Tra il naturalismo di ‘costì’ e il verismo ‘di qui’: Capuana recensore di Rod, Rod critico di Capuana

The first (epistolary) contact between Édouard Rod and Luigi Capuana dates back toJune 1882. Giovanni Verga, who had recently met the Swiss-Parisian intellectual in theFrench capital, becomes their intermediary as he suggests Capuana to send his worksto Rod and, at the same time, suggests Rod to send his novel Côte a Côte (1882) toCapuana, a successful militant critic. Thus, an intense correspondence begins betweenthe two writers, whose stages are reconstructed by Jean-Jacques Marchand in EdouardRod et les écrivains italiens (1980). Their exchange of letters alternately continuesuntil 1909, accompanied by a real exchange of courtesies: from France, Rod regularlyreviews the short stories and the critical studies of the Sicilian writer and, from Italy,Capuana makes Rod the privileged dedicatee of his last production and evaluates his works with critical rigor on the most important newspaper’s columns of the time.
Across-examination of these writings in most cases relegated to a first publication onspecialised magazines and the contents expressed in their missives reveals asignificant reflection on the differences between the French Naturalism and the ItalianVerismo, as well as a mutual effort to redefine the concept of influence. The stages ofthe epistolary relationship between the two writers are reconstructed here, linked toan initial analysis of the critical debate on Capuana’s work in France and Rod’s work in Italy.