ABSTRACT: May 11, 1986. To watch the "maxi-trial" in Palermo there come school children, tourists, etc., but not as ought to, "sociologists, linguists, socio-linguists, anthropological researchers". These latter would learn a great deal if they had the competence of a Gerhard Rohlfs who wrote the historical grammar of the Italian language and its dialects. Sciascia is reading a book of Rohlfs' devoted to "insults" used in Sicily. What, for example, are the meanings of the two nicknames given - certainly with a pejorative intention - to Michele ("the pope") Greco and Totò ("the senator") Greco? (1) Sciascia attempts an explanation and maintains that with the two nicknames as a point of departure he confers credibility, not legal but literary, on the revelations of Buscetta and Contorno.(2) This last, for his part, could very well express himself in Italian, but prefers instead to stick to strict dialect which the presiding judge makes efforts to translate: "only that modern Sicilian does not suffice for unde

rstanding what Contorno says".

(L'ESPRESSO, May 11, 1986)

To the "maxi-trial" (a perfect designation with regard not only to the number of defendants, but at the same time, almost in order to destroy the illusion that one would and could want to do more) come students who must write theses on the Mafia, entire classes of school children, groups of tourists (one of which, from Sweden or England, received the thanks of the judges and lawyers during the hearing); but we do not hear of sociologists, linguists, socio-linguists, and anthropological field-workers coming too. For them this trial would be an inexhaustibly rich mine. They ought in fact to be people of high professional stature and competence like that Gerhard Rohlfs who wrote a historical grammar of the Italian language and its dialects in three thick volumes relating to phonetics, morphology, and to syntax and word formation. And I am thinking of Rohlfs just because I recently read a book of his on Sicily where he devotes attention to nicknames and to "insults": for nicknames almost always end up being

insulting or somehow harmful in that they point out the physical, psychological or moral deformities of an individual or else they sum up his functions and activities. And without doubt, if one looks closely, the nicknames of the two Grecos - Michele called "the Pope" and Totò called " the senator" - are harmful, since they have been caught in the net of the law and are undergoing a trial based more on circumstantial evidence than proofs. It is even obvious that a nickname like "the Pope" must indicate that a person is or thinks he is in a position of supreme and uncontested power and infallibility. And what can a nickname like "the senator" mean other than what the accusations of Buscetta and Contorno tell us of Totò Greco's functions? A senator "par excellence" if he exercised power over some senators (and deputies). I must confess that with these two nicknames as a starting point I would give credence to the revelations of Buscetta and Contorno. If I were a judge it would be very bad for me to base a

conviction and a judgement on these elements. But since I am only a person who works with words and who thinks that words are things - there are those who think that words are only words from which derives the Pirandellian distinction between "writers of words" and "writers of things" - who thinks that words serve to reveal rather than hide things even when one doesn't want them to, I can permit myself to allow two nicknames to lead me to a conviction. In the same way Contorno's dialect reassures me of its veracity (a veracity, be it understood, which is not legal but, to express it approximately, "literary"). I have the conviction that, if he wanted to, Contorno could express himself in an equally picturesque Italian, equally approximative, but passable, comprehensible; and that his choice of Sicilian dialect is principally for the sake of the trial. But it is also a choice made from passion and ideology in the sense that the urgent need for vengeance and the Sicilian type of ideology are by now evident in

what Pitrè called "Mafia feeling".

In these very days, during a public competition for regional government jobs, the candidates were assigned as a theme for an essay on the nature of being Sicilian. It would have been possible to reply summarily and exemplarily that "Sicilianism" is Contorno, the manner and substance of what Contorno says. But his manner of saying it excites the protests of the non-Sicilian lawyers, and they are right. The presiding judge took on the task of translating for them, only it is not enough to know modern Sicilian to understand Contorno. When Contorno says "argia" - which is the Sicilian word "gaggia" in Palermo dialect phonetics, and even more in the phonetics of a particular district of Palermo - one must have recourse to an old Sicilian dictionary to find its right meaning of "mouse trap" or of "muscipula" (fly-catching, ed.) as the Jesuit Father Michele Del Bono translated it into Latin in 1752.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Michele and Totò Greco - Two Mafia bosses.

2) Buscetta, Tommaso and Contorno, Antonio - Two Mafiosi who collaborated with the law in making revelations about the Mafia.