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Cathy Vignale Translates: Grazia Deledda, Nobel Prize Winner

Translator, Catherine G. Vignale, is finishing her Master Of Arts in Italian Language and Literature at Rutgers University and plans to earn a Ph.D. Other translations include poems by Giovanni Pascoli due to be published in Gradiva, an international journal of Italian literature. Her short story The Handbag's Tale appeared in VIA: Voices in Italian Americana at Purdue University.

Grazia Cosima Deledda born in 1871 in Nuoro, Sardinia won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. Her first short story was published at age seventeen, entitled Sangue sardo (Sardinian Blood). She published her first novel two years later, Stella díOriente (Star of the East). In 1899 she met Palmiro Madesani from Rome. They were married in 1900 and moved to Rome where she died in 1936. They had two sons. Though hardly known in the United States, she was one of the most prolific women writers of this century and only the second woman to win the Noble Prize for Literature. Her best known novels are Elias Portolu ( 1903), Cenere (Ashes, 1904), Líedera (Ivy, 1908), Colombi esparvieri (Doves and Sparrowhawks or Love and Hate, 1913), Canne al vento (Reeds in the wind 1913), and Marianna Sirca, 1915. In 1920, her novel La madre was published and translated into English as The Woman and the Priest, with an introduction by D. H. Lawrence. This was the novel that brought her international attention. Her last novel, Cosima, a quasi-autobiographical novel was published after her death and is available in English translation from Italica Press in New York. For a longer biography, see Grazia Deledda by Marilyn Migiel in Italian Women Writers, A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Rinaldina Russell, Greenwood Press, Westport, Ct., 1994.

Excerpt from the novel: Marianna Sirca by Grazia Deledda [in Narratori del Novecento, ed. Luigi Fiorentino, Edizioni Scolastiche Mondadori, Verona, 1968. pp.50 - 54.

After the death of an old, rich, uncle priest, from whom she had inherited her estate, Marianna Sirca had gone to spend a few days in the country, in a small farmhouse which she owned in Serra di Nuoro, in the middle of cork-tree woods. It was June. Marianna, worn out by the hardship of looking after her uncle, who had died of a paralysis which lasted two years, seemed like one released from prison, she was so white, weak, bewildered. On her own account she would not have moved nor would she have given heed to the advice of the doctor who ordered her to breath a bit of pure air, if her father, a shepherd who had always been a sort of servant of his brother the priest, had not purposely come down from the Serra to get her, imploring her respectfully: "Marianna, listen to those who love you: obey."

Even the rough and resolute servant woman from the Barbagia, who had been in the priest's house for years and years, and had seen Marianna grow up, while preparing her belongings and loading them rudely into the saddlebag as if they were a servant shepherd's things, repeated:"Mari, heed those who love you: obey." And Marianna obeyed. She had always obeyed, since the time as a child she had been put in her uncle's house like a little caged bird, to squander her childhood joy and light around the melancholy priest, in exchange for the possibility of his inheritance. So she mounted silently on her father's horse and rested her hand at his waist, answering only with nods of the head as the solicitous servant arranged her skirts around her legs and advised her not to catch a chill in the night air.

"And don't tire her out, Berte Sirca!" He placed a finger on his mouth and spurred the horse; he was a man of few words, even with Marianna. Besides, they did not have much to say to each other.While they traveled he only pointed out this or that land, naming the owners. She knew the places because every year in Spring, with the exception of the last in which the priest had been sick, they would go with him and the relatives to spend entire days in the tanca, which was populated by flocks of sheep and herds of horses and where a farmhouse had replaced the primitive hut of the Sardinian shepherds.

From the first day up there, she felt better: the place was elevated, at the border between the territory of Nuoro and that of Orune; the forest bloomed and an infinite tranquility seemed to stretch over the whole earth. On the third day Marianna already seemed like another; the fragile, slightly bent over person had straightened, the pale alabaster face under the wide braids of the shiny black hair and the large wide-set chestnut eyes like the fawns, reflected the greenish light of the woods.

