GRAZIA DELEDDA

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 18

GRAZIA DELEDDA

WINNER OF THE NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE

Grazia Deledda, the second women to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a modest Sardinian matron of fifty-four, who has immortalised her native island. In the midst of her literary labours, which have been unceasing, she has found time to marry and bring up a family—two children, who are now grown up. In appearance she is small and shy, a woman of considerable reticence. She left Sardinia on her marriage to Signor Nadosani, a poor school teacher, a Neapolitan. For manv years she made her home in a little place on the outskirts of Rome. But with success came money, and her house in the Via Porta Maurizio today is pleasant and spacious (says a writer in “Time and Tide’’).

Born in Nuoro, she went to the elementary school. When she left, at fifteen, she sought a means _of earning money, and began to write. By a curious iron}’ her first articles were for a journal called “Latest Fashion Flints.” Then she wrote for various political and literary periodicals, and presently tried her hand at a romance. “La Tribuna” of Rome accepted the romance. Thus encouraged, she wrote a short novel called “Justice.” lhe publishers took it and asked for more. Grazia Deledda was launched. But she was wise enough to realise that she was writing the pastorales of her folk, the sombre peasants of Sardania. She knew them, their fears, joys, tragedies, superstitions, traditions, ways of life, 'this was her subject. This country was hers. She understood it. Its mountains and valleys were part of her. She went on writing about the island folk as Thomas Hardv went on writing about the Wessex folk. This concentration gives her her strength and depth. Many of her tales, with their simple stories, their theme of primeval forces in conflict with man-made laws, their deliberate movement towards a climax which has an air of inevitability, have the movement of an old Greek drama. And there is something Greek about Signora Deledda too, writing away, calmly, industriously of the same places, the same people, in the same wav, year after rear, for thirty-five years, while around her Pirandello, d’Annunzio, and the rest have let off their fireworks, schools have arisen and died, reputations have come nnd gone.

Steadilv and industriously she works. When her brain begins to function she is detached, remote. Nothing disturbs the powerful rhythm of her mind. She says she began to write for money, and kept on writing because she had to make money; for there were children, and thev were verv poor. But that was the motive power only. Her mind generates stories as a dynamo generates current. Of this book and that book she savs: “Whv did I write it? I had to.” Her labours, which have been unceasing, have left few marks upon her. Her dark hair is threaded with grey, her calm face, with large brortn eyes under strong brows, and large mobile lips, is at once sensitive and heavy. Modest to the point of timidity, she vet has inflexible ideas. There is no hesitation about her mind or her conceptions. She writes on a high plane, and she achieved a mature style very early.

Her work has maintained an unimpaired vitality. But she has never managed to go beyond the enchanted, narrow world of the island folk. Her reputation was firmly established with “Cenere,” published in 1903. This tale was filmed for Eleanora Duse. It was the tragedienne’s only appearance as a screen actress. But she liked the story. It was like her own life, Cenere (Ashes). The film was poor, and a failure. Extensively translated in Europe, Deledda has not had much success in the English-speaking countries. Although she lias published twenty-five works, and a play and a volume of poems, only three books have appeared in English—“ Ashes,” “Reeds of the Wind,” and her masterpiece, “The Mother.” "The Mother” is a tale of mother love and sacrifice. A widow slaves to raise her son to the priesthood, to rescue him from the drudgery of the soil. But the son forgets his’ vows for a woman. The selfsacrificing mother dies before the altar at the moment of the novel’s climax. It was this book, more than any other, which brought Deledda the Nobel prize. For such a woman, Deledda’s opinions strike the Western emancipated mind as singular to a degree. She has stated her belief that the creative function finds its noblest expression in child-bearing, that women have no business in" politics or public life, and that war is not always and inevitably evil since humanitv can be purified through it. But to understand _ this remarkable woman, with her timidity, her deep feelings, her imaginative sweep and psvchological insight, and profound knowledge, it is necessary to separate Deledda the artist and craftswoman from Deledda the social creature. Unlike most of her women contemporaries —Italy has many women writers—she lias' not brought her pen to the enthusiastic support of the regime, or of national propaganda, although some time ago Mussolini bestowed the highest Fascist literary honour on her. But one must not forget that she lives in Rome, and either approves the Fascist regime and doctrines, or at least acquiesces. One must remember that her husband is a Government official in a country where criticism is forbidden, freedom of speech is prohibited, those who disapprove are suspect, none may participate in the regime who publicly differ from the masterful Dnce, and evervone who throws his or her influence into the scale in favour of the regime and its doctrines is held to have performed a notable public service. One refrains from positively asserting that these circumstances explain the singular opinions given for publication, of this calm, tranquil, industrious writer, happy in husband, home and children; but the fact that on the items of babies, war and women two such opposite personalities as Deledda and Mussolini can find absolutely common ground, so that they ' express themselves almost in like phrases, is significant, to say the least.