DELEDDA, GRAZIA. – Writer, b. in Nuoro on 27 September 1871, d. in Rome on 15 August 1936. An island soul, even during her more than thirty-year residence in Rome she surrounded herself with solitude, interrupted only when she served as a nurse to Sardinian soldiers during the First World War, and in 1927 for a journey to Sweden after being awarded the Nobel Prize. She endured with virile resignation the sufferings that led her to an edifying end and wished to be buried in the common grave. She wrote short stories, four compositions for the theatre, and numerous novels (Elias Portolu, 1903; Canne al vento, 1913; Marianna Sirca, 1915; Il Dio dei viventi, 1922; Annalena Bilsini, 1927; etc.). Of the novel Cenere (1904), Eleonora Duse gave a cinematic interpretation in 1913.
D.’s literary activity extends from the age of sixteen (Amore regale, short stories, 1891) until her death (Cosima, a recollection of her sad and dreamy adolescence, left unfinished and published posthumously in 1937), and, without concessions to the various literary fashions, is nourished by the writer’s inner life. After a «Sardinian» phase, in which the island finds exemplary configuration in an opulent narrative of oriental flavor, a deliberate representational attenuation takes shape (La madre, 1920; Il segreto dell’uomo solitario, 1921), together with an expansion of spiritual interests. Her creatures, of every age and condition, pass by, shaken by passion as by a storm, attuning their spiritual ruin to the harsh and hallucinating landscape: an unleashing of primal forces, over which the voice of conscience and of God sometimes ultimately prevails; an epic in which, therefore, a fundamentally religious, though non-confessional, inspiration has been discerned, and which pursues one of religion’s highest expressions: pity (Cosimo, chap. 7).
Yet D.’s work retains a mixture of religiosity and superstition, a profound spirit of incomprehension toward Christianity and its rites, the reprehensible choice of certain themes and characters, and the impassionedly vivid crudeness of quite a few representations. From a fatalistic vision of nature and of the «terrible book of life», watched over by an inflexible punishing God, D. then finds peace in the more trusting conception of a nature friendly to man, of a life in which it is possible that «everything should be balanced, love with glory, just as suffering with joy» (letter of 1 January 1891 to Stanis Manca), of a God more in conformity with the Christian conception, of a friendly and faithful Redeemer, who would console her as death approached, with his sacraments.
This spiritual substratum finds expression in an art which, inserting itself into the moment of transition from verismo to symbolism, is characterized by intense expressiveness, made up of immediacy and constructive simplicity, audacious metaphors, fresh and at times popular diction, the characters’ complete immersion in their surroundings, and an almost magical aura that envelops and transfigures people and events.
Illum.: Opera: Romanzi e novelle (selection, with a preface by E. Cecchi), 2 vols., Milan 1941–45. – Studies: A. Bocelli, In morte di D., in Nuova Antologia, 5 (1936), pp. 88–95; A. Manca, Sogni di gloria a vent’anni. Dalle lettere di G. D. a Stanis Manca, ibid., 5 (1937), pp. 241–50; L. Falchi, L’opera di G. D., 2nd ed., Milan 1937; E. De Michelis, Il motivo religioso nell’arte di G. D., in Nuova Italia, 8 (1937), pp. 129–36, 271–273; idem, G. D., Milan 1938; R. Branca, Bibliografia deleddiana, there 1938 (supplemented by A. Vallone in Quadrivio, 24 September 1939); N. Zaja, G. D., 2nd ed., there 1939; R. Branca, Testimonianza a G. D., there 1940; B. Croce, Letteratura della nuova Italia, VI, Bari 1940, pp. 317–26; P. Pancras, Scrittori d’oggi, there 1946; I, pp. 68–76; III, pp. 49–55; M. Mundula, Ricordo di G. D. Nel decennale della morte, in Nuova Antologia, 2 (1946), pp. 370–88; for the same occasion, commemorative issue of Convegno, 7–8 (1946), with articles by various authors; G. Titta Rosa, Secondo Ottocento, Milan 1947, pp. 179–84; A. Momigliano, Storia della letteratura italiana, 7th ed., Milan–Messina 1948, pp. 572–82. Enzo Navarra