*This article appears in two parts. In the first (published here) we reconstruct the affair – and the ensuing controversy – between Luigi Pirandello and Grazia Deledda concerning the publication of the novel Her Husband, in which the Sicilian writer alludes (a little indiscreetly, we must admit) to the family life of his Sardinian colleague. The second part will explore certain aspects more closely, still in relation to the two writers and to the novel, but touching on broader themes such as publishing strategies or the relationship between personal biography and invention in artistic creation.

If a “strange case” it truly is, and one involving two figures so important in our literary history of the early twentieth century, then we must investigate how it arose, how it unfolded and how it (perhaps) concluded.

The “scene” opens in 1908, with a letter from Pirandello, who has as yet no foreboding of the events that would follow but is anxiously awaiting the appearance of his most recent literary offspring:

[…] The new volume of short stories, already delivered to Treves, has the title ‘La vita nuda’. There are fourteen of them. I shall also send Treves, in April I hope, the novel ‘Her Husband’. I started out from Grazia Deledda’s husband. Do you know him? A masterpiece, my dear Ugo, I mean Grazia Deledda’s husband – mind you… […]. [1] The Sardinian writer had married Palmiro Madesani, an official at the Ministry of Finance in Cagliari – though originally from Cicognara di Viadana, in the province of Mantua –, in January 1900. After the wedding the couple move at once to Rome, where Palmiro devotes himself body and soul to following and supporting the literary work of his wife, already successfully launched in Sardinia.

From the very first days of their stay, the Deledda-Madesani couple take their full place in Roman cultural life, as Maurice Muret recounts in the “Journal des débats politiques et littéraires” of 21 August 1936 (a few days after Grazia’s death), recalling the gatherings and country outings of a merry band of men of letters in the early years of the century:

There was in Rome at that time a shop, not, I would say, of fine wits, but of good ones, where at the close of the day all that went by the name of intelligence, in the times when it was still honoured in Europe, used to gather. This congenial workshop stood on the Corso and served as the editorial office of the celebrated review “Nuova Antologia”. The good poet Giovanni Cena did the honours there. It was he who introduced me to Grazia Deledda, in his little office, where that day there were also Pirandello and Professor Barzellotti. Grazia Deledda’s husband came to join us shortly afterwards, and there and then a picnic at the Acqua Acetosa was improvised. We squeezed into a carriage or two, I no longer remember. The novelist’s husband, whom some called Grazio Deleddo, had taken his seat, and his coat, bulging with two bottles of the excellent wine of his home region, greatly annoyed our ‘coachman’. [2]

That day (and not only that day) Pirandello will surely have observed the writer and her consort with an interest both professional and personal; reliable sources tell us, moreover, that he was no stranger to the invention and spread of that name inflected in the masculine. [3]
In the next scene a double leap, in time and in space, carries us into a room of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm in December 1927 [4]:

A very spacious and austere bedroom […]. Grazia is sitting on the bed, at three-quarters to the audience. She is wearing glasses. She is reading a newspaper. Palmiro enters […]:

Palmiro: – Still reading that stuff?
Grazia: – Just so, so as not to forget where I come from.
Palmiro: – What are they saying this time?
Grazia: – Oh, the usual things… The good thing about detractors is that they often let their imagination run away with them.
Palmiro: – Pirandello?
Grazia: – Him too, of course, he really didn’t hold back […]. There is one accusation against me that I have even come to understand…
Palmiro: – An accusation?
Grazia: – Of course, and I’ll tell you more: it is the origin of everything. (She searches for the right words) That I refused to mediate… To offer some possible consolation. They have grown used to confusing the writer with the master of ceremonies. Whereas the writer is a mirror. He reflects and sets before you what you are, with no discount. Otherwise he is not a writer. Look at good Enrico Costa: how much beautiful writing thrown away, how much talent squandered for the sake of being loved…
Palmiro: -And Pirandello…
Grazia: – No, not Pirandello, Palmiro: Pirandello is very great, very great.
Palmiro: – I cannot forgive him… He did something far too cruel to you.
Grazia: – What thing, that novel in which everyone was supposed to recognise you and me? (She turns away) What did he achieve? A wretched novel…
Palmiro: – And you still say he is very great?
Grazia: – Only the very greatest can fail so miserably. But that Mattia Pascal, what a marvel! It is beautiful, it is modern; I’ll tell you, I even envied him for it…
Palmiro: – And now it is his turn… [5]

