Grazia Deledda's Elias Portolu, or how an ex-con becomes a priest

Grazia Deledda’s After the Divorce (1902) has a minor character, a priest, named Elias Portolu.  Her next novel is set in the same Sardinian town and is titled Elias Portolu (1903).  Perhaps it is the same character.

Happy days were coming for the Portolu family of Nuoro.  At the end of April their son Elias, who had served his time in a penitentiary on the continent, would come home; then Pietro, the older of the three Portolu boys, was to be married.  (Ch. I, p. 1, tr. Martha King)

Okay, maybe it is not the same character.  Elias returns from prison reformed in the sense that he does not fall back in with his former bad crowd.  His new problem is that he is tormented by love and lust for his brother’s fiancée, Maddalena, and she reciprocates (they are on horseback in this scene, sharing a horse):

Not only did her voice tremble, but her hand, poised on Elias’s belt, was also trembling, as was her whole body collapsed against his back.  He was also vibrating like a broken string and a shadow veiled his eyes: it was the same anguish, the same rapture as his dream.  (III, 64)

But in fact it is the same character.  Elias Portolu is the story of how this man becomes a priest:

In short, it seemed that a ferocious beast thrashed around in that pale young man with the mild appearance who was often seen sitting near the hut, immersed in little holy books.  (VI, 117)

As a means to escape sexual temptation, entering the priesthood is likely a bad move, and Portolu’s path to a religious vocation is painful and dangerous, at risk until the last sentence.  So as far as that goes, well done, Grazia Deledda.

The character is perhaps most interesting for the dream-like states that come upon him, apparently lingering psychological effects of prison, or, as he always thinks of it, “that place,” not even able to think or say the word “prison” without mental preparation.  Portolu’s interaction with the natural world up in the Sardinian mountains, where he works as a shepherd, interact curiously with his prison experience.

Meanwhile Elias, on top of the rock, with his vitreous eyes fixed as though enchanted by the pure splendour of the moon, was unmoving, immersed in a confusion of visions.  He felt the same bewilderment, the buzzing, the vague dizziness that he had felt in the family courtyard on the evening of his return [from prison].  (V, 90)

His father is watching him, wondering if he is “’Planning a crime?  Thinking of becoming a priest?’”  In a book of flattish characters, title character aside, the father is a lot of fun, always bragging about his wealth (which does not appear to be so substantial) and insulting his sons by telling them they are “made of fresh cheese.”

The characters are on the flat side because the main interest of this novel, other than the journey of Elias to the priesthood, is social or cultural.  A long scene at the beginning of the book is set during the Feast of St. Francis; a later scene is set during Carnival.  The ordinary life of the Sardinian shepherds is mixed with their holidays and entertainments.  Meanwhile, the extraordinary life of Elias Portolu mostly takes place within his head.

The yellow plain and the great purple-grey sphinxes - Grazia Deledda's After the Divorce

Grazia Delleda’s After the Divorce (1902) is a novel written a lot like a lot of novels are written now.  I would not have guessed it was so old.  Information is handed out as needed, not all at once.  The writer lingers on minor details.  Not every dang thing is explained every dang time.

First paragraph:

On the floor by the bed in the Porrus’ guest room a woman wept.  She crouched, rocking her head on her arms, sobbing in utter despair.  Her shapely figure, tightly laced into a yellow cotton bodice, rose and sank like a wave on the sea.  (1)

Then a little bit of this and that in the room, a cricket, a bit of sky where “a single yellow star shone” – yellow again, too bad I didn’t keep an eye on that – and the sound of a horse’s hoof on the cobbles.  The point of view is at some distance, impassive, willing to let the woman weep.

Soon enough – next paragraph, we get a name (Giovanna) and a place (Nuoro, the Sardinian town where the author was born).  The characters, setting, and story fill out.  Giovanna’s husband is on trial for murder.  What will happen to her when he is sent away? 

‘The new divorce law is going to be passed soon,’ Paolo said.  ‘A woman whose husband is serving a long sentence can become free again.’  (8)

That short first chapter, along with the title of the novel, gives a pretty good idea about what goes on in After the Divorce.

Deledda wrote frequently about the Sardinian peasants from her home, and all of their trials, errors, bad luck, and superstitions.  The husband here, for example, is not really defending himself from an accusation of murder because he feels he is being deservedly punished for marrying Giovanna in a civil ceremony, not in church.  You idiot.  Well, where would fiction be without such people?

