Repository path: workshop/translations/cavalleria-rusticana/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-cavalleria-rusticana-R06-v1 — Verga, «Cavalleria rusticana» ¶50–81, lead single pass

This is the frozen R04 draft, filed as its own R06 artifact per R04 §Procedure step 2a. It is the straight-through pass, before self-revision. The revised text is T-cavalleria-rusticana-R04-v1.

• Source. Giovanni Verga, «Cavalleria rusticana», in Vita dei campi (Treves, 1880; text from the 1881 edition transcribed at it.wikisource.org, CC BY-SA / GFDL, retrieved 2026-08-06). Verga d. 1922 — public domain. Locus: paragraphs 50–81 of 81, 740 Italian tokens (744 whitespace-separated words), from compare Alfio's return to Turiddu's death. Stored whole at workshop/translations/cavalleria-rusticana/source-it-full.txt; the locus at source-it-locus.txt.
• Regime. R06 v1.0 (lead single pass) as the frozen draft of an R04 run.
• Translated by. The lead agent, in session, as a labeled subject (charter §3, A4). Cost $0; not ledgered.
• Contamination: high, declared before the locus was chosen and measured after the translation was frozen. Basis: «Cavalleria rusticana» is among the most-translated Italian short stories, and at least two public-domain English renderings (Strettell 1893, Dole 1896) plus D. H. Lawrence's 1928 version are freely reachable online and plausibly sit in the lead's training data. The measurement against both public-domain renderings is reported on the R04 artifact and in RS-20260806b-berman-occurrence.
• Priming declaration (R04 §Procedure 1). Before any locus was selected, the lead had seen Strettell's English of Italian ¶1–8 and Dole's English of ¶1–2, while checking OCR quality on the two scans. The locus was then deliberately chosen from ¶50–81, a stretch whose English the lead had not seen in any rendering. No published rendering of the locus was read before this draft and its log were frozen.

Translation

Compare Alfio came back with his mules, loaded with money, and brought his wife a fine new dress as a present for the feast days.

— You've every reason to bring her presents, Santa the neighbour said to him, because while you're away your wife adorns your house for you!

Compare Alfio was one of those carters who wear the cap over one ear, and hearing his wife spoken of in that way he changed colour as if he had been knifed. — Holy great devil! he exclaimed, if you have not seen right, I'll not leave you eyes to cry with! you nor your whole kin!

— I'm not used to crying! answered Santa; I didn't cry even when I saw with these eyes Turiddu della gnà Nunzia go into your wife's house at night.

— Very well, answered compare Alfio, many thanks.

Turiddu, now that the cat had come back, no longer hung about the little street by day, and worked off his boredom at the tavern with his friends; and on Easter Eve they had a dish of sausage on the table. When compare Alfio came in, from nothing but the way he planted his eyes on him Turiddu understood that he had come about that business, and he laid his fork down on his plate.

— Have you orders to give me, compare Alfio? he said to him.

— No request, compare Turiddu, it's a while since I've seen you, and I wanted to talk to you about that thing you know of.

Turiddu had at first held out a glass to him, but compare Alfio put it aside with his hand. Then Turiddu got up and said to him:

— Here I am, compar Alfio.

The carter threw his arms round his neck.

— If you'd like to come tomorrow morning to the prickly pears of the Canziria we can talk about that business, compare.

— Wait for me on the highroad at sunrise, and we'll go together.

With these words they exchanged the kiss of challenge. Turiddu gripped the carter's ear between his teeth, and so made him solemn promise not to fail.

The friends had left the sausage quietly, quietly, and went with Turiddu as far as home. Poor gnà Nunzia waited up for him late every evening.

— Mamma, Turiddu said to her, do you remember when I went for a soldier, and you thought I wasn't coming back any more? Give me a good kiss like then, because tomorrow morning I'm going far away.

Before daylight he took his flick-knife, which he had hidden under the hay when he went off a conscript, and set out for the prickly pears of the Canziria.

— Oh! Jesus-Mary! where are you going in such a fury? Lola whimpered in dismay, while her husband was on the point of going out.

— I'm going close by, answered compar Alfio, but it would be better for you if I never came back.

Lola, in her shift, was praying at the foot of the bed, pressing to her lips the rosary that fra Bernardino had brought her from the Holy Places, and reciting all the Hail Marys that would go into it.

— Compare Alfio, Turiddu began, after he had gone a stretch of road beside his companion, who kept quiet, with his cap over his eyes. As God is true I know I'm in the wrong and I'd let myself be killed. But before coming here I saw my old woman, who had got up to see me leave, on the pretext of seeing to the hen-house, as though her heart were speaking to her, and as sure as God is true I'll kill you like a dog so as not to make my poor old woman cry.

— That's the way, answered compare Alfio, taking off his jerkin, and we'll both of us strike hard.

Both were good hands with the knife; Turiddu took the first blow, and was in time to catch it on his arm; when he gave it back, he gave it back good, and struck for the groin.

— Ah! compare Turiddu! you really do mean to kill me!

— Yes, I told you so; now that I've seen my old woman in the hen-house, I seem to have her always before my eyes.

— Open them wide, those eyes! compar Alfio shouted at him, for I'm about to give you back good measure.

As he stood on guard all gathered in on himself, keeping his left hand on the wound, which hurt him, and almost trailing along the ground with his elbow, he snatched up a handful of dust and threw it in his opponent's eyes.

— Ah! howled Turiddu, blinded, I'm dead.

He tried to save himself, making desperate leaps backwards; but compar Alfio caught him with another blow in the stomach and a third in the throat.

— And that's three! this one is for the house you adorned for me. Now your mother will let the hens alone.

Turiddu groped a while this way and that among the prickly pears and then fell like a stone. The blood gurgled foaming in his throat and he could not even get out: — Ah, mamma mia!

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-08-06, before any evaluation of this translation was designed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

This is the single-pass draft. The log for the pair — where the pressure was, what was live, what the revision changed — is written on T-cavalleria-rusticana-R04-v1, because the revision is where most of the decisions became visible as decisions. Three things belong here, on the draft, because they were settled at first pass and never reopened:

1. The forms of address were retained unglossed from the first word — compare / compar, gnà, fra, and massaro in the wider story. No alternative was live at draft time: the English options (neighbour, friend, goodman, Master, Mistress) each pick one strand out of a word that is simultaneously kinship-fictive, deferential and ordinary, and compare is the story's most frequent single marker of who these people are.
2. adornare was fixed as adorn at its first occurrence and held at its second, because the two are one joke thirty paragraphs apart — Santa's "your wife adorns your house for you" and Alfio's "this one is for the house you adorned for me." Nothing else about the passage was allowed to disturb that pair.
3. The dialogue dashes and the absence of quotation marks are Verga's and were kept. The draft never considered supplying quotation marks.

(Any evaluative sentence in a log carries internal-judgment-only; the front matter carries it for the page.)