SOURCE: "Appendix: Pirandello on Verga," in Verga's Milanese Tales, by Olga Ragusa, S. F. Vanni, 1964, pp. 106-26.

In the following excerpt, part of a speech that was first presented to the Royal Academy of Italy celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of I Malavoglia in 1931, Pirandello investigates the concept of reality in art and takes issue with the claim that Verga wrote objective, realist fiction.

It is probable that every nation produces two human types from its stock: the builders and the adaptors, the necessary beings and the beings of luxury; the former endowed with a "style of objects" and the latter with a "style of words." These two great families or categories of men, living contemporaneously within every nation, are quite distinct and easily recognizable in Italy, perhaps more so than anywhere else. But only for someone who knows our situation well and is able to...