NOBEL PRIZE WINNER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20288, 22 December 1927, Page 15

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER.

ITALIAN WOMEN NOVELIST. GRAZIA DELEDDA. (From Odr Own Correspondent.) LONDON, Nnvernber 16. There _is much gratification in Italy (writes the Rome correspondent of the Observer) that the Nobe] prize for literature has-been given this year to Grazia DeIcdda, who is Italy’s leading woman novelist. A few months ago she would have hat! to run the gauntlet with that veteran authoress_ the late Matilda Serao. though as a stylist and in the matter of form sho ranks higher. Like all the Italian novelists of yesterday and to-day, Dcledda is regional in her art, and loses some of her magic when sho attempts portraiture further afield. But a limited sphere has not made her provincial, partly because her art is on big lines, and partly because her own ‘‘ sphere ” happens to be Sardinia, a veritable little world of its own. Her first book, “ Anime Oncste,” was published in 1893, when she was about one and twenty.

In spite of her literary success, Signora Dclcdda’s chief interest is her home. Her civil name is Madame Nadosani; she was married to the barrister Kadosani in 1900. She holds that women should never be allowed access to politics and other public affairs.

TO-DAY’S TRIVIALITIES.

In an interview she said;—“Authors should devote close study, not to oilier ages or extrinsic forms, but to their own age and to common people’s feelings, sentiments, daily gossips, and all sorts of trivialities. "All these things ultimately unite in creating history, and authors should utilise them. Look at Dante. From innumerable trivialities in Firenze, small enough to be one day’s sensation, but too unimportant to be writte.n in history, was created ihe unsurpassed ‘ Divinia Comedia. ’ The secret about Dante was that he didn’t pose as supercilious towards his own age, but lived as a creature of that age. It anvbody i«. Dante is a true realist. He w peculiar to his locality, peculiar to his ape. peculiar to his race. “ To-day’s trivialities are rust as interesting as they wore when Dante lived, only dep'’ n( ‘ cnt 0,1 sc o ' l '!? eyes and listening on vs. When a new literary gcn;u« comes he will, out, of his own age, create new eternal work in no regard inferior to the ‘Divinia Comedia.’ The worlds new great literary work must not lie stamped by internationalism, but be based on national soil.”

?o many English farmer? are giving up their holdings that a large firm of auctioneers in North Lincolnshire has re-fn-ed to take any more sales for next April as its lifts are full. The onlv private school left in London for teaching navigation now belongs to two master mariners, who first met as prisoners during the war. The school was founded by a woman. Straw plaiting would scorn to he a dying industry, ns Luton has now 30 straw plaiters ns compared with 30,000 half a century ago, ___