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Grazia Deledda (1871-1936)
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Italian novelist and short story writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926.
Grazia Deledda spent her childhood in a small isolated village, where the people spoke Logudorese, a dialect closely related to Latin. Her stories are usually set in Sardinia and depict the life and customs of simple folk – small landowners, servants, farmers, and shepherds. Often they must find their own solutions to complex moral problems. From 1900 until her death in 1936 Deledda resided in Rome.
"The moon rose before him, and evening voices told him the day had ended: a cuckoo's rhytmical cry, the early crikets' chirping, a bird calling; the reeds sighing and the ever more distant voice of the river; but most of all a breathing, a mysterious panting that seemed to come from the earth itself. Yes, man's working day was done, but the fantastic life of elves, fairies, wandering spirits was beginning." (from CANNE AL VENTO, 1913)
Grazia Deledda was born in the Sardinian village of Nuoro into a middle-class family. Her her father was a prosperous landowner, who served as a mayor of Nuoro for some time. Until the age of ten, Deledda attended the local elementary school. It was her only formal education, before she was privately tutored in French and Italian. Deledda's father died in 1892, her older sister died in 1896 following an abortion.
Deledda was an avid reader of Russian novelists, Cadrucci, D'Annunzio, and Giovanni Verga, but her reading was unsystematic. At the age of 8 she began to compose poems. She also absorbed stories from servants, farmhands, and shepherds. When Deledda was fifteen, her stories, 'Sangue Sardo' (signicicantly entitled 'Sardinian Blood') and 'Remigia Helder', appeared in the fashion magazine . The subject of 'Sangue Sardo', a love triangle, was considered by many to be inappropriate in her home village. However, Deledda continued to contribute in 1888-89 to magazines published in Rome and Milan. At the same time she took care of the household responsibilities. Her older brother had become the head of the family, but he had started to drink and dissipated the inheritance. "An ugly, horrendous vice, getting drunk!" Deledda wrote. "At first, I remember, Andrea didn't have this vice, but for a year now he has raised his elbow at least every fifteen days."
Deledda made her debut as a novelist in 1891 with FIOR DI SARDEGNA, but it was ANIME ONESTE (1895), a family romance for young women, which secured her fame. Deledda's early works reflected the influence of folklore. In TRADIZIONI POPOLARI DI NUORO IN SARDEGNA (1895) she examined the customs of the village, where she was born. Deledda's interest in the lives of ordinary men and women and rural customs connected her to Giovanni Verga (1840-1922), who depicted provincial Sicilian people, and whose style infuenced deeply a number of prose writers. Deledda's work has been seen to fall between verismo, a 19th-century Italian literary movement related to naturalism, and decadentismo, which emphasized instincts and irrational forces; love, sin, guilt, and death are the central elements of Deledda's stories.
Deledda left Nuoro in 1899 and moved to Cagliari and then to Rome. In 1900 she married Palmiro Madesani; they had two sons. Madesani was a civil servant from the region of Mantua, whom she had met in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. She moved with her husband to Rome, but Sardinia remained always for her the most important source for inspiration. She kept contact to her native region and made there frequent visits. For the remainder of her life, Deledda wrote novels at the rate about one a year, producing some 40 works. She also translated Balzac's Eugénie Grandet into Italian in 1930. Benito Mussolini claimed being a great admirer of Deledda's work, but fascist reign did not leave much traces on her writing – in Rome she lived a rather restricted life. Her only travel abroad she made in 1927, to Stockholm, when she attended the Nobel Prize ceremonies. Deledda died in Rome on August 15, 1936
"In Grazia Deledda's novels more than in most other novels, man and nature form a single unity. One might almost say that the men are plants which germinate in the Sardinian soil itself. The majority of them are simple peasants with primitive sensibilities and modes of thought, but with something in them of the grandeur of the Sardinian natural setting. Some of them almost attain the stature of the monumental figures of the Old Testament." (from the Nobel presentation by Henrik Schück)
IL VECCHIO DELLA MONTAGNA (1900, The Old man of the Mountain) was the first of the author's many books dealing with simple characters and illustrated the destructive and tragic effects of overpowering sexual attractions. DOPO IL DIVERZIO (1902, After the Divorce) was a moral story a man, Constantino, who is condemned to a long prison term for a murder, and his wife, Giovanna, who finally decides to divorce him. However, Constantino is freed after a deathbed confession by the actual murderer.
Deladda's other major works include ELIAS PORTOLU (1903), which depicted a shepherd, who prepares to enter the priesthood because he falls in love with his brother's fiancée. His brother dies and he must resolve the conflict between his love and demands of society. CENERE (1904) told about a story of a young girl who sacrifices herself for her illegitimate child, killing herself in order not to harm his son's prospects in life. The tale was filmed in 1916 starring Eleonora Duse. In this as in other stories Deledda's protagonist is a woman and a victim, who must eventually sacrifice herself. LA MADRE (1920), a tragedy set in an isolated Sardinian village, tells of a poor woman, who has made many sacrifices so that her son, Paolo, would become a priest. Paolo is torn between love and clerical celibacy. At the end she dies in a church during the service while her son looks on from the altar.
Deledda's later novels have a wider setting than the harshly beautiful Sardinia but continue to deal with moral and ethical themes, among them LA CHIESA DELLA SOLITUDINE (1936), which dealt with the subject of breast cancer. Her autobiographical novel COSIMA was published posthumously in 1937. The novel was also Deledda's fictionalized autobiography – Cosima was her second name – in which she chronicled the difficulties faced by a woman who wants to be a writer. Nowadays Deledda's Christian and archaic world view has made her work somewhat outmodish, although her unpretentious manner of writing creates still powerful impact. Aparently her own favorite piece of work was CANNE AL VENTO (1913), which told the story of a aristocratic Pintor family, sliding deep in poverty. Efix, the family servant, is the personification of loyalty, but she hides a secret: she has killed the father the three sisters, and tries to protect them.
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