Italian Folktales
Murtaugh, Kristen
in the direction of a more pronounced metaphorical symmetry is "The Little Girl Sold with the Pears." In the traditional tale, a little girl named Margheritina is placed in the bot- tom...
...To the Editors: Abigail McCarthy asks, "Why is the administration so set on cutting programs for the poor...
...The attitude was rather cavalier...
...To the Editors: Answering Abigail McCarthy [Apr...
...Years and years of horrendous federal deficits have ravaged this country...
...There is something very Italian about these wonderful sketches in which Christ is shown playing tricks on his Apostles and "splitting his sides laughing" when St...
...handgun ownership surged because the crime rate went up...
...If the state cannot prevent violent crime, cannot protect the citizens, then the citizens must be afforded the means to protect themselves...
...10]: Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also...
...The influx of Cubans (mixing of races) has shot the crime rate up as Commonweal: 382 well as the rate of buying handguns...
...A liberal Congress voted for social programs which endeared them to many large, well organized voting blocs', but then it did not have the courage to vote the taxes to go with them...
...Calvino includes two series of brief tales about Christ and St...
...Comparing other countries is invalid...
...I never heard any concern about making these programs more efficient, getting more of those dollars to those who really need it...
...Our industries cannot be starved, abused and hamstrung and still produce more and more wealth for bureaucrats to redistribute...
...E. G. MARQUIS Cavalier liberals Southfieid, Mich...
...Italian Folktales is a delightful book...
...Where the original tale seemed to put its emphasis on the power and constancy of love, Calvino's adaptation shifts the attention to the pear motif...
...The author's informative introduction, notes, and bibliography are valuable complements, and the attractive miniature woodcuts are charming...
...What promises to be a miracle narration, "Stones to Bread," turns out to be a lesson in the form of a joke played by Christ on St...
...Peter...
...in the direction of a more pronounced metaphorical symmetry is "The Little Girl Sold with the Pears...
...George Martin's translation of the tales, itself a Herculean undertaking, captures quite competently the vivid, colloquial, and quick-paced spirit of Calvino's Italian rendition...
...EDWARD COLLINS Stockman's knitting Albany, N.Y...
...Peter, one from Friuli and one from Sicily...
...The s~tes on the Southern tier had high murder rates...
...Calvino makes some very interesting and suggestive remarks in his introduction about the nature of love, the imagery of cruelty, and the relation of the world of the king to that of the peasant in the Italian folktale...
...The liberals who today cry about the budget cuts need to be reminded: The force which powers the pendulum to the right today is fueled by the energy wfiich was stored in it when liberals pushed it so far to the left without regard for the consequences...
...It is because the crime rate is high that handguns should not be banned...
...The fat cats and those multi-national companies could pay it...
...Peter's attempts at miracle-making backfire...
...In the traditional tale, a little girl named Margheritina is placed in the bottom of a basket of pears to make it look full, and delivered to the king's kitchen...
...Pro-gun control people argue that because the crime rate is high we should ban handguns...
...The crime rate did not go up because of the surge in handgun ownership...
...The objective of the cuts is not to cut social programs as it is to balance the budget...
...Thus, when Calvino speaks of the hybrid nature of his edition, we must remember the more literary qualities the popular tales assume as they are recast by a contemporary letterato, an accomplished and self-conscious practitioner himself of the art of the fable...
...He doesn't, however, discuss one of the most interesting types of folktales represented in this collection, the stories about various saints or about Christ and the Apostles...
...The Mediterranean world has traditionally had a more relaxed relationship not only to its rulers and its legendary heroes, but also to its saints and to God himself...
...Later Christ turns the stones into bread and Peter's subsequent hunger repays his laziness...
...This handsome volume, almost a log of Calvino's "journey" through Italy's fairyland, has much to offer both the serious scholar and the casual reader of the folktale...
...Banished through their trickery, she returns with a witch's treasure, protected by magical props provided by the prince, whom she marries...
...Raised there she draws the favor of the king's son and the jealousy of the maid servants...
...Much as we hate to admit it, the fact is that the mixing of races engenders tensions that contribute to crime, including murder, probably more than any other single factor...
...Finally the pendulum swung the other way as the electorate voted for a change...
...That is putting the cart before the horse...
...He changes the child's name to Perina ("Little Pear") and he invents an episode in which the young girl rec'eives the means for obtaining the treasure from a little old woman under a pear tree...
...Where were the liberal voices when these social programs were delivering only a few cents on the dollar to the poor...
...In the hands of these story-tellers, who have picked up on hints in the gospel narrative, St...
...Those states had little mixing of races...
...In Miami we have a microcosm of the national problem...
...A long list of Negroes have been killed in Atlanta...
...Peter comes across as a glutton, a braggart, a well-meaning but blundering fool...
...Peter undergoes the same demystification into a rather buffoonish character that the austere French heroes of the Chanson de Roland underwent when appropriated by the itinerant Italian singers of chivalric romance...
...I have not heard that many if any have been shot...
...When Christ asks each of the disciples to pick up and carry a stone, Peter chooses the tiniest pebble he can find...
...Then those tax rates which Congress didn't have the courage to index to inflation, started putting more and more working people into the "fat cat" brackets...
...Correspondence (Continued from page 384) all the states on the Northern tier without large cities had low murder rates...
...lAp...
Vol. 108 • June 1981 • No. 12
