Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda (; 27 September 1871 – 15 August 1936), also known in
Sardinian language
Sardinian or Sard ( , or ) is a Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
Many Romance linguists consider it the language that is closest to Latin among all its genealogical descendants. How ...
as Gràssia or Gràtzia Deledda (), was an
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
writer who received the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island
.e._Sardinia.html" ;"title="Sardinia.html" ;"title=".e. Sardinia">.e. Sardinia">Sardinia.html" ;"title=".e. Sardinia">.e. Sardiniaand with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general". She was the first Italian woman to receive the prize, and only the second woman in general after Selma Lagerlöf was awarded hers in 1909.
Biography
Deledda was born in
Nuoro, Sardinia, into a middle-class family, to Giovanni Antonio Deledda and Francesca Cambosu, as the fourth of seven siblings. She attended elementary school (the minimum required at the time) and was then educated by a private tutor (a guest of one of her relatives) and moved on to study literature on her own. It was during this time that she started displaying an interest in writing short novels, mostly inspired by the life of Sardinian peasants and their struggles. Her teacher encouraged her to submit her writing to a newspaper and, at age 13, her first story was published in a local journal. Some of Deledda's early works were published in the fashion magazine ''L'ultima moda'' between 1888 and 1889. In 1890 Trevisani published ''Nell'azzurro'' (Into the Blue), her first collection of short stories. Deledda's main focus was the representation of poverty and the struggles associated with it through a combination of imaginary and autobiographical elements. Her family wasn't particularly supportive of her desire to write.
Deledda's first novel, ''Fiori di Sardegna'' (Flowers of Sardinia) was published in 1892. Her 1896 book ''Paesaggi sardi'', published by Speirani, is characterized by a prose both informed by fiction and poetry. Around this time Deledda initiated a regular collaboration with newspapers and magazines, most notably ''La Sardegna'', ''Piccola Rivista'' and ''Nuova Antologia''. Her work earned significant visibility as well as critical interest. In October 1899, Deledda met Palmiro Madesani, a functionary of the Ministry of Finance, in
Cagliari
Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitan ...
. Madesani and Deledda were married in 1900 and the couple moved to Rome right after the publication of Deledda's ''Il vecchio della montagna'' (The Old Man from the Mountain, 1900). Despite the birth of her two sons, Sardus (1901) and Francesco "Franz" (1904),
[Migiel, Marilyn. (1994). "Grazia Deledda." Italian Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. By Rinaldina Russell. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 111-117. Print.] Deledda managed to continue to write prolifically, publishing about a novel a year.
In 1903 she published ''Elias Portolu'', which was met with commercial and critical success, boosting her reputation as a writer. This was followed by ''Cenere'' (Ashes, 1904); ''L'edera'' (The Ivy, 1908); ''Sino al confine'' (To the Border, 1910); ''Colombi e sparvieri'' (Doves and Sparrows, 1912); and her most popular book, ''
Canne al vento'' (Reeds in the Wind, 1913).
In 1916 ''
Cenere
''Cenere'' is a 1916 silent film directed by and starring Febo Mari. It is adapted from the 1904 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda. It is notable as the only film performance by the Italian theater star Eleonora ...
'' was the inspiration for a silent movie with famed Italian actress
Eleonora Duse. It was the first and only time that Duse, a theatre performer, appeared in a film. Deledda was one of the contributors of the nationalist women's magazine, ''
Lidel'', which was established in 1919.
In 1926
Henrik Schück
Henrik Schück (2 November 1855 – 3 October 1947) was a Swedish literary historian, university professor and author.
Biography
Johan Henrik Emil Schück was a professor at the Lund University 1890–1898. He was a professor at Uppsala Univers ...
, a member of the
Swedish Academy, nominated Deledda for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Deledda won "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general." She was awarded the Prize in a ceremony in
Stockholm in 1926. Her initial response to the news was "Già?" ("Already?")
Deledda's win contributed to increase her popularity.
