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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. 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, which connects her work to the tradition of Fyodor Dostoevsky. From 1900 until her death in 1936 Deledda resided in Rome. "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) Grazia Deledda was born in the Sardinian village of Nuoro into a middle-class family. Her her father was a prosperous landowner and 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. Family responsibilities weighted particularly heavily on her, because only a few from her large family escaped the misfortune of illness or being involved in crime. She was an avid reader of Russian novelist, Cadrucci, D'Annunzio, and Giovanni Verga, but her reading was unsystematic. Deledda started early her career as a writer. At the age of 8 she began to write poems, and her first short stories appeared in 1888-89 in magazines published in Rome and Milan. Her first book, SANGUE SARDO (1888), was signicicantly entitled "Sardinian Blood." Her first novel, FIOR DI SAREGNA (1892), was followed by ANIME ONESTE (1895), which secured her fame. These early works reflected the influence of folklore and attracted immediately the attention of a number of critics. 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. 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 novels. She also translated Balzac's Eugénie Grandet into Italian in 1930. Benito Mussolini's fascist reign did not leave much traces on her work. - 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 IL VECCHIO DELLA MONTAGNA (The Old man of the Mountain, 1900) 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. Among Deladda's other major works is 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) was 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. In 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) was a tragedy, which was set in an isolated Sardinian village. Paolo, a priest has fallen in love and his mother suffers more than she can bear. She has worked as a servant and made many sacrifices so that her son would become a priest. Paolo conquers his passion, but she dies at 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, including 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. Deledda's Christian and archaic world view has made her work seem little dated, 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, which is sliding deep in poverty. Efix, the family servant, is the personification of loyalty. She has killed the father the three sisters, and tries to protect them. For further reading: 'Introduction to The Mother' by D.H. Lawrence (1928); La vita e i romanzi Grazia Deledda by Y.E. Di Silvestro (1945); Grazia Deledda by G. Buzzi (1952); The Modern Italian Novel from Capuana to Tozzi by S. Pacifici (1972); Self-Made Woman by C.A. Balducci (1975); Grazia Deledda by M. Aste (1990) - NOTE: Only nine women have received (1901-1997) the Nobel Prize for Literature: Grazia Deledda, Selma Lagerlöf, Sigrid Undset, Pearl S. Buck, Gabriela Mistral, Nelly Sachs, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Wislawa Szymborska Selected works:
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