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Belli, India Salgari: tips and tricks of a master of adventure
Read Salgari is a little 'how to travel around the world, touching all continents, ranging from Europe to Africa, the Americas and Asia, reaching even to the two poles.
It jumps back and forth around the globe, now face the bitter cold, now the heat and thirst of the African desert, in Algeria there are the lions and tigers in India, only to end up in full far-West, between boundless prairies, endless herds of buffalo and red men looking for scalps to show off as trophies.
The Mysterious Continent, 1894, Illustrations by G. Carpanetti
E 'can also run up to Oceania, known at the time of Salgari fairly superficial. The novel's title The mysterious continent Salgado (1894) reflects the limited and fragmentary knowledge of the period over this region.
The thing that is most surprising is that every time, regardless of the plot of the story and of where this takes place, the reader feels immersed in the landscape, even thrown in the middle of the action as if it were one of the characters, too ready to live the heroic adventures narrated by the author.
This is the result of careful programming and a stunning descriptive ability. As well established, Salgari not traveled the world simply navigate in his youth, along the Adriatic and reaching, as more remote locations, the city of Brindisi.
was the continuous and diligent reading of Geographic magazines, encyclopedias, books of history, customs, religion and travel that allowed him to describe places in detail.
If we look at the geographical locations we have to conclude that the lion's share went to Asia, with almost thirty titles. Is undisputed that region at the time of Salgari was still called British India and comprising, in addition to the current states of India and Pakistan, also the island of Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The Bloody Pearl, 1905, Cover by Alberto Della Valle
The part of the Indian Ocean to the east of the Indian peninsula, between the islands of Andaman and Nicobar islands, has been the scene of the action of the captain of Djumna (1897 ) and the first part of The Bloody Pearl (1905).
In this novel, to leave his beloved Juga, the protagonist Palicur, pearl diver, he must retrieve a stolen gem from the wonderful reddish reflections to a statue of Buddha in the monastery of Annarodgburro island of Ceylon, and finished under the sea near the bank of pearl Manaar.
only giving back to the monks of the monastery can hug the bride, kidnapped to be sacred to Buddha. In this
Salgari mixes seafaring adventure, teeming with terrible sea monsters and "modern" diving equipment, with events tied to the most typical Indians as a description of the life and habits of the monks of the jungle inhabited by wild cats and treacherous snakes. The book is set among the Negritos of the Nicobar and Vadassi of Ceylon, primitive peoples, far from the images of the proud and chivalrous warriors Indian protagonists of other novels.
The events culminating in Ceylon where it reigns over the world, less known, of pearl divers and their dives into dangerous waters of the Gulf of Manaar, infested by sharks. Although Ceylon Indian territory, for Salgari is mainly an island unto itself, ruled by the sea and its fishermen. To visit India "authentic", to fight tigers, fight their way to the most intricate jungle escaping poisonous reptiles and silent, to meet the fire jugglers and fakirs and insensitive to pain, we read novels set in the Indian continent.
The Mountain of Light, 1902, Cover Gennaro Amato
Already the number of Indian novels of the cycle, seven, suggests the importance of India in the production Salgariana. Moreover, they all belong to the most famous cycle, what he sees as the protagonists Sandokan, Yanez, and Naik-Tremal Kammammuri1. The only exception is the Mountain of Light.
latter can be regarded as among the Indian Salgariani novels, set as it is in central India where, in 1843, British influence was not yet fully consolidated.
There are the square of the White City district of Calcutta to describe, but only India mysterious and captivating, with its snake charmers, festivals and processions in which penitents may have seen hanging from hooks sharp, fakirs who are buried alive, the able and ruthless highwaymen such dacoit; the nuki-kakussi, or wrestlers who are faced with deadly iron spikes applied to the fingers ...
Everything revolves around a giant diamond (the Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light) really existed and is now housed in the Treasury of the British Crown. Salgari, followed by many other writers as well as an endless series of films, greatly enhances the theme of the fabulous treasures that came from India to Europe and the rest of the world. It 's so that India with its spices, its diamonds, the fragrant wood of the sandal of his ivory elephant becomes, more than any other region of the world, a kingdom of fabulous wealth.
