Di cca c’e ’a morti, di dda c’e ’a sorti

“Di cca c’e ’a morti, di dda c’e ’a sorti” is a Sicilian proverb meaning “On one hand there’s death, on the other destiny.” Placed at the threshold of the September 1868 epilogue, it sets death against the possibility of an unknown future and lends the novel’s closing scene its governing tension: the next step may end a life or open a new fate.

Meaning and Form

The proverb is built on a balanced opposition. One side names death; the other, destiny. It does not explain which path will be taken or promise that destiny will be favorable. Instead, its compact parallel structure makes uncertainty itself the point: the alternatives stand together, and neither is resolved in the saying.

Place in the Epilogue

The proverb appears beneath the date September 1868, immediately before the epilogue’s sensory opening. The air is described through the sweetness of honey, flowers, fruit, ripe olives, and grapes left to macerate in the sun; the scene feels like spring. Against that rich, life-bearing atmosphere, the proverb’s reference to death sharpens the sense of a threshold rather than supplying a simple prediction.

Narrative Significance

As the novel’s closing proverb, the line gathers a recurring tension between mortality and what may still lie ahead into a single image of two possible directions. Its placement makes the epilogue’s seasonal abundance resonate with the uncertainty of the future: renewal is present in the atmosphere, but it does not cancel the prospect of death. The ending leaves the balance open, with neither destiny nor loss declared victorious.