accusation made to ruin someone's reputation.

Renzo suffers it in Milan: from one moment to the next he becomes a dangerous leader of the mob, with a warrant out for his arrest. Manzoni devotes many pages to the mechanism: how a slander is built, how it runs faster than truth, how nearly impossible it is to clean it off. Read today, the pages sound familiar.

carestia · famine ((sin. fame, penuria))

Una grave mancanza di cibo che si prolunga per mesi, portando la popolazione alla fame.

A grave shortage of food that lasts for months.

Milan was hit hard by it in 1628, and Renzo runs into it in the middle of his flight. Famine in Manzoni is not a background: it is a character, the one that drives the crowd to break open the bakeries, and the one that will get Renzo mistaken for a revolutionary.

conversione · conversion ((sin. ravvedimento, trasformazione))

Il cambiamento radicale e definitivo di vita e di fede: da chi si era a chi si diventa dopo aver visto qualcosa che non si potrà più dimenticare.

A radical and final change of life and of faith.

It is the secret heart of the novel. Fra Cristoforo was converted in his youth, after a duel. The Innominato will be converted in a single night, and that night is perhaps the most famous chapter in all of Italian narrative. Manzoni tells it without rhetoric: how the whole scaffolding a man has built around himself collapses, from the inside.

coscienza · conscience ((sin. senso morale, interiorità))

La voce interiore che dice cosa è bene e cosa è male, e che tormenta chi non l'ha ascoltata.

The inner voice that tells us what is right and what is wrong.

It is the great hidden character of the novel. Don Abbondio silences it, Don Rodrigo ignores it, the Innominato meets it one night and does not recognize it, Federigo has it speak to everyone. For Manzoni conscience was the part of God inside man: and in this book he says so, without ever pronouncing the name.

The glossary contains 31 entries in all