A step backwards, and we are in 1911, to go on following the publishing history of Her Husband, the «wretched novel» to which Grazia alluded in Fois’s text. A history still untroubled, if Pirandello writes to Alberto Albertini, chief editor of the “Corriere della Sera” and brother of its director Luigi, to apologise for the failure to send short stories since, «– bound by a commitment to Treves –», he must «absolutely deliver the manuscript of the novel Her Husband by the end of next month». [6]
And here, to enliven the action, there enters the stage for a moment, but as a protagonist not without a certain wit, Emilio Treves himself, who in September 1911 writes to Pirandello, explaining, in a curious letter, that he cannot print the novel ‘Her Husband’ […]. He pretends to have refused a novel «fine, interesting» entitled ‘His Wife’, in which allusion was made «plainly to your wife, my dear Signor Pirandello», «holding her up to ridicule in such a way that one cannot help recognising her». By publishing ‘His Wife’, once accepted and then rejected, he would have failed «in every delicacy» and would have caused one of his own authors, namely Pirandello, «the grave displeasure of seeing himself made a laughing-stock». And so he concludes: «You have understood the parable, and need no further words to explain the moral impossibility in which I find myself of publishing ‘Her Husband’». It is a stroke of great sensitivity, enhanced by his request that Pirandello bear him no «grudge» and send him «another of his novels, with a few short stories for “L’Illustrazione” and for “Secolo XX”». [7]

Pirandello’s family situation had grown ever more dramatic, his wife Antonietta Portulano being afflicted by «an incurable form of paranoia» [8], which, worsening year by year, would lead her to be permanently committed to a clinic for mental illness in 1919. The burden of the family (there are also three children) had long rested entirely on the writer’s shoulders. Pirandello, who had himself been quite explicit in referring to Palmiro Madesani in the 1908 letter to Ojetti, does not seem touched by Treves’s ‘delicacy’; and writing once more to his friend he shows himself surprised and resentful at the publisher’s decision:

My dear Ugo, a fine thing has happened to me! I am at last sending Treves the manuscript of the novel ‘Her Husband’ which – as you know – is dedicated to you and – as you do not know – has turned out really well, so well that it may enjoy – if the fates are kind to it – great fortune. And here is what Treves replies to me! Evidently Signora D.dda, who learned of the submission from a Rome newspaper that had “interviewed” me, has run to Treves for cover […]. I assure you, my dear Ugo, that it is a most unjust persecution! I took from reality no more than a simple starting point, which is perfectly legitimate; then I worked freely with the imagination, inventing characters, actions and everything. I cannot, for the sake of Signora D.’s black looks, throw away a work of art. I might perhaps legally compel Treves, who had accepted the novel ‘by contract’, to print it, but it does not suit me, as you understand. […] [9]

And a few days later, again to Ojetti:

[…] Treves had already sent the manuscript to the printer, and it has come back to me with the first sheets smudged with ink […] What poverty of spirit, what narrowness of mind in that Deledda! Not to understand that, by acting so, she only whets the morbid curiosity of this dirty, mean little courtyard of gossip that is our present-day literary world! And it grieves me! Because to readers, who are preparing for a spicy read, my novel, which is a plain and pure work of art, may perhaps risk seeming insipid. But no, indeed! I assure you that insipid it will not seem… Enough. I accept with gratitude, my dear Ugo, your second proposal: that of Quattrini. […]. [10]

The novel will finally be published in 1911 by Attilio Quattrini’s Casa Editrice Italiana, Florence, a high-sounding name but a second-rank publishing house; whereas Pirandello set great store by the publisher Treves [11], a first-rank house indeed, able to boast in its catalogue authors such as Verga, D’Annunzio, De Amicis and, from 1905, Grazia Deledda. [12]

Her Husband is certainly not the most popular of the seven novels Pirandello left us, from The Outcast of 1901 to One, No One and One Hundred Thousand of 1926; yet it is still interesting today for the picture it draws of the Roman literary milieu [13], and above all because its protagonist is a writer, here the woman writer Silvia Roncella.
In the earlier novels Marta Ajala (The Outcast) did write, but letters, which would be the cause of her ruin; don Diego Alcozèr (The Turn) confined himself to quotations from Horace and Catullus, showing himself without much effort more cultivated than his fellow townsmen; Mattia Pascal was surrounded by books as a librarian, but the first (and only, we imagine) that he writes is the very one we are reading, in which he recounts his story in the first person.
A successful writer, Silvia Roncella has moved to Rome from Taranto with her husband Giustino Boggiòlo who, faithfully mirroring the derided “Grazio Deleddo”, Palmiro Madesani, acts as her accountant-secretary-literary agent. It is easy to see that if Pirandello is irritated by the many obstacles Deledda placed in the way of the publication of Her Husband, the woman writer is just as irritated, if not more, by a novel that many would read with gossipy malice rather than with literary interest. [14]
Pirandello certainly did not behave like a gentleman, having vented in Her Husband some ill humour born of family or professional envy (or perhaps both). But if we come to the actual content of the novel, he is essentially right: the narrative starting point taken from the private life of the Sardinian writer will indeed remain nothing more than a starting point.
The matter, however, is not settled here, for the hostility between the two future Nobel laureates would last a good while longer: according to Pirandello «Deledda, who obtains the award in 1926 – on that occasion he makes bitter and scornful comments about her in his correspondence with his son Stefano –, is said to have done everything to obstruct (though in vain) the Sicilian writer’s candidacy for 1934. There is no record of any reconciliation ever having taken place between the two, who moreover die within a few months of each other: Deledda dies on 16 August 1936, Pirandello on the following 10 December». [15]

At this point the “strange case” closes without any real, definitive answers, without a confrontation between the two parties concerned, without further evidence to enter into the record. Not even the reworking of Her Husband – the Giustino Roncella nato Boggiòlo, the last, unfinished act of this affair – introduces any new elements that might alter the discord between the two writers.