But from the beginning. The meeting between India and Salgari happens soon. The first work that takes care of The Stranglers is the Ganges, which appeared in serial form in the appendix in the newspaper's phone Livorno in 1887 (from January 10 to April 15 for a total of 77 episodes). The title probably does not say much, except to experts.
It is in fact the prototype of the black mysteries of the jungle (1895), appeared for the first time in volume only in 1994 (Turin, Viglongo). Already in the first lines of the novel takes us Salgari India mysterious and fascinating:
"The Ganges, this famous river celebrated by ancient and modern Indians, whose waters are deemed sacred by these people, after he had crossed the snowy mountains Keutaisse and of the rich provinces of Sirinagoi, Delhi, of Oelhe of Bhar and Bengal, two hundred and twenty miles from the sea is divided into two arms, forming a huge delta, intricate, wonderful and probably unique. "
are described in exotic locations from the beginning, inhabited by tigers and snakes, in where a thousand giant banian aerial roots form a "forest supported by hundreds and hundreds of odd columns, in which priests placed their idols of Brahma ', these plants are the enormous cache of mysterious thug, strangled by the noose infallible.
The protagonists are not
dapper European officers with spotless uniforms and mild-mannered and polite, but an Indian-looking semi-wild Tremal Naik, whose trust maharatto a fierce companion in adventure, Kammamuri and allies as a dog and a tiger tamed.
Already in this first novel, the description of the background where the characters act is meticulous. Salgari has many sources of accurate and then moves with ease among temples and jungle, thug and Baiada. Describes landscapes, temples, pagodas, fauna and flora with accuracy and immerses us firmly in a mysterious world full of promises. As mentioned
The Stranglers of the Ganges is the first version of the famous mysteries of the jungle that is black for the first time in volume 18952, with major changes compared to the prototype. The main line is traced in the conclusion: Tremal-Naik does not kill the captain Macpherson, father of the woman he loves, Ada, but joins him to defeat the thug.
dates back to 1903 a further version in which Salgari to adapt his novel to the standard of a new series of the publisher Donath, added eight consecutive chapters in the second half.
These chapters are very rich in exotic references. For a frantic affair is augmented by a detailed description of the environment the Indian Ocean.
So here is the colorful and unique celebration of snakes pagodas fraught with extraordinary statues of elephants or monstrous creatures half man and half lion, or dwarf-looking benevolent hours now threaten behold legions of fakirs looking horrible and disgusting habits and features incredible and so far mainly by European royalty of the time. "As it is said that some do not eat anything, but only in public," says Salgari sarcastically, "because home is another matter." Other plunder the gardens, the saniassi then are "more thieves who gurus" to reach those who, for mysterious reasons, are distinguished by having a single base and wearing only one shoe. In India you can find just about anything! Then there are the
Sapwallah, snake charmers, with Tomril, flutes that seem like magic to enchant deadly bite from the reptile, you hear the sound of air tools of all kinds, accompanying Tremal-Naik in the course of his adventures in the city of Calcutta, and the reader is led to lost in this magical atmosphere.
In the new chapters also Salgari change the scene in which Tremal-Naik and the old thug Moh Hider meet in a tavern. The three make arrangements to kill Captain Macpherson, and ignores Tremal-Nayk of conspiring to murder the father of his beloved Ada. The fact is fundamental nell'accorta fictional plot that owes so much to soap opera!
In the 1895 version, the dialogue that takes place is as follows:
- Order, made of Kali, - said in a trembling voice. (Hider is speaking) - you know the Captain Macpherson? - Perhaps more than you. - Do you know where leads to the frigate?
In recent editions of the version with the eight chapters in more than, for example Vallardi of 1959, the dialogue between characters is amended as follows:
"I am at your command, sent by Kali" (Hitler is speaking)
"Sit and listen," said Tremal-Naik. "You know Captain Macpherson?"