Giovanni Verga’s dry stories of Sicilian peasants from twenty years earlier are a reference point, although to me this novel sounds nothing like Verga, even if Deledda shares his compassionate brutality, but is rather quite French.  Zola, Flaubert, that crowd.  A distant narrator, mostly limited third person moving easily among characters, details turned into motifs, metaphors mostly limited to the world of the characters, bursts of descriptive excess amidst the plainness:

The windows, whose stone sills burned in the sun, looked out over the whole village, blackish-brown, like a pile of spent charcoal, under its green veil of trees.  Beyond lay the yellow plain and the great purple-grey sphinxes.  In the burning afternoon silence, the incessant peal of the church bell sounded like the clang of a chisel working wearily away far-off in the centre of those mountains.  (115)

Yellow again.  I had not noticed that until I began assembling this post.  Oh well.  How I would like to visit Sardinia.  I could visit the Museo Deleddiano.

I would read another Deledda novel.  I will read etc.  A priest names Elias Portolu is a minor character in After the Divorce.  Her next novel, available in English, is titled Elias Portolu.  Maybe I should try that one next.

Page numbers from the 1995 Northwestern University Press edition translated by Susan Ashe.

Now every heart is glad, and far and wide / Rises once more the rumour / of work as it once did - when Italian literature acquired an Italy

I have switched to the J. G. Nichols translation of Leopardi.  The title is from Canto XXIV, “The Calm after the Storm.”  I have finally gotten to the point where there is a united Italy.  And Italian literature expands.

Giovanni Verga – I want to revisit and read more of his stories of hard times in Sicily, like those in Little Novels of Sicily (1883), and I also want to try at least one of his novels, either The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) or Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889) or both.

Luigi Pirandello was also from Sicily.  The major plays for which he is best known are from the 1920s and 1930s, too late for me – as  usual I want to choke off my reading somewhere around World War I – but The Late Mattia Pascal, a novel, is early, from 1904.  Somebody will have to tell me what else is especially good.  I like the sound of Shoot: The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator (1915).  Pirandello is the first Nobelist I will mention in this post.

Grazia Deledda (she’s the second) is Sardinian.  I would likely enjoy her novels just for their unusual setting, but I assume they have more to offer than that.  After the Divorce (1902) and Elias Portulu (1903) are in my local library, which is encouraging.  Deledda is another reason my attention had turned to Italy.

Matilde Serao is associated with Rome and Naples – I’m back on the boot – where she was a journalist and novelist.  The fairly recent short story collection Unmarried Women looks most promising to me, but there are a large number of novels in English published a hundred years ago.  Ford Madox Ford, whose taste is eccentric but who seems to have read everything, recommends Conquest of Rome, Desire of Life, and In the Country of Jesus (see The March of Literature. p. 859).  Unlikely, but life is full of surprises.

I think of Italo Svevo as a 20th century writer because of Zeno’s Conscience (1923), but his first two novels, A Life (1892) and As a Man Grows Older (1898), are much earlier.  I have read the latter but remember nothing more than that I thought it was pretty good.  I would appreciate advice on the former.  Svevo at this point was not actually in Italy, since Trieste was part of Austria.  Another marginal region raising its voice.

Back to Tuscany, the old center of Italy, to remind anyone interested of the Pinocchio (1883) readalong at Simpler Pastimes scheduled for later this month.  Just 200 pages, including illustrations, written for tiny little children.  So easy to join in.

The poets are more of a problem.  20th century Italian poetry strikes me as very strong – Italian fiction, too – but the period before the war is either weaker or poorly represented in English.

The great figure is Giosuè Carducci (Nobel #3), but even in Italian he seems to have lost some of his status, as if squeezed between the great 20th century poets and Leopardi.  The 1994 Selected Poems shows off Carducci well.  It includes his long ode Hymn to Satan (1865), which is not what the title suggests.  One of Carducci’s major collections, The Barbarian Odes (1877-89), is also available in English, but it is one of the worst translations I have ever come across.

A number of poets began publishing during or just after the war.  I hope to read Dino Campana, who wrote just one wild visionary book, Orphic Songs (1914), then, sadly, spent the rest of his life in mental hospitals.  I have my eye on Umberto Saba, too.  Move the cutoff just a bit later and lots of interesting writers pop up.

Look how efficient I was today.  Tomorrow I will end with the hard cases.  If you have advice on Gabrielle D’Annunzio or Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, let’s save it for a day – I do want it.  Then I will browse through some books I won’t read and take a glance at the 20th century.

Five days for all of this.  In my defense, it is an exciting literature.  Even in the 19th century, exciting.