Second paragraph of third chapter:
| Donna Ester fece fare il pane apposta, un pane bianco e sottile come ostia, quale si fa solo per le feste, e di nascosto dalle sorelle comprò anche un cestino di biscotti. Dopo tutto era un ospite, che arrivava, e l’ospitalità è sacra. Donna Ruth a sua volta sognava ogni notte l’arrivo del nipote, e ogni giorno verso le tre, ora dell’arrivo della diligenza, spiava dal portone. Ma l’ora passava e tutto restava immoto intorno. | Ester made bread just for the occasion, white and thin as a holy wafer, the kind usually made only for festivities. She also secretly bought a basket of cookies. After all, a guest was coming and hospitality is sacred. Every night Ruth dreamed about their nephew’s arrival, and every day around three, the hour the coach came, she would spy from the doorway. But the hour went by and everything was quiet. |
Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926, the second woman to get it after Selma Lagerlöf, and the second Italian after Giosuè Carducci (who I must admit I have not otherwise heard of). The citation was “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 had been nominated almost every year since 1914 by the former Swedish ambassador to Italy, Carl Bildt, whose great-great-great-nephew of the same name served as prime minister and then foreign minister of Sweden.
Reeds in the Wind / Canne al vento, is her best known book, and it’s noticeable that her Nobel nominations started as soon as it was published in 1912. I have to say it’s not very cheerful. It’s about a declining noble family in Sardinia, and the tension between the two surviving sisters, the son of the sister who fled to the mainland years before, and the old retainer who is the guardian of the dark family secret that is eventually revealed.
It reminded me of The Leopard, but the Deledda’s Pintor family are more decayed and less up themselves than di Lampedusa’s Salina family. There are some nice landscape moments, but otherwise I was not overwhelmed by it. You can get Reeds in the Wind here.
I know it’s a small sample, but two out of two European winners of early Nobel Prizes for Literature that I have sampled so far have gone in for rural drama. Next up in this project is Kristin Lavransdottir, by Sigrid Undset, which I fear is going to be more of the same.