"Father of ....." Hider began, but the old thug immediately interrupted him, frowning and pointing Tremal-Naik.
Hider including on the fly. "Captain Macpherson?" he said casually. "I know perhaps better than anyone else"
"You know where it is ?..." he asked anxiously Tremal-Naik, who had not noticed anything
It all comes back, there are no problems because Hitler was stopped in time, before revealing the secret.
Instead, the original edition of 1903 looked like this:
"I am at your command, sent by Kali" (Hitler is speaking) "Sit and listen," said Tremal-Naik. "You know Captain Macpherson?" "The father of the" Virgin of the Pagoda "!... I know perhaps better than anyone. "You know where it ?..."
The difference is not really trivial! Fact Tremal-Naik, an accomplice distrattissimo Salgari obtained the only revelation ... that was not to obtain, unless seriously affect the plot! It is not known, however, the year it was the providential adjustment made to the text of the dialogue.
Also in these pages, added later, it appears one of the characters that most Indians is given to the player. This figure dell'affascinante the fakir from ankylosed arm, which made her hand the jar to a myrtle sacred, dedicated to helping Tremal Naik enterprise to track and kill the Captain Macpherson.
Nimpor, the name of the fakir, is a character that can not fail to impress the reader, as the living image of a world where the unheard becomes common practice.
Salgari introduces him thus:
"went Moh the spacious staircase leading into the INPUT of the pagoda and stopped before an Indian, who was sitting on the bottom step, telling Tremal-Naik and Hitler: "This is the fakir." In it, Tremal-Naik had been unable to restrain a gesture of disgust. That miserable Indian, the victim of religious fanaticism and superstition Indiana, was really horrified.
was more than a man, a skeleton. Her parchment face was covered with a beard, thick, uneducated, who came under his belt, and covered with strange tattoos depicting red and blacks mostly good or ill of snakes, while her face was smeared with ash. Her long hair also, and perhaps never had known use of combs and scissors, they formed a kind of mane, some teeming with insects. The body, scary skinny, she was almost naked, not wearing a tiny thong off just four fingers. That, however, that aroused disgust, had his left arm.
the conquest of an empire, 1907, Cover by Alberto Della Valle
That State, reduced to skin and bones remained continually being raised or lowered more potevasi now dried up and stiffening. In the hand, closely related, with some fixes and closed to form a container, the fan was placed on earth by planting a small sacred myrtle, which gradually grew as if he were in a jar. The nails can not find an outlet, eransi first curved, then had pierced his hand and now they came out, as claws of wild beasts, through the palm. "
Salgari was very impressed by this character, so that takes it up verbatim ( just change the name) in the novel to the conquest of an empire (1907). He had read the description given by Louis Rousselet French traveler in the rajah of India (Milan, Treves, 1877).
appropriated it and made him a fictional character intended to impress in the minds of readers.
E 'is this a feature of the page Salgariana: great freedom to the imagination but in a framework inspired by reality. The cited work of
Rousselet, of course, is a major source of Indian romanziere.Dalla reading of those pages are derived describing the festival of snakes that Naga-Pantciami3; descriptions of mines where he was found the Pannah famous Koh-i-Noor diamond and many more: for example, the sleight of hand when, to general amazement, a child goes into a basket that is pierced with sharp swords and reduced to a small thickness to the sound of blows, then miraculously emerged unharmed and Meriah, still practiced human sacrifice in the nineteenth century in parts of central India, that lively and colorful novel The Mountain of Light. Other
well known source for the setting of Indian books and didactic Salgari is the monumental work "The costume of ancient and modern history or government, militia, religion, arts, sciences and practices of all peoples, ancient and modern by Luigi Ferrario ( twenty-one volumes of the first edition were published, at the expense of the same author, between 1817 and 1834).
