Il paese di Cuccagna: an Italian graded reader at level B1

Glossary

abbondanza · abundance ((sin. ricchezza, profusione))

Una quantità grandissima di qualcosa: cibo, denaro, cose belle. Molto più del necessario.

Having plenty of everything. The opposite of miseria.

The one thing no character reaches. In the book the land of plenty is always somewhere else: in the next terno, in the following Saturday, never today.

accanimento · relentlessness ((sin. ostinazione, furia))

L'insistenza cieca in una cosa, anche quando è chiaro che porta al disastro.

Refusing to give up on something, even when the effort has become harmful.

The relentlessness of the marquis over his daughter's visions is one of the novel's most difficult motifs. Serao portrays it without softening: because to soften it would be to falsify the plague.

ambo · ambo / two-number bet ((sin. coppia, doppia))

Nel lotto, la vincita di due numeri giocati insieme. Vale meno del terno, ma è più facile da prendere.

Two numbers played together. A smaller prize than the terno, but easier to win.

The ambo is the little prize of little players: those who have staked little settle for guessing right. Serao uses it often: it is the half-victory that keeps faith alive when the terno does not come.

arricchirsi · to grow rich ((sin. prosperare, far fortuna))

Diventare ricchi. Nel libro succede quasi sempre agli altri, e sempre in modo che sembra facile.

To pass from being poor to being wealthy.

The verb of the marquis and of Cesare: they no longer want money, they want to «grow rich», that is, to change class. The lottery promises exactly that. It is the promise's specific cruelty.

assistito · the assisted one / seer ((sin. veggente, medium))

A Napoli, un uomo (spesso povero o mezzo matto) che si crede in contatto con i santi o con i morti, e che «riceve» in sogno i numeri del lotto.

In old Naples, someone believed to receive lottery numbers from spirits.

Pasqualino De Feo, «the assisted one»: a poor youth whom the neighbourhood believes to receive numbers from the dead. Serao does not make him a charlatan: she makes him a victim of the collective faith he is asked to feed.

asta · auction ((sin. incanto, vendita giudiziaria))

La vendita pubblica in cui un oggetto va a chi offre di più. Nel libro, il modo in cui si vendono i mobili di chi ha perso tutto.

A public sale where objects are sold to whoever offers the most.

The Fragalà pastry-shop is put up for auction: it is Luisella who goes, not Cesare, and she comes back with the pastry-tools she bought with the last twenty lires, for their affective value, not their use.

The glossary contains 61 entries in all