As evening of the third day fell, she sat in front of the farmhouse, a small construction in crude stone with a shelter for the animals, a kitchen and a bedroom: in front of her, a great grassy clearing, with an ancient cork-tree in the middle and the dogs tied to its trunk; and beyond the green of the fields which penetrated into the forest losing itself in the deep shade of the bushes and the rocks. While on the right, among a row of trees, the line of the hills still shone blue on the red sky of sunset.

She was alone, with the dogs, who got up every now and then to watch and returned quickly to crouch down in the dust; but she was waiting for her father's and the sheperd's return and the arrival of a relative who had promised to visit. She was alone and tranquil; she wanted for nothing; she had her vast estate around her which was tended to by a trusted servant of simple spirit such as her father. Down in Nuoro her house was also taken care of by a faithful servant who did not sleep at night in order to keep watch against thief. She lacked nothing: and yet turning inward, looking with full consciousness of self, she saw a serene dusk, yes, dusk: red and gray, gray and red and solitary like the dusk of the tanca.

She seemed old to herself; she saw herself as a child in that same place,the first time that she had been lead up there and someone had whispered in her ear: I"if"you are good all this will be yours." And she had looked around her, with her placid eyes, without wonder and without desire, and yet answering yes. Wandering here and there, not so far as to get lost, she had found a hiding place, a crib carved in a rock, and she placed herself inside, very content to be alone, mistress of all, but hidden to all: and it seemed she was like the pit inside the fruit,like the little bird inside the egg. Cuddled up, glad that the shepherds could not pull on her skirt as she passed, and say winking: "Will you lend me your place, Marianna?" She had even fallen asleep. And she woke up here, after so many years. She was thirty, now, and did not even know love. They had raised her as a girl of a noble family, destined to a rich marriage; in reality her life had been that of a submissive servant not only to the padrone but to the servants of greater rank than she.

But her father is returning: and her thoughts retire in their most secret hiding place: no one in the world must know them, and this not so much out of pride but because she loves her soul as her home, everything should be in order, clean, closed in trunks, belonging to her alone. After all, even though her father had a mute admiration for her and the attachment of a faithful servant, he was not a man to understand her: as he comes forward, small, bent over, with his hands together, the large bald head seems to be pulled down to his chest by the long gray curly beard. He seemed like a friar disguised as a shepherd, a meek hermit with large brown, still innocent eyes.

"Well then, are you praying?" he said passing in front of her.--Come on, cheer up because tonight we're staying up. They are coming up.

"Who, who?" she said, stirring.

"Sebastiano with someone else; I'm going to start the fire. If Sebastiano asks you how much they offered you for the cork," he added turning back, tell him 1000 scudi. Quiet! Obey someone who loves you."

Marianna was ready to obey even this innocent vanity of his, which doubled her income; even more so that her relation Sebastiano was coming on account of certain dealers who wanted to purchase the cork from her woods: and without getting up she sharpened her gaze, thinking about this second cousin of hers, neither young nor old, neither rich nor poor, widowed and alone, who among so many needy relatives that harbored rancor for her uncle's inheritance, was the only one to show her a bit of disinterested attachment.

At times she doubted that Sebastiano loved her for love; but she rejected with disgust the idea of ending up the wife of a relative, widowed and no longer young. Here he was arriving on horseback, wearing the widower's mourning coat; even from far off, the black velvet of the heavy coat made the yellowish pallor of his lean face stand out surrounded by a sparse dark pointy beard. The large, lively black eyes that illuminated his entire sad figure, searched out Marianna right away. She had gotten up silently as soon as he dismounted with agility in front of her. A bit smaller than she, he put an arm around her shoulders looking at her top to bottom, with a familiar yet sly look. However, she pushed it away, only intent on a handsome tall young man who came forward smiling at her. It seemed and then again maybe not, that she knew him. She had already seen those teeth shining between the fresh lips shadowed by a light fuzz, and on the dark face the long eyes were so blue that even the white seemed a pearly blue. When he arrived in front of her he stopped, like a soldier at attention. She blushed, but quickly smiled and gave him her hand.

"Simone Sole!"

He nodded yes, taking her hand without squeezing it. Yes, it was he, Simone Sole, the bandit. ....

Translation Copyright © by Catherine G. Vignale

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