La foglia, credit Mary Blindflowers©
Mary Blindflowers©
Dear Grazia, open letter
(Translation by Mariano Grossi©)
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Adhering to New Sardinia’s reporter’s undertaking, Luciano Piras, in his site @ddurudduru, where he invites to write a hypothetical letter to Grazia Deledda, the following letter was born. It has created, in Luciano’s wall, some controversy, which I had foreseen. I was aware that someone would not appreciate, turn their schnozzles summoning aligned’s god’s help and heavenly bolt. The letter indeed was not cherished by the stick-in-the-mud church mice persuaded that roads and infrastructures are built by dynamite, ever ready to call “envious” anyone is not aligned, in all respects, with their religious and dogmatic world and life outlook. Such stick-in-the mud are not at all keen on analyzing the text as their words are law and need neither demonstrations nor rebuttals. Never do dogmatic arrogance die, unfortunately.
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Dear Grazia,
never have we met before and not only because you were born in 1871 and I was born one century and one year later, but also because probably never would we even have met though we had been contemporary. Moreover it is quite better not to meet any of our own myths. As since 1936 you have crossed the threshold of life which spares nobody, I can easily kid myself that I write you, call you out by name and that we use our first names.
On the contrary had we met before, probably we would not be on first name terms, I would call you Lady Deledda, you would call me Lady X so and so, and we would have a quite formal talk. Death clears our minds from formalities. One does not think so, though it is like this. Is not that sweet?
At this stage, after this premise, I do not know what you expect from me, maybe that I behave as everyone when a writer takes awards, is famous and above all she sails into the next world. Praising. Praising. Praising.
Here it is: I have repeated it three times, just like a magic-apotropaic spell. But the unqualified praise does not come naturally to me, I prefer to be quite honest, even though never is disclosure appreciated in any historical age, in living memory. Maybe only hens easily rummaging through the farmyard unaware that one day they are going to end up in the pan and dress the soup can afford disclosure’s luxury.
Therefore do you realize that I am a heron, not a hen, because I do not like to end up in the soup. Herons live in seclusion thereby it is comfortable to think. So I am writing this letter of mine to you to thank you since you gave Sardinia a Nobel, even though that prize’s founder is a gentleman whose name is Alfred Bernhard Nobel who invented dynamite, a sequence of improvements for bombs and a relatively safe detonator. The record tell that in 1888 Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, died, but a French newspaper, thinking Alfred was dead instead, made a quite good obit piece: “Le marchand de la mort est mort”. So you, Grazia, took the prize invented by a merchant of death as poverty and nobility get on well together in man, the abominable and the wonderful joint. Wonderful, then, so to speak… But, do you know that Stockholm’s old people have been completely senile? They give prizes to the minstrels who play for the Pope who is so commonly anti-literary, often little poetic and cocky enough. But whatever, the world is upside down.
Anyway, beyond prizes’ value, beyond your husband Grazio Deleddo, who introduced you to Roman middle-class’ crème, mocked by Pirandello, you remain a great novel-writer. I have read them all thoroughly. Your early tales, truth be told, do not come up to my expectations , but it is normal, before the engine warms up and can burn the road, it has to get hot. Verga too, after all, wrote terrible novels. Tigre reale (Royal Tiger) cannot be read, full as it is of faints because of too tight bodices and cheap theatrical sentimentalism. On the other hand I Malavoglia are notable, but I prefer Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind), your undisputed masterpiece, so full of echoes and charms. You managed to tuck everything inside it masterfully: life, death, selfishness and waiver, crime and punishment, murder and repentance. Its landscape speaks a secret language of its own, as if it were animated by supernatural presences.
History tells you are catholic, but I see you as an animist. The returning dead, nature which is lively full of dark and underworld presences, those panas washing their clothes along the river with dead’s shins…Please, Grazia, do not deny, you are an animist! And I like that. There is something deeply esoteric in your novels, even in those with the direst end the unspoken remains, an untold mystery which words suggest without spelling it out.
Never have I liked your poems conversely, I say it to you, as a heron I am honest. Never have you been a poetess. You miss true poetry’s rhythm, image, vigour. Never have you reached high poetical peaks.
I am aware that, when someone is famous, everything becomes superlative and am aware too that people dedicate to you squares, literary awards which are useless mostly, even chargeable, where they let their friends next door, relatives, collateral and kindred win. They dedicate to you events where bald-headed mayors who never have read just one book of yours probably cut coloured ribbons with honey-like haughtiness and smile as if they suffer from a paresis.
Grazia, you are a star, undoubtedly, your name resounds throughout centuries and considering you are self-taught, I can state you got quite lucky. Yet let me cherish you as a heron, as a honest reader, not as a mayor or a reviewer or a corny suitor or a constipated Swedish dealer of hardly bombing awards. Do not reproach me.
A warm greeting from the before-life that sometimes one does not realize where it is.
Sincerely
Mary Blindflowers
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