Here is the idea of \u200b\u200bshooting banian which acts as the thug hiding; Salgari drew ideas from the same page with regard to the stone Salagraman sacred to Vishnu, the various incarnations of Vishnu, or the same party in honor of Darma-Rajah, during which crowds of believers walk without suffering any harm on a bed of hot coals. The reader of today, these descriptions are fairly religious family, but in the days when Salgari works evoke visions of an unimaginable elsewhere.
The Illustrated Journal of travel and adventure by land and sea, Cover
Among his known Indian sources, it must then quote the magazine, the weekly newspaper The Illustrated travels and adventures by land and sea, edited by Sonzogno publisher since 1878. It was indeed an irreplaceable source for the geography, customs and costumes of the whole universe Salgado. Here we only mention the story of killing the family of Surama, the future queen consort of Yanez and Assam, by the cruel Sindhia and the description of the incredible performance of Indian thieves able to steal the blanket on which the owner is blissfully sleeping or shrubs to pose as deceiving as any pursuers.
Revenge of Yanez, 1913, Cover by Alberto Della Valle
Besides these three principal sources can put many other texts. The works are available in public libraries frequented by Veronese writer and dealing with the same exotic themes of his novels Indians thug, Baiada, fakirs, jungles, snake charmers, tigers tamed, and rajaputi sepoy mutineers.
Among these, the novels of Louis and Louis Jacolliot4 Boussenard5 (the latter is remembered by the same Salgari). Or the travel accounts of Paul Mantegazza6, Ferdinando De Lanoye7, Aristide Calani8, Edward De Warren9.
The list is long and probably not great, considering the one hand the amount of available texts and other potential of the uncommon reader Salgari and consulted.
spend but a few words about the debts that has Salgari with Ponson Du Terrail, the inventor of Rocambole, the hero of the adventure so extraordinary that the adjective is daring past to indicate the operations carried out with such cunning and audacity to appear incredible .
of the long cycle of the adventures of Rocambole a title immediately jumps to the eye: The Stranglers. And in fact it is the protagonists the thug, the pioneers of the evil, opposed to the followers of Sivah. Supporters of the property, with Rocambole involved alongside them.
In this novel, the first Italian translation was made in 1874 for issues Sonzogno, we find many ideas that will then be Salgari. In addition to the Stranglers with their lethal snares and the goddess Kali by "deformed mouth equipped with teeth stained red," we find the heroine condemned by the same thug to be burnt at the stake, as Ada in The mysteries of the jungle, black, and even a blue fish, "which is found only in the Ganges" and adored by the thug, who remembers when the fish eat Suyodhana often ask advice and inspiration.
But another series title of Rocambole can be considered, namely: A drama in India. The references are even more numerous and interesting.
The name of one of the main characters is Kougli (Ed. Sonzogno, 1876, p. 47). This is
"a nigger on the west coast, those who are more reds blacks, and they pump so much beauty that at least Baiada and often die of love for them."
He does not hesitate to be castrated to log on as a eunuch in harems for the sole purpose of freeing the bride of his master! Qquesto "martyr" of selflessness and loyalty Salgari struck so as to induce him to use your name, in fact assigned to one of the thug in The Stranglers the Ganges.
But the correspondences do not end here. We can trace it (page 87) represents one of the most memorable and Salgariane that the lemonade that loosens the tongue:
"The Indian Ocean lies wounded on his wound a balm, which is nothing else except the juice of a squeezed plant we call Youma, a word that means the language of the serpent. "
the next page, we read the description of the effects caused to those who drink:
"The mixture of lemon which refreshes, opium and falls asleep dell'youma that heals the wounds, which make up a drink produces the effects peculiar ....... He who swallows half a glass, not long in being at the mercy of a kind of feverish gaiety, which is manifested by a great exuberance of gestures and words of intemperance. The man locked himself in, most brooding intelligence you can not resist. As a secret is buried deep in the depths of the heart, the beverage of which I speak it instantly brings to his lips. "
Then we have the description of the shape of the leaves of Youma:
" It took, in fact, from his pocket a handful of large triangular fogliuzze, which he laid on the table. "
to continue with the method of preparation of the mysterious drink tongue twister:
" Ten minutes later, the girl returned with lemons. Nadir then put them in a small mortar that was used to pilaris rice and was at home, then he began to crush them by mixing them with the leaves of Youma and the grain of opium, and slowly pouring a glass of water in the mortar. Then I saw a beautiful formation rosy liquor, he poured in a cup of coconut.
