Colomba Reading Order

What is the vendetta in Colomba?

The vendetta (called 'vendetta' or sometimes 'voceru' in Mérimée's text) is the traditional Corsican system of clan blood feud — the obligation to avenge the death of a family member by killing the killer or a member of his family. In Colomba, the backstory is that Colomba's father Ghilfuccio della Rebbia has been killed by his rival Barricini, and the obligation of vengeance falls on Colomba's brother Orso, who has returned from mainland France as a French army officer and been partially Frenchified — he is skeptical of the vendetta system and reluctant to kill. Colomba's entire purpose in the novella is to reawaken Orso's sense of Corsican honor and drive him to kill the Barricini. Mérimée presents the vendetta not as primitive savagery but as a coherent social institution with precise rules: the obligation is formal, the target must be specified (a Barricini, not just anyone), and the killing, once done, satisfies the social obligation and ends the feud (in principle). The novella's most disturbing argument is that Colomba is not wrong by the standards of her society — she is doing exactly what the vendetta code requires — but that her standards are incompatible with the mainland French legal and moral order that Orso has internalized, and that the collision between the two systems is what makes the story possible.