Celebrating the anniversary of the first Italian woman to receive Nobel Prize

Grazia Deledda, Sardinian writer known for books like Canne al vento (1913), La madre (1920) and Cosima (1937), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926, making her the first Italian woman—and only the second woman overall (after Selma Lagerlöf in 1909)—to win the award.

According to the Nobel Prize website the prize motivation was “her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general.”

I am reporting here some of the quotes from Canne al vento:

• On fate and human vulnerability:“Ma perché questo, Efix, dimmi, tu che hai girato il mondo: è da per tutto così? Perché la sorte ci stronca così, come canne? – Sì, – egli disse allora, – siamo proprio come le canne al vento, donna Ester mia. Ecco perché! Siamo canne, e la sorte è il vento.”

  
  

  (“Why is it like this, Efix, tell me, you who have roamed the world: is it like this everywhere? Why does fate break us like this, like reeds? — Yes, he said then, we are truly like the reeds in the wind, Donna Ester. That is why! We are reeds, and fate is the wind.”) 

  
  

• On life and courage:“Life demands courage; without it, we merely drift through shadows.”

  
  

• On human connection and loss:“Little by little they all gathered around him, entering through the cracks like moonbeams... [b]ut once the wind of misfortune blows, people disperse like little clouds around the moon when the wind blows off the mountains.”