To end with the description of the effects we already know:
"After drinking, Hassan fell into a kind of recollection that looked like ecstasy. Then, little by little, his face s'imporporò, the his eyes began to shine, and incoherent words burst forth from his lips. "
Who felt like it could easily verify that The Stranglers Salgari writes of the Ganges leaves "triangle" of Youma and the method of preparation and the effects after drinking are described in almost identical manner.
In the same work (p. 73), Ponson Du Terrail describes the manzanillo, the tree whose shadow can kill and it is well known to readers Salgariani, is a woman condemned to sati (p.27), the torn horrible fate by Rocambole (this is also an episode Salgado) and of a poor tailor who, to wrest the secret of where he is a fabulous hidden treasure, burning the feet
"The soldiers, under orders of their leader, they had the bare legs and exposing her feet the flames that had lit the brazier. "(page 84).
Easy to remember the torture to which Kammamuri Tremal-Naik and submit the thug named Manciadi to force him to reveal the secrets of his sect.
There also remember if any were needed, that the pages are filled with Indian Salgari of exotic terms, the result of painstaking research. Their repeated use is intended to create an exotic and distant. The word new, unknown, since sound so different and strange, has, as you know, the role of drag in an unknown world and to increase the aura of mystery. Things are different about the blunders: the problem, which detract from the musicality of those seductive words, exists and deserves further investigation.
Salgariane Quotations are sometimes wrong. And they are often already used the same sources. Salgari has put his cripple their readings also had a hasty handwriting, fine, that often get tricked into printers and transcribers, leading to crippling and add other errors.
The errors are then multiplied together to publishing success, so that you can find typos and arbitrary interventions in later editions.
However Salgari was able to carefully choose the names of the protagonists and antagonists. So here
Tremal Naik, which is the name of the reigning dynasty in the city of Madurai in the south India; Suyodhana, as the cruel leader of the thug, is the nickname of one of the main characters of the Mahabharata, one of the most important works in a religious epic of Hinduism, Dharma, then, is a term that refers to a set of laws spiritual Hindus to follow.
About Darma name, so it struck Salgari who used not only for the Tiger faithful companion of adventures Tremal-Naik, but the death of the cat, as the name of the daughter of the same Tremal-Naik. And 'This is a feature of Salgari. If a term in a particular exotic struck him did not hesitate to use it again.
Captain of Djumna, 1897, Cover by Joseph Gamba
Garrovi For example, in reality the name of a region of Indiana, is used in The Stranglers of the Ganges as the name of a thug and captain Djumna as the name of a cruel fakir.
E 'Djumna also be noted that, in the name of a ship Salgari, is actually the name of a river sacred to Hindus, while Manciadi is a unit of measurement Indiana. Dhundia, the traitor in the Mountain of Light, is the nickname of the goddess Holic; Aghur, mate-Tremal Naik who is killed by the thug in the first pages of The mysteries of the jungle, black is the Indian word which means fence, Bhagavad, Tykora and Huka, names of characters from The Stranglers of the Ganges, denote a coin, a drum and a pipe Indiana; Sadras, the name of the small Indian Indri that helps to recover the diamond and Toby The Mountain of Light, is a popular beach near Madras in southern India. And the list goes on and on.
The accuracy is also less on Sunset Boulevard, when worries and insecurity make frantic writing. The painful condition is detected by taking into account any of the novels of the trilogy's final round of Sandokan.
repetitions can be traced to the terms already used in previous works and the names of the characters incredibly decrease in number.
