Saturday, October 24, 2009
i12bent: Among the nearly forgotten Nobel Laureates we find Grazia Deledda (Sep. 27, 1871 - 1936), the 1926 winner (“for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general”), who was only the second woman to receive the Literature Prize. Deledda submitted this autobiography to Stockholm after winning the Prize: “I was born in the little town of Nuoro in Sardinia in 1871. My father was a fairly well-to-do landowner who farmed his own land. He was also a hospitable man and had friends in all of the towns surrounding Nuoro. When these friends and their families had to come to Nuoro on business or for religious holidays, they usually stayed at our house. Thus I began to know the various characters of my novels. I went only to elementary school in Nuoro. After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about, and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper. I was thirteen and I didn’t know to whom I should go to have my stories published. But I came across a fashion magazine. I took the address and sent off a short story. It was immediately published. Then I wrote my first novel, Fior di Sardegna (1892) [Flower of Sardinia], which I sent to an editor in Rome. He published it, and it was quite successful. But my first real success was Elias Portolú (1903), which was first translated by the Revue des deux mondes, and then into all of the European languages.” (Source - more)

i12bent:

Among the nearly forgotten Nobel Laureates we find Grazia Deledda (Sep. 27, 1871 - 1936), the 1926 winner (“for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general”), who was only the second woman to receive the Literature Prize.

Deledda submitted this autobiography to Stockholm after winning the Prize:

“I was born in the little town of Nuoro in Sardinia in 1871. My father was a fairly well-to-do landowner who farmed his own land. He was also a hospitable man and had friends in all of the towns surrounding Nuoro. When these friends and their families had to come to Nuoro on business or for religious holidays, they usually stayed at our house. Thus I began to know the various characters of my novels. I went only to elementary school in Nuoro. After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about, and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper. I was thirteen and I didn’t know to whom I should go to have my stories published. But I came across a fashion magazine. I took the address and sent off a short story. It was immediately published. Then I wrote my first novel, Fior di Sardegna (1892) [Flower of Sardinia], which I sent to an editor in Rome. He published it, and it was quite successful. But my first real success was Elias Portolú (1903), which was first translated by the Revue des deux mondes, and then into all of the European languages.” (Source - more)

Posted at 1:40 PM 5 notes Reblogged from i12bent Tags: sardinia sardegna letteratura

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