Italian · Advanced
Read Le vergini delle rocce in Italianwith every sentence explained
English title: The Virgins of the Rocks
Gabriele D'Annunzio · 1895
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About the book
Le vergini delle rocce by Gabriele D'Annunzio was first published in 1895. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 57,500 words.
One proud aristocrat. Three secluded princesses. A plan to give the world a new king.
Disgusted by the vulgar, money-minded Rome of the new Italy, the young nobleman Claudio Cantelmo withdraws to his family's ancient lands in the south. He dreams of reviving the glory of his bloodline by fathering a son of genius, a future king of Rome. All he needs is to choose the woman worthy of bearing him.
In the nearby town of Trigento live the Capece Montaga, one of the grandest families of the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruined since the fall of their Bourbon king. In their decaying palace, beside the aged Prince Luzio, his mad wife and two brooding sons, wait three beautiful sisters: Massimilla, Anatolia and Violante. Which of them will Claudio choose?
Lush, musical and provocative, The Virgins of the Rocks is Gabriele D'Annunzio's manifesto of the superman, its title borrowed from Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting.
- Author
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
- First published
- 1895
- Language
- Italian
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 57,500 words
How it opens
Io vidi con questi occhi mortali in breve tempo schiudersi e splendere e poi sfiorire e l'una dopo l'altra perire tre anime senza pari: le più belle e le più ardenti e le più misere che sieno mai apparse nell'estrema discendenza d'una razza imperiosa.
Su i luoghi dove la loro desolazione, la loro grazia e il loro orgoglio passavano ogni giorno, io colsi pensieri lucidi e terribili che le antichissime rovine delle città illustri non mi avevano mai dato.
Reading Le vergini delle rocce 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.