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
, who had just consolidated his grip to power and established
Fascism, sent Deledda a signed portrait of himself, with a dedication where he expressed his "profound admiration" for the writer. Flocks of journalists and photographers started visiting her home in Rome. Deledda initially welcomed them but eventually grew tired of the attention. One day she noticed that her beloved pet crow, Checca, was visibly irritated by the commotion, with people constantly coming in and out of the house. "If Checca has had enough, so have I," Deledda was quoted as saying, and she returned to a more retired routine.
The events also put a strain on Deledda's extremely methodical writings schedule. Her day would start with a late breakfast, followed by a morning of hard reading, lunch, a quick nap and a few hours of writing before dinner.
Deledda continued to write even as she grew older and more fragile. Her subsequent works, ''La Casa del Poeta'' (The House of the Poet, 1930) and ''Sole d'Estate'' (Summer Sun, 1933), indicate a more optimistic view of life even as she was experiencing serious health issues.
Deledda died in Rome at the age of 64 of breast cancer. ''La chiesa della solitudine'' (The Church of Solitude, 1936), Deledda's last novel, is a semi-autobiographical depiction of a young Italian woman coming to terms with a fatal disease. A completed manuscript of the novel ''Cosima'' was discovered after her death and published posthumously in 1937.
Accolades
Deledda's work has been highly regarded by writers of Italian literature, including
Luigi Capuana
Luigi Capuana (May 28, 1839 – November 29, 1915) was an Italian author and journalist and one of the most important members of the ''verist'' movement (see also ''verismo'' (literature)). He was a contemporary of Giovanni Verga, both having ...
,
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Carmelo Verga di Fontanabianca (; 2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist ('' verista'') writer, best known for his depictions of life in his native Sicily, especially the short story and later play ''Cavalleria ...
,
Enrico Thovez
Enrico Thovez (10 November 1869 – 16 February 1925) was an Italian artist-polymath best known for his contributions as a poet and literary critic.
Biography
Enrico Thovez was born in Turin less than ten years after unification. He was his ...
, , . Sardinian writers including
Sergio Atzeni
Sergio Atzeni (14 October 1952 in Capoterra – 6 September 1995 in Carloforte) was an Italian writer.
Life and career
Born in Capoterra, southern Sardinia, Atzeni lived in Orgosolo during his childhood until he moved to Cagliari where, as a ...
,
Giulio Angioni and
Salvatore Mannuzzu
Salvatore Mannuzzu (7 March 1930 – 10 September 2019) was an Italian writer, politician, and magistrate.
Life
Mannuzzu was born in Pitigliano. He was a magistrate until 1976 and a member of the Italian Parliament until 1987. He is considere ...
, were greatly influenced by her work, prompting them to found what has later become known as the
Sardinian Literary Spring Sardinian Literary Spring is a definition of the whole body of the literature produced in Sardinia from around the 1980s onwards.
History
About the denomination
Sardinian Literary Spring, also known as Sardinian Literary Nouvelle Vague, is a ...
. In 1947 artist Amelia Camboni was commissioned a portrait of Deledda, currently standing close to her home in Rome in the
Pincio
The Pincian Hill (; it, Pincio ; la, Mons Pincius) is a hill in the northeast quadrant of the historical centre of Rome. The hill lies to the north of the Quirinal, overlooking the Campus Martius. It was outside the original boundaries of the ...
neighbourhood.
Deledda's birthplace and childhood home in
Nuoro was declared a national heritage building and purchased in 1968 by the Municipality of Nuoro, which in 1979 handed it over to the Regional Ethnographic Institute (ISRE) for the symbolic price of 1,000 Italian Lire. The Institute transformed the house into a museum commemorating the writer, and it's now called the Museo Deleddiano. The museum consists of ten rooms showcasing the most important episodes in Deledda's life.
A
coal power plant
A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...
opened in
Portoscuso in 1965. , this powerplant called Grazia Deledda has a capacity of 590 MW.
;Tribute
On 10 December 2017
Google celebrated her with a
Google Doodle.
Work
The life, customs, and traditions of the
Sardinian people are prominent in Deledda's writing.
