May 22– From I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Allessandro Manzoni (1827)
Summary: Setting, expo expo expo, ACTION!, expo.
Commentary: This is, I believe, the FOURTH excerpt we've gotten from this book. It's finally chapter 1. It's one thing to give us a more exciting chapter the very first time, but THREE in a row and then bounce back? Absolutely ridiculous.
We get a full page describing the landscape, which might explain Elliot's reluctance to start us with this one. Then there's a weird narrator's note? I checked, and it is in the original, not just a translator's note. It's weirdly specific (exact dates) and vague (not naming towns and figures) at the same time. An interesting device. I think timing is one of the most under/misused tools in fiction (stories that cram 1000 events into a day or two, serials that take literal years to cover an evening), so I'm curious to see if Manzoni will play with it here.
We keep going with basically a summary of background info/another story. Finally, about five pages in, we get some actual present day events, a priest be threatened not to perform the wedding of (I think) the main characters. A solid start for a romance novel, if we'd gotten to it sooner.
No one ever told Manzoni show don't tell, as we get literal pages of narration about legality and morality uninterrupted.
My five-and-twenty readers may imagine what impression such an encounter as has been related above would make on the mind of this pitiable being.
The old Italian version of "the three people reading this blog."
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