Italian · Intermediate
Read Fosca in Italianwith every sentence explained
Iginio Ugo Tarchetti · 1869
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About the book
Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti was first published in 1869. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under horror and romance. It runs to about 57,100 words.
She is ill, she is plain, and she loves him with a terrifying passion.
Giorgio, a young army officer just recovered from a grave illness, is torn from Clara, the woman he loves, and posted to a dull garrison town. At the colonel's table one place always stays empty: it belongs to the colonel's cousin, a sick young woman who never leaves her rooms and devours novels one after another.
Her name is Fosca. When Giorgio finally meets her, he is shaken: she is frail, strikingly ugly, intelligent and desperately alone. And she fixes all her hope of love on him. Repelled and fascinated at once, Giorgio finds himself drawn into a bond he cannot escape, where pity, guilt and desire become hard to tell apart.
Iginio Ugo Tarchetti's dark masterpiece of 1869 is a jewel of Italian gothic fiction. It inspired Ettore Scola's film Passione d'amore and Stephen Sondheim's musical Passion.
- Author
- Iginio Ugo Tarchetti
- First published
- 1869
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Horror, Romance
- Length
- About 57,100 words
How it opens
Mi sono accinto più volte a scrivere queste mie Memorie, e uno strano sentimento misto di terrore e di angoscia mi ha distolto sempre dal farlo. Una profonda sfiducia si è impadronita di me. Temo immiserire il valore e l’aspetto delle mie passioni, tentando di manifestarle; temo obbliarle tacendole. Perchè ella è cosa quasi agevole il dire ciò che hanno sentito gli altri — l’eco delle altrui sensazioni si ripercuote nel nostro cuore senza turbarlo — ma dire ciò che abbiamo sentito noi, i nostri affetti, le nostre febbri, i nostri dolori, è cómpito troppo superiore alla potenza della parola. Noi sentiamo di non poter essere nel vero.
Reading Fosca 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 intermediate: comfortable once everyday Italian feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