She often relies on detailed geographical descriptions and her characters often present a strong connection with their place of origins. Many of her characters are outcasts who silently struggle with
isolation.
Overall Deledda's work focuses on love,
pain and death, upon which rests feelings of
sin
In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, s ...
and
fatality. Her novels tend to criticize social values and moral norms rather than the people who are victims of such circumstances.
In her works it can be recognized the influence of the
verism
Verism was a realistic style in Roman art. It principally occurred in portraiture of politicians, whose imperfections of the face were exacerbated in order to highlight their old age and '' gravitas''. The word comes from Latin ''verus'' (true). ...
of
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Carmelo Verga di Fontanabianca (; 2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist ('' verista'') writer, best known for his depictions of life in his native Sicily, especially the short story and later play ''Cavalleria ...
and, sometimes, also that of the
decadentism
The Decadent movement (Fr. ''décadence'', “decay”) was a late-19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.
The Decadent movement first flourished ...
of
Gabriele D'Annunzio, although her writing style is not so ornate. Despite her groundbreaking role in Italian and World literature, Deledda has failed to be acknowledged as a
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
writer, possibly due to her tendency of depicting women's pain and suffering as opposed to women's autonomy.
Complete list of works
Below is a complete list of Deledda's works:
* ''
Stella d'Oriente'' (1890)
* ''
Nell'azzuro'' (1890)
* ''
Fior di Sardegna'' (1891)
* ''
Racconti sardi'' (1894)
* ''
Tradizioni popolari di Nuoro in Sardegna'' (1894)
* ''
La via del male'' (1896)
* ''
Anime oneste'' (1895)
* ''
Paesaggi sardi'' (1897)
* ''
La tentazioni'' (1899)
* ''
Il tesoro'' (1897)
* ''
L'ospite'' (1897)
* ''
La giustizia'' (1899)
* ''
Nostra Signora del buon consiglio: leggenda sarda'' (1899)
* ''
Le disgrazie che può causare il denaro'' (1899)
* ''
Il Vecchio della montagna'' (1900)
* ''Dopo il divorzio'' (1902; English translation: ''
After the Divorce'', 1905)
* ''
La regina delle tenebre'' (1902)
* ''
Elias Portolu'' (1900)
* ''
Cenere
''Cenere'' is a 1916 silent film directed by and starring Febo Mari. It is adapted from the 1904 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda. It is notable as the only film performance by the Italian theater star Eleonora ...
'' (1904; English translation: ''Ashes'', 1908)
* ''
Odio Vince'' (1904)
* ''
Nostalgie
Nostalgie is a popular French radio station broadcasting on FM, mostly playing pre-2000s songs with 76% of them coming from the 1980s. Nostalgie is part of the NRJ Group.
History
Radio Nostalgie, now simply Nostalgie, was created on 16 Septem ...
'' (1905)
* ''
L'ombra del passato'' (1907)
* ''
Amori moderni'' (1907)
* ''
L'edera'' (1908), English translation a
''Ivy''by Mary Ann Frese Witt and Martha Witt (2019)
* ''
Il nonno'' (1908), English translation of the short story "Il ciclamino" as "The Cyclamen" by Maria Di Salvatore and Pan Skordos, in "Journal of Italian Translation", Volume XIV, Number 1, Spring 2019
* ''
Il nostro padrone'' (1910)
* ''
Sino al confine'' (1910)
* ''
I giuochi della vita'' (1911)
* ''
Nel deserto'' (1911)
* ''
L'edera: dramma in tre atti'' (1912)
* ''
Colombi e sparvieri'' (1912)
* ''
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...
