Colonization, tradition and the Nobel Prize
It would probably be simplistic to say that Sardinian writers were influenced for a long time by the foreign powers that, in turn, claimed the island and imposed their culture, merely imitating them. Certainly, Enzio of Sardinia (ca. 1224-1272), who was also a king, was assimilated to the Sicilian School and used popular Italian to write his work, while Antonio de Lofraso, a sixteenth-century poet, chose Castilian for The Ten Books of Love Fortune , which he completed in 1573, as did Joseph Zatrillas Vico in the following century, the author of Engaños y desengaños del amor profano (1688) and Poema heroico al merecido (1696). However, in the same way that Sardinia knew how to make pagan festivals and the Catholic religion cohabit, the literary identity was transmitted by a roundabout way, that of the oral tradition, particularly alive in at least two forms. The first is in the form of tales passed down from generation to generation, which can be found in French in Lauranne Milliquet's collection La Porte d'argent , published by Slatkine, while the second is in the form of gara poetica, oral jousts organised during patronal festivals, during which several poets compete by improvising on a theme drawn by lot. This practice was the subject of an ethnological study by Maria Manca, available from the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme under the title La Poésie pour répondre au hasard. Nothing really suggested it and yet the beginning of the 20th century will witness an explosion, Sardinia, until now so discreet on the literary scene, will be put under the spotlight. Indeed, the 1926 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to a Sardinian writer, Grazia Deledda. Born in Nuoro in September 1871, she was not really destined to become a novelist, since in this remote area, almost cut off from the world, girls were often not lucky enough to be able to continue their studies, a situation her parents remedied by entrusting her education to a relative. She began to publish in magazines when she was barely of age, once again arousing popular disapproval, which did nothing to hinder her vocation but forced her to use pseudonyms. She eventually left this restricted world - which she still felt nostalgic about and which she has not failed to depict in her many novels and short stories - on the arm of her husband, with whom she moved to Rome, and it was he who put his own career on hold to promote that of his wife. Grazia Deledda's masterpiece is certainly Elias Portolu (1903), which Cambourakis has had the good idea of republishing. It is about a man who falls in love with his sister-in-law and decides to enter the orders as a way of redemption, but when his brother dies, a dilemma arises... Exploring the paths of naturalism, the writer then set out to explore the meanders of the human psyche. Death took her life in 1936 just as she had decided to write about her childhood... Did Deledda have an influence on Salvatore Satta, also born in Nuoro? In 1975, after the man, a lawyer by profession, breathed his last, his heirs discovered a manuscript, no doubt partly autobiographical, in which a narrator spun out his memories like so many bitter memories. Published posthumously and initially shunned by the critics, Il Giorno del giudizio eventually met with success when it was reissued.
New breath and New wave
The Sardinian literature of the 20th century is peppered with some titles that win the favour of the public, and all of them have a common point: Sardinia. Giuseppe Dessì (1909-1977), who drew from his grandfather's secret library the desire to dedicate himself to literature and who was awarded the Strega Prize in 1972 for Paese d'ombre, or Gavino Ledda, born in 1938, an illiterate shepherd who took advantage of his military service to gain access to the culture that had been denied him. His autobiography - Padre Padrone: the education of a Sardinian shepherd - was so influential that it opened the doors to the career to which he aspired. And then there are three writers who are credited with having initiated what would come to be known as the New Wave: Salvatore Mannuzzu (1930-2019), Giulio Angioni (1939-2017) and Sergio Atzeni (1952-1995). If the third one is going to be especially interested in the history of his country, very ancient and more recent, the first two are going to initiate a genre which will become quickly popular in Sardinia: the black novel. Thus, Manuzzu will sign Procedura - adapted to the cinema by Antonello Grimaldi under the title Un delitto impossible, in which a prosecutor dies poisoned under the eyes of his mistress. As for Angioni, in L'Or sarde he portrays the disappearance of a child, which is investigated by the mayor of the village of Fraus. It is in this breach that two authors will rush in, who will have no difficulty to find in French translation: Giorge Todde, who has a marked taste for bloody atmospheres, and Marcello Fois who prefers psychological convolutions and will not hesitate to explore other novelistic veins. If Sardinia is used almost systematically as a backdrop, the dialect is also given pride of place by this new generation, and some of them do not hesitate to place this specific vocabulary in the mouths of their characters, like Salvatore Niffoi, who also knew how to invent "Sardinian magic realism", or Milena Agus who, although born in Genoa, has not denied her Sardinian roots, and who has decided to teach in Cagliari. Mal de pierres is certainly her best-known work, but in Une saison douce, published in 2021, she sets the action in a small Sardinian village faced with the very contemporary issue of immigration. Finally, another female author, Michela Murgia, in her first novel, Accabadora (Points), delivers a moving story of transmission in which she explores island customs. Her talent is confirmed in La Guerre des saints and Leçons pour un jeune fauve, also translated by Seuil.
