Italian · Advanced
Read Forse che sì forse che no in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: Maybe Yes, Maybe No
Gabriele D'Annunzio · 1910
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About the book
Forse che sì forse che no by Gabriele D'Annunzio was first published in 1910. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under romance. It runs to about 103,100 words.
A red racing car. A daredevil aviator. A woman who answers every question with "maybe".
Paolo Tarsis belongs to the reckless new breed of men teaching humanity to fly. Hurtling along an old Roman road across the plain at the wheel of his red car, he begs Isabella Inghirami to say she loves him. Smiling behind her fluttering veil, she will only answer "maybe".
Isabella never travels alone: with her come her brother Aldo, little Lunella and her sharp, jealous sister Vana, who watches everything. In the Ducal Palace of Mantua they stand beneath a gilded labyrinth ceiling carved with an old Gonzaga motto, Forse che sì forse che no, and Paolo begins to lose himself in a maze of passion, rivalry and danger, while the airfield calls him back to the sky.
Gabriele D'Annunzio's novel was one of the first in literature to celebrate the thrill of flight, and its playful title has become a proverbial Italian phrase.
- Author
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
- First published
- 1910
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Romance
- Length
- About 103,100 words
How it opens
— Forse — rispondeva la donna, quasi protendendo il sorriso contro il vento eroico della rapidità, nel battito del suo gran velo ora grigio ora argentino come i salici della pianura fuggente.
— Non forse. Bisogna che sia, bisogna che sia! È orribile quel che fate, Isabella: non ha alcuna scusa, alcuna discolpa. È una crudeltà quasi brutale, un'offesa atroce al corpo e all'anima, un disconoscimento inumano dell'amore e d'ogni bellezza e d'ogni gentilezza dell'amore, Isabella. Che volete voi fare di me? Volete rendermi ancor più disperato e più folle?
Reading Forse che sì forse che no in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Italian book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
