I Viceré: libro in italiano per studenti avanzati (C1)

Glossario

adulazione · flattery ((sin. lusinga, piaggeria))

Le lodi esagerate e interessate rivolte a chi ha potere.

Excessive, self-interested praise offered to the powerful.

Around the Uzeda buzzes a little world of poor relations, priests and fixers who live on flattery. The prince despises them and uses them: he knows that a flatterer is the cheapest servant there is.

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

La relazione amorosa di una persona sposata fuori dal matrimonio.

Betrayal between husband and wife.

Raimondo's adultery is public and unpunished; Isabella's ruins her. The novel's scales weigh twice: once for princes, once for everyone else, and a third time, heaviest of all, for women.

alterigia · haughtiness ((sin. superbia, boria))

La superbia fredda di chi si considera superiore per nascita.

The cold pride of those who think themselves superior by birth.

It isn't vanity: it is certainty. An Uzeda has nothing to prove to anyone: the world divides into the family and the rest, and the rest hardly counts.

ambizione · ambition ((sin. brama, aspirazione))

Il desiderio ardente di potere, successo e gloria.

A burning desire for power, success and glory.

Consalvo doesn't love money like his father or the blazon like his aunt: he loves command itself. His ambition is the most modern and the purest in the novel: it needs no excuses, no ideals, no affections.

annullamento · annulment ((sin. scioglimento, invalidazione))

La dichiarazione che un matrimonio non è mai stato valido.

A declaration that a marriage was never valid.

To unite Raimondo and Isabella, two annulments are needed, and the family obtains them by buying witnesses, judges and consciences. It is the book's most ferocious chapter: God's law bent like a promissory note.

avarizia · avarice ((sin. taccagneria, spilorceria))

L'attaccamento eccessivo al denaro, che impedisce di spenderlo e di darlo.

Attachment to money so strong it prevents spending or giving.

Donna Ferdinanda hoards and never spends; Giacomo counts and counts again. Avarice here isn't a flaw: it is a whole passion, the only form of love certain Uzeda are capable of.

beata · blessed woman ((sin. venerabile, santa))

Una persona morta in fama di santità, venerata dalla Chiesa.

A woman who died in the odour of sanctity and is venerated by the Church.

The family has a blessed of its own, the venerable Ximena, and her portrait watches over them all. Every generation of Uzeda produces saints and bullies with equal ease: and sometimes, says De Roberto, in the same person.

Il glossario contiene 52 voci in tutto