The Brahmin of Assam, 1911, Cover Gennaro Amato
While in The Stranglers of the Ganges there are over thirty names of characters in The Brahmin of Assam, which is 1911, there are about a dozen. In those novels
many characters, major or minor, do not even have names.
An example is the "giant rajaputo," so called throughout the book, he is the only man who was loyal to Surama and Yanez, but even this is enough to give him a proper name. Even the "son of Khampur", leader of the mountain faithful to Surama, remains "the son of Khampur.
In Revenge of Indians Yanez terms and names of the protagonists are reduced even further than the two previous titles, but here it is necessary to make a clarification.
The novel (published posthumously in 1913) was revised according to various sources, perhaps up unfinished manuscript, the writer Renzo Turin Chiosso, and contains a large number of inaccuracies and errors, even gross and coarse, and inconsistencies. One for all: Timul, "the hunter tracks", suddenly appears, along with the gigantic and Kammamuri rajaputo, a prisoner of the bandits of Sindhia, the usurper of the throne of Surama. There is no explanation of how this was possible, but only:
"How was there too, we have not said before to not repeat a story too similar to the one told. The reader will have noticed if they themselves and do not be surprised if you find here Timul and others, including the strange priest. "
Instead the reader is surprised, and not just because it is not at all accustomed to Salgari oversights of this kind.
But despite all this, also in the final trilogy India is undisputed leader, with its poison (of which three are ministers of Yanez victims) and, above all, its extraordinary and colorful inhabitants.
The fall of an empire, 1911, Cover Gennaro Amato
and 'law Salgari, her novels are Indians, many of us got acquainted with the Indian society and culture.
Salgari With many Indian words entered our common vocabulary. Maybe some of the terms were already known in Italy but only with Salgari have become familiar to a wide audience.
E'infatti Verona thanks to the writer that a little 'we all know who the thug, we are familiar with the word fakir, the term goddess Kali us to appear before our eyes the image of a deity with multiple arms and' terrifying. We know that the Indian rulers, famous for their riches and their eccentricities are called rajah, the ballerina dances Baiada are disturbing and that the Ramsingh is a "long trumpet consists of four thin metal tubes, the sound is heard by a great distance. ", used by thugs for their posts encrypted.
Reading Salgari has expanded our knowledge and our vocabulary, giving birth to a little 'in all the curiosity to investigate further in a world so far, so different from ours, but able to elicit interest and passion.
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Notes 1 The titles are The Mysteries of the black jungle, the two tigers, the conquest of an empire and the final trilogy, comprising The Brahmin of Assam, The Fall of an Empire and Revenge of Yanez. Donath
2 editions of Genoa. In 1893 (August 21 to December 8 for 108 episodes) The Stranglers Ganges appears on "The Province of Vicenza" already with a few changes since the first version of Livorno.
3 Always in Chapter 8 in the edition of 1903 added to the mysteries of the jungle black
4 Among the titles include Journey to the Land of Baiada (Edizioni Carrara, Milan - 1880), The rider of the jungle (which appeared on the "Illustrated Newspaper travel "between 1896 and 1898) and Journey to the city of the dead and the ruins of Golconda (Edizioni Carrara, Milan - 1879). Remember Three months later the work on the Ganges and the Bramaputra published in 1881 editions for G. Pavia, C. Milan, signed by Madame L. Jacolliot., Wife of French writer. As far as this author, see: F. WELL, Louis Jacolliot, the mysterious master of Salgari Arguments in LG, Genova, 2, 2005.
5 of this author include The Stranglers of Bengal, which appeared in installments in the magazine Weekly Illustrated Journal of travel adventures on land and at sea (Sonzogno, Milan) from number 8 in February 1900.
6 India - 1884 - Edizioni Milano Treves
7 The contemporary India's insurgency-Scene from 1857 to 1858 - Editions Vallardi
Scene 8 insurrection Indiana - 1858 - Edizioni Civelli
9 The English in India 1843 - 1845 - Società Editrice Fiorentina of Florence
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