'' (1912)
* ''
Canne al vento'' (1913), ''
Reeds in the Wind'' (199
English translationby Martha King)
* ''
Le colpe altrui'' (1914)
* ''
Marianna Sirca'' (1915)
* ''
Il fanciullo nascosto'' (1915)
* ''
L'incendio nell'oliveto'' (1918)
* ''
Il ritorno del figlio'' (1919)
* ''
Naufraghi in porto'' (1920)
* ''La madre'' (1920; English translation: ''
The Woman and the Priest'', 1922; English translation:
The Mother', by Mary G. Steegman, 1923)
* ''
Il segreto dell'uomo solitario'' (1921)
* ''
Cattive compagnie: novelle'' (1921)
* ''
La grazia'' (1921)
* ''
Il Dio dei viventi'' (1922)
* ''
Silvio Pellico
Silvio Pellico (; 24 June 1789 – 31 January 1854) was an Italian writer, poet, dramatist and patriot active in the Italian unification.
Biography
Silvio Pellico was born in Saluzzo (Piedmont). He spent the earlier portion of his life at Pin ...
'' (1923)
* ''
Il flauto nel bosco'' (1923)
* ''
La danza della collana; A sinistra'' (1924)
* ''
La fuga in Egitto'' (1925)
* ''
Il sigillo d'amore'' (1926)
* ''
Annalena Bilsini'' (1927)
* ''
Il vecchio e i fanciulli'' (1928)
* ''
Il dono di natale'' (1930)
* ''
La casa del poeta'' (1930)
* ''
Eugenia Grandet, Onorato di Balzac'' (1930)
* ''
Il libro della terza classe elementare: letture, religione, storia, geografia, aritmetica'' (1931)
* ''
Giaffa: racconti per ragazzi'' (1931)
* ''
Il paese del vento'' (1931)
* ''
Sole d'estate'' (1933)
* ''
L'argine'' (1934)
* ''
La chiesa della solitudine'' (1936); English translation by E. Ann Matter, ''The Church of Solitude'' (University of New York Press, 2002)
* ''
Cosima'' (1937) published posthumously
English translationby Martha King (1988)
* ''
Il cedro del Libano'' (1939) published posthumously
* ''
Grazia Deledda: premio Nobel per la letteratura 1926'' (1966)
* ''
Opere scelte'' (1968)
* ''
Letter inedite di Grazia Deledda ad Arturo Giordano direttore della rivista letteraria'' (Alchero: Nemaprress, 2004)
See also
*
List of female Nobel laureates
The Nobel Prizes are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind."
As of 2022, 61 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 6 ...
References
Bibliography
*Attilio Momigliano, "Intorno a Grazia Deledda", in ''Ultimi studi'', La Nuova Italia,
Florence, 1954.
*
Emilio Cecchi
Emilio Cecchi (14 July 1884 – 5 September 1966) was an Italian literary critic, art critic and screenwriter. One English language source describes him as "an 'official' - although radically anti-academic - intellectual".
He was made artistic ...
, "Grazia Deledda", in ''Storia della Letteratura Italiana: Il Novecento'', Garzanti,
Milan, 1967.
*Antonio Piromalli, "Grazia Deledda", La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1968.
*Natalino Sapegno, "Prefazione", in ''Romanzi e novelle'',
Mondadori, Milan, 1972.
*
Giulio Angioni, "Grazia Deledda: l'antropologia positivistica e la diversità della Sardegna", in ''Grazia Deledda nella cultura contemporanea'', Satta, Nuoro, 1992
*Giulio Angioni, "Introduzione", in ''Tradizioni popolari di Nuoro'', Ilisso, Biblioteca Sarda, Nuoro, 2010.
*
*
*
Voice recording
The voice of Grazia Deledda speaking (in Italian) at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in 1926.
External links
*
*
*
*
*
Werkverzeichnis*
ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dzhmp BBC Radio 4's 10-part dramatisation of ''Reeds in the Wind'' 2012Il bilinguismo di Grazia Deledda - Il Manifesto Sardo (article written in Italian)a
The Italian Women Writers project*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deledda, Grazia
1871 births
1936 deaths
People from Nuoro
19th-century Italian novelists
20th-century Italian novelists
Italian women poets
Italian dramatists and playwrights
Italian women dramatists and playwrights
Italian women novelists
Sardinian literature
Nobel laureates in Literature
Italian Nobel laureates
Women Nobel laureates
20th-century Italian women writers
19th-century Italian women writers
Sardinian women