“Stick to your trade, you may not get rich but you’ll earn your daily bread.” Pitrè, Verga and the fusion of folklore and narrativity

Abstract

Pitrè, more than the Grimms or any other folklorist of the 19th century, made greater contributions to laying the solid groundwork for major developments in collecting and preserving oral popular tales, songs, legends, riddles, games, customs and proverbs than any other scholar of his time. He was fully aware of just how fertile the tales were for understanding how the European ones originated and were spread. Sicily had been a country that had been constantly attacked, invaded and occupied by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, French, and Spanish for long and short periods of times. All of these occupations left their imprint on Sicilian culture, and many of the tales can be traced to storytelling traditions of these people. Pitrè was sure that a certain number of folktales originated in the Orient. In this respect one must recognize that Mohammedans and Buddhists spread Indic tales in Africa, Asia, and Europe; one must also remember that the cause of this propagation is owed not only to books but also to the oral tradition. Because of its geographical position, Sicily clearly must have collected tales and legends from Persia, Greece, and Arabia and transmitted them to the European continent, enhancing folktales with their own particular character, their own historical concreteness. Pitrè believed that the past is not dead. It lives in and with us. This past is in many respects the contemporary history of Sicily. He also considered folk traditions as the result of the bygone days, but that they live because the present, in renewing them, has taken them as its own. Furthermore, he was convinced that ethnology must meet with folklore in order to give it a more solid historical foundation. Any consideration of Sicilian culture should begin with the works of the great ethnographer Giuseppe Pitrè: born in Borgo, a lower-class district in Palermo in 1841, he came from a family with a strong maritime tradition. The early death of his father brought the young boy closer to his grandfather, strengthened his mother’s desire to further her two sons education and thanks to the help of a priest, she was able to provide for their educational security. Indeed, this extended family and his friends in the Borgo district stamped Pitrè’s positive attitude toward the common people his entire life. Already as a young boy, he began collecting proverbs, maritime expressions, and songs and it soon became clear that he was curious about the history of the common customs and beliefs, especially from the lower classes. During this time, however, the insurrection against the Austrians erupted, and Pitrè, a dedicated patriot, was inspired by the idea of an independent united Italy, which also included a liberated Sicily. So he left school in 1860 to enlist in Garibaldi’s navy. He never took part in any fighting but was often on board the Washington in charge of loading arms for the Expedition from Naples, Genoa, Marseilles, and Toulon. When he returned to Sicily, he resumed his studies and enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Palermo in 1861, graduating five years later. Pitrè surpassed his family expectations: not only he excelled in his study of medicine but he also became an accomplished scholar of literature and history. As from 1865, he began publishing articles on proverbs in the Sicilian journals Borghini and Favilla and later began teaching Italian Literature. It was also during this time that he made the acquaintance of Salvatore Salomone-Marino, who became one of his most intimate friends and his closest collaborator in folklore research. In over fifty years, Pitrè, folklorist and ethnographer, gathered, with heartfelt enthusiasm, not only traditions from Sicily but also from other parts of Italy too, loved his native Palermo, and always enjoyed speaking in Sicilian dialect, absorbing all the effective expressions and passionate meanings. He was the foremost figure in the 19th century Italian folklore studies, and had a central role in establishing the study of popular traditions as an independent discipline in Italy. He opposed a strictly aesthetic approach to folklore, maintaining that folk traditions offered precious historical information on national heritages that often revealed different realities from ‘official’ history. The people knew of Pitrè’s humble origins, a life full of painful issues and yet rich in moral values. He loved Sicily and studied local affairs with a tireless passion, never detached himself from anything he learnt, making it part of his own life, his heart and soul. In all his volumes everything is scrupulously transcribed, though in some of them, the documented material is highly representative, as Pitrè feels really part of it, he is the voice of the people as he has the ability to mix with them, he is able to listen to each one of them, and he can write on old traditions also participating emotionally, fully aware that it is his duty to keep these traditions alive. This is why Pitrè will hopefully remain in the heart of the Sicilian people as in his writings they will hear over and over again, the ancient voice of their land; besides, he will be remembered in Italy and the world by all those who have read or will have the opportunity to read his books.