Grazia Deledda

1871–1936

Deledda’s work combines the sublime realism of Leo Tolstoy and the moral framework of Greek tragedy. Among her running themes are arranged marriages, forbidden love, public humiliation, intergenerational conflicts, the old world clashing with the new. Her authorial domain is society and family, but she also writes blistering, haunting descriptions of the natural world. To all this one must add a gothic sensibility, given that her work is full of witches, evil spirits, malevolent winds. Deledda learned to write in Italian, as opposed to the Sardinian language that shaped her childhood and early life. She was raised in the mountainous Barbagia region of Sardinia, in the town of Nuoro, which is named for the prehistoric Nuragic structures that dot its spectacular landscape. Entirely self-taught, she never attended school. The title of one of her first published stories, in a Roman fashion magazine in 1888, is ‘Sangue Sardo’ (‘Sardinian Blood’), and her first novel, Stella d’oriente (Oriental Star), was published in instalments under the pseudonym Ilia de Saint Ismail. In 1900, after meeting her husband in the Sardinian capital of Cagliari, she moved with him to Rome, a city that traumatized her at first, and stayed there. And from that distance, from mainland Italy, she wrote most frequently about Sardinia: the overwhelming, archaic beauty of the place, its mysterious energy, its population that kept either to land or to sea, producing one of her most important novels, Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind) in 1913. Deledda writes as Rembrandt painted: majestically, intimately, in sombre hues. She wrote over forty novels, one published nearly every year, alongside copious short stories, all while upholding her responsibilities as a wife and mother. D. H. Lawrence adored Deledda and translated some of her work into English, including the novel La madre (The Mother). The story included here has an almost pagan sensibility, and the fervently desired animal at the centre is totemic. Deledda’s Nobel Prize in Literature confirms that her regional artistic focus was, in fact, of universal resonance.

The Hind

Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell

‘At one time,’ Baldassare Mulas’ servant Malafazza was saying to the cattle dealer who had come to the Mulas’ place to acquire certain bullocks, ‘my master was what you could call a proper gent. He used to live in that tall house with the wrought-iron balcony that’s next to the church of San Baldassare, and his wife and daughter wore cloth skirts and embroidered shawls, like real ladies. The young girl was supposed to marry a nobleman, in fact, a moneybags who was so afraid of God that he hardly ever opened his mouth for fear of committing a sin. But the day before the wedding the master’s wife, who was a beautiful woman and still young at the time, was seen behind the church kissing a lad of no more than twenty, a soldier home on leave. What a scandal that was! We’d never seen the like of it in these parts before. The daughter was dumped after that, and died of a broken heart. From then on, my master started to spend weeks and months and whole seasons with the sheep, not going back to town at all. He hardly ever speaks, but he’s all right – a bit of a simpleton, to tell the truth! The dogs, the cat, other animals are all his friends! He even gets on with wild deer! At the moment he’s befriended a young hind whose fawns were probably stolen from her soon after they were born, and who came all the way here desperately looking for them. My master is so placid that this creature comes right up to him. When she catches sight of me, though, she’s off like the wind. And it’s just as well, since I’d catch her if I could and sell her to some hunter or other. But here comes my master now …’