Il fu Mattia Pascal: an Italian graded reader at level B1

Glossary

adulterio · adultery ((sin. infedeltà, tradimento coniugale))

Il tradimento fra marito e moglie.

Betrayal between husband and wife.

When Mattia comes back, Romilda has another husband. If he is alive, she is an adulteress; if he is dead, she is respectable. The law has no box to tick for a man who is both at once.

biblioteca · library ((sin. libreria, raccolta di libri))

Il luogo pieno di libri dove si va a leggere.

The place full of books, where one goes to read.

The Boccamazza library is an empty church with two thousand books and no readers. Mattia spends his days watching the rats eat them, and does nothing to stop it: a portrait of a wasted life.

cadavere · corpse ((sin. corpo, salma))

Il corpo di una persona morta.

The body of a dead person.

The body in the mill-race is a stranger, and it becomes Mattia Pascal because a woman points at it. This is where the novel states its thesis outright: you are whoever other people say you are.

caso · chance ((sin. sorte, combinazione))

Quello che succede senza che nessuno l'abbia deciso.

What happens without anyone having decided it.

Pirandello doesn't believe in destiny; he believes in chance, which is far worse. Destiny has a design: chance has none. This entire novel starts because a man gets off a train because he is hungry.

colpa · guilt ((sin. responsabilità, peccato))

La responsabilità di aver fatto qualcosa di grave.

The weight of having done something seriously wrong.

Mattia's guilt isn't that he ran away: it is that he never did anything. «And I did nothing» repeats through the book like a sentence handed down: and the man handing it down is always himself.

debito · debt ((sin. obbligo, passivo))

Il denaro che si deve a qualcuno.

Money that is owed to someone.

Debt is the chain of Mattia's first life. When he learns he is dead, his very first thought is that the debts now belong to somebody else: to a man who does not exist.

denaro · money ((sin. soldi, moneta))

I soldi.

Money.

For Mattia money is never wealth: it is distance. He wins eighty-two thousand lire, and his first thought is not «I'm rich» but «now I can buy my way out».

denuncia · report to the police ((sin. accusa, querela))

L'atto di dire alla polizia che qualcuno ha commesso un reato.

Telling the police that someone has committed a crime.

The report Adriano cannot make is the exact centre of the novel. The thief is standing in front of him, he knows his name, he knows what was taken: and he cannot open his mouth. That is what total freedom costs.

The glossary contains 43 entries in all