The Peasants' Bible and the Story of the Tiger

by Dario Fo, Ron Jenkins (Translator)

The Italian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature delivers two sparkling, imaginative works never previously published. “The Peasants’ Bible” is a collection of five stories drawn from Italian folklore but filtered through Fo’s delightfully singular lens—for example, an Adam and Eve who are passionately entwined like peas in a pod; a race between two classes of men struggling for power that resembles the legend of the Hare and the Tortoise—to form a Bible of the common man. “The Story of the Tiger” is the story of a Fourth Army soldier injured fighting Chiang Kai-shek’s army, saved from starvation by being suckled by an enormous tiger, who then comes back to defeat Kai-shek by using model tigers in combat.

Genres: Drama, Fiction, Italy

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Dario Fo was an Italian satirist, playwright, theatre director, actor, and composer. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997. In 2007 he was ranked Joint Seventh with Stephen Hawking in The Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses. His dramatic work employed comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the proletarian classes. He owned and operated a theatre company with his wife, the leading actress Franca Rame. Dario Fo died in Milan on October 13th 2016, at the age of 90.

Reviews

[Elfdart · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was an entertaining read. the book is essentially a collection of short stories, parodies of bible stories. the first story i enjoyed the most. it was a retelling of adam and eve, told from eve's perspective. the tone she sets is comical in a common sense kind of way.
there is a part, when she has her period, when she turns to a goddess and she says that the goddess has to hide in a cave so that god doesn't see her and other deities like her. i found this to very symbolic of how though christianity become the dominant religion, other, older forms of worship didn't completely disappear, the just went underground, so to speak, but still had an effect on the people.
one of my many impulse purchases, but it was a great read.

[Zach Tarr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Biblical stories, but for commoners. There are only 5 short stories in this book, each told in the style of a storyteller's monologue, which is kind of Dario Fo's specialty. Some of his biggest plays would just be one-person monologues. This book is much smaller than its pages, and it's easy to read, in fact, you would likely breeze through it, since it's heavy on the smut and humor. The first half is told in English, with the second being the stories retold in Italian (just for the curious). The first story is the only one that isn't exactly aligned with the overall themes of the other 4. But everything needs a beginning and you can't really begin the bible and the preceding divisions of thoughts of human beings that live on Earth without Adam and Eve. Except, they're retold in Two Lovers Entwined Like Peas in a Pod, where Adam and Eve are the offspring of two peas locked in a pod by the devil, redefining paradise as the place you cuddle up and have sex all day, such an evil thing to do to God's creations. I can't give you the full story, but thousands of years later there's just Eve, and Adam is given to her with the flash of lightning bolt. Anyway, long story short, eventually Adam learns from an eagle that the devil is love, which he feels around Eve through her scent and laughter. Which causes the demons to possess his body with uncontrollable stiffness, but only in certain areas. Luckily, he remembers that God always said that the devil must be cast down into the pit of hell, he just never told Adam where the pit of hell is, but Eve might have an idea where it could be. Hallelujah, amen, roll your eyes back, and let it begin.

Everything else and the overarching themes take shape through the remaining stories of The Shepherd's Cantata, where the Madonna is mistaken for a smuggler. The Presumptuous Pig, a good story about two pigs (a boy and a girl) who want to fly, and are somehow granted the ability to fly by God. But they can only fly by locking their sexes together (weird detail, but it sounds fun), so they fly up to heaven and stink it up. Getting kicked out in the process and sent back down to Earth as a consequence. Hats and Caps is a retelling of the Tortoise and the Hare but for proletariats and the bourgeois. This has one of the most direct messages about bourgeois double crossings. The Dung Beetle was my favorite because nobody fucks with the dung beetle. Then the last story is The Story of the Tiger, where a man befriends a tiger and brings her and her cub back home to his village, to help defend it from bandits. Even though the bunch of know-it-all politicians want to take away the Second Amendment rights of the villagers, by taking their tigers away.

If you haven't noticed, these are all class-based retellings. Where treatment and exclusion are dependent on who you are in the social order of things. Pigs kicked out of heaven, like, it ain't their fault they were made stinky, that's on God. Hats and Caps is a cautionary tale to not trust boujie power lovers, who lie through their teeth to maintain power. The dung beetle is a cautionary tale to the one percenters, to not insult the proletariats with shitty jobs, who they may think are beneath them, and powerless. But the most famous story is probably The Story of the Tiger, an "arm yourself to protect yourself", sort of tale. I've been telling my kid a PG version of the dung beetle and the story of the tiger before bedtime. I hope it doesn't backfire when she's older. I wouldn't want her to always be trying to pick fights with her bosses at work.

Anyway, wishing you all some sensational exorcisms

[Gustavo Krieger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Um libro bom de Dario Fo, embora não excepcional. Contêm 6 monólogos curtos, sendo o melhor o "The Story of the Tiger". Este conta a história de um soldado do exército chinês que se vê ferido mortalmente e é socorrido por uma tigresa e seu filhote - em troca da proteção e do leite com o qual ela o amamenta ele deve cozinhar para as feras. As outras cinco histórias compõe o que é chamado da "Bíblia do camponês" - Fo buscou nas histórias tradicionais do povo aquelas que, assim como as do famoso livro, tentam, com a sabedoria de um (óbvio) camponês, explicar o mundo. Nelas animais ou seres humanos vivem alguma aventura onde deus ou Maria ou Jesus contracena com eles e no qual aprendem alguma moral ou sofrem algum evento que os altera permanentemente - como o porco que possuía asas e, ao perdê-las e cair, ficou com o focinho achatado. Cobra perdendo as patas, alguém?

Um ponto curioso do livro é que 5 das 6 histórias também estão com sua versão em italiano, e 3 das 6 estão em dialeto. Parece-me um modo de apenas engrossar o livro, que seria muito curto sem isso (77 páginas). As histórias em dialeto valem apenas por curiosidade, e ao meu ver a tradução é excelente (Ron Jenkins, o melhor tradutor de Fo) e não há nada na versão original que realmente seja muito diferente para compensar. O estranho é que a única história em que Fo comenta que deve ser falada em dialeto só possui a versão em inglês. Na verdade, creio ser uma estratégia barata de compensar as 56 páginas com desenhos que a versão norte-americana deixou de lado...

As peças de Dario Fo são únicas e muito difíceis de serem representadas, e confesso que antes de ter assistido a uma delas sendo atuada por Mario Pirovano, o maior ator das peças Fo (palavra do próprio autor!), elas não eram tão engraçadas e interessantes quanto são agora. Creio ser essencial para que o leitor compreenda o que está se passando usar o útil youtube para conhecer um pouco do método empregado.

[Antonietta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dario Fo è un grande maestro e attore teatrale. Ho visto un paio di suoi spettacoli in tv e ho avuto modo di apprezzarlo. Tuttavia la trasposizione dei suoi lavori in questo libro fa perdere molto di quel pathos che invece coinvolge pienamente lo spettatore a teatro. La lettura di questo dialetto inventato è pesante, soprattutto nelle parti dove si conosce meglio la parlata, perché si fa molta fatica ad individuare l'inflessione giusta e i vocaboli risultano sempre in qualche modo incongruenti con il dialetto che si cerca di interpretare. Dal vivo probabilmente è un'altra cosa, ma qui, senza Dario Fo ad affascinarci con la sua parlantina, è una gran frustrazione, né aiuta la traduzione in italiano a fronte, perché sminuisce e banalizza ancora di più i contenuti. Boh, probabilmente avrei fatto meglio a spendere i miei soldi in un dvd con la registrazione di uno spettacolo dell'autore.

[Lise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great works by Fo