FAMOUS WOMAN WRITER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22615, 31 December 1936, Page 3

FAMOUS WOMAN WRITER

A LOSS TO LITERATURE ITALIAN NOVELIST'S DEATH The death of Grazia Deledda, which occurred recently, removed one of the foremost women writers in modern European literature, stated an overseas writer. Her fame as an author reached far beyond the boundaries of her native Italy, and her work was crowned in 1926 with tho Nobel Prize for literature. Grazia Deledda was born in 1875 in Sardinia and made her appearance in literature toward the end of last century. It was no easy matter to gain prominence in Italian literature at a time when Sarducci and Fogazzaro, two of the greatest literary figures, were still alive, and a third one, her contemporary, G. D'Annunzio, was making his mark as the foremost writer of the younger generation. Deledda, however* won fame by her simple stories written in a realistic manner on the background of her native Sardinia.

Sardinia is tho least civilised part of Italy. 11l its northern mountainous part, where life is preserved in its primitiveness, lives a race of sturdy and rugged people not contaminated with the artifice of modern civilisation. From this populace of hard-working men and women—toilers of the soil, fishermen and sea adventurers—are recruited Deledda's characters. She describes her types in the following words: —'"People were coming and going; now men were arriving, too; they were tall, with long, square beards, as in Moses' time, dressed in leather jackets and short serge trousers full like skirts. Some seemed liko prophets, they were so solemn, calm and unaffected. The women, too. recalled those in the Bible." Deledda's earlier novels, like "Ashes," "After the Divorce" and "Nostalgia," were rendered into English at the beginning of this century. These novels are written in a simple language, depicting in a true to Nature manner the day to day existence of the humble folk of Sardinia and Italy. It is, however, in the short stories that Deledda achieved her supreme artistry, which gained for her writing world fame.