Grazia Deledda
Elias Portolu

Grazia Deledda, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, is today almost forgotten. Most of her works, apart from “Canne al vento”, are difficult or impossible to find. Among the more available is “Elias Portolu”.

Deledda tells us about her Sardinia, the deep Sardinia of the early 1900s, with its landscapes and ancestral traditions. The environmental and bucolic descriptions guide the reader through the seasons, indirectly speaking to them of the scorching summer heat and the winter chill. The narration, as in many of her books, aims to highlight the clash between a very rigid tradition and custom, anchored in the past and in a faith that is the only culture of the poor people, and a renewal of society and of the implicit laws that control it.

Grazia Deledda's writing is meticulous, with a use of colons and the semicolon, whose existence many other writers often forget, that I find splendid. The vocabulary, enriched with Sardinian terms, is fresh and does not particularly feel the impact of the hundred years that have passed. I love this woman's prose.

Elias Portolu, the son of shepherds, returns home after serving a prison sentence on the continent for some unknown crime. He has become a man of fresh cheese: prison has weakened his spirit and body, the shadow of the cell has made him pale as a girl.

During one of the religious festivals that mark the time for shepherds, he meets the betrothed of his brother, and just a few glances are enough to ruin his life. No words are necessary: the shining eyes of Maddalena, following him, ignite the fire in his veins.

This event places Elias in a very difficult position. Confess to his beloved brother their passion, offending him irrevocably? Or remain silent, and face the terrible cohabitation that would follow, when she would move to live at the Portolu house? Torn by doubt, he finds his only consolations in old Uncle Martinu, a wise shepherd from the nearby pasture with a dark past, and in the idea of becoming a priest, escaping both temptation and forced cohabitation.

Elias's drama involves us, on every page one finds themselves sympathizing with him and at the same time almost despising him, for his lack of courage, for his eternal postponement of what could resolve the situation. His soul struggles, incapable of breaking the barriers of social conventions. How can one not love the author's view of her characters, scrutinizing their souls?