The folktales’ father. Giambattista Basile’s O conto de li cunti trattenimiente de li peccerille” (Pentamerone)

Abstract

In his preface to the Italian Folktales, Calvino takes Brothers Grimm´s Fairy Tales (1812) as a model, but criticizes their "bloodthirsty" and violent character. He closely imitates the collection of the German authors, selecting the same number of tales (200), and also decides to translate all texts, originally written in dialect, to Italian, arbitrarily adapting plots and names. Regarding Giambattista Basile, a celebrated writer imitated and translated by the Brothers Grimm, author of Lu Cunto li cunti (or Pentamerone), a collection of 50 short stories written in Neapolitan in 1646, Calvino was downright negligent. Basile, an author so to speak proto-expressionist, presents in his work the older versions of many well-known tales (Cinderella, Snow White, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and others). His masterwork was translated into Italian by the philosopher Benedetto Croce only in 1925. The so-called Pentamerone (in association to Boccaccio´s Decamerone), had an amazing translation into German, published in 1846, thanks to the stimulus of the Brothers Grimm, who worshiped the Italian baroque author as a grand master of Fairy Tale. The virtual triangle formed between Calvino, the Brothers Grimm and Basile has Calvino´s denial against the Neapolitan author as one of its angles, whereas his Pentamerone reinforces the importance, vitality and consistency of dialects in the Italian literary tradition and the expressionism of its author. Between Calvino and Basile, the Grimm Brothers appear to represent a unique and typical mediation between German and Italian cultures.