In concluding the first part of this study, there is nothing left but to acknowledge – with some melancholy on our part as readers – the “missed appointment” between two of the great figures of our literature.
They travelled their roads in parallel without ever meeting, although both were islanders of a harsh and strong temperament, and anchored to their respective homelands, drawing sap from them, taking their codes into themselves, suffering their deep bonds. Both had set out from the far periphery with something adventurous and vague in the heart, with confused hopes, out of a hunger for life and for the world, dreaming of vast horizons, but then, from that periphery, drawing away from it in the imagination. Both of tenacious purpose and iron will, ferocious even: which is what Pirandello always cultivated in himself, even amid grave family adversities, but which, perhaps, he did not wish, nor was able, to appreciate in a woman. [16]

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[1] Letter to Ugo Ojetti from Rome, 18 December 1908, in L. Pirandello, Carteggi inediti, ed. S. Zappulla Muscarà (“Quaderni dell’Istituto di Studi Pirandelliani”), Bulzoni Editore, Rome, 1980, p. 28. The publisher Treves too announces, in the “Nuova Antologia” of 16 January 1908, «the publication of Her Husband in the current year» (ibid.).

[2] R. Dedola, Grazia Deledda. I luoghi, gli amori, le opere, Avagliano Editore, Rome, 2016, p. 231.

[3] We are at the beginning of the century and already (from 1905 at least, right after The Late Mattia Pascal ) Pirandello was at work on the novel: «Meanwhile I am writing another humorous novel: Her Husband. The husband of a grandonna [sic], an accountant and secretary husband. Just imagine!» (Letter to Luigi Villari from Rome, 10 March 1905, in R. Dedola, Grazia Deledda, cit., p. 232).

[4] Let us recall that Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize for 1926 but collected it on 10 December 1927.

[5] M. Fois, Quasi Grazia, Einaudi, Turin, 2016, pp. 45-51: «A perfect “novel in the form of theatre”», as the publisher’s blurb has it.

[6] Letter to Alberto Albertini from Rome, 6 February 1911, in L. Pirandello, Carteggi inediti, cit., p. 161. The writer had been contributing to «the prince of our daily newspapers» since 1909.

[7] M. Grillandi, Emilio Treves, Utet, Turin, 1980, pp. 590-591.

[8] See letter to Ugo Ojetti from Rome of 10 April 1914, in L. Pirandello, Carteggi inediti, cit. , p. 78.

[9] Letter to Ugo Ojetti from Rome, 30 July 1911, in L. Pirandello, Carteggi inediti, cit., p. 60.

[10] Letter to Ugo Ojetti from Rome, 3 August 1911, in L. Pirandello, Carteggi inediti, cit., p. 62.

[11] Treves had published in 1908 The Outcast, the first novel by the writer from Agrigento, and in 1910 The Late Mattia Pascal, which had appeared in 1904 first in instalments in the “Nuova Antologia”, then in volume form under the imprint of the review itself.

[12] In that year the Sardinian writer published with Treves the collection of short stories I giuochi della vita. Then, from 1910 until 1936, Treves would be her exclusive publisher (see A. Dolfi, Grazia Deledda, Mursia, Milan, 1979, pp. 171-172).

[13] For further reading, see: I cenacoli letterari nella Roma di inizio Novecento nel romanzo “Suo marito”, in Illusione e affabulazione in Pirandello e nel modernismo europeo (éd. B. Van des Bossche, M. Jansen et N. Dupré), Cesati, Florence, 2013, p. 109-118. Also on the web: https://www.academia.edu/13470899/I_cenacoli_letterari_nella_Roma_di_inizio_ novecento_nel_romanzo_Suo_marito_

[14] The first edition of Her Husband having sold out, Pirandello no longer allowed it to be reprinted (according to the testimony of his son Stefano this happened out of delicacy towards Deledda; or, perhaps, it was for fear of legal disputes, as some critic has imagined); but around 1934 he returns to the text of the novel, making considerable changes to it. This second draft, however, remained unfinished, stopping at the beginning of the fifth chapter because of the writer’s death. What was the title chosen for the new edition? Giustino Roncella nato Boggiòlo: that first nickname, maliciously invented for the Sardinian writer’s husband, Pirandello would never forget.

[15] F. Danelon, Appunti per “Suo marito” di Luigi Pirandello, in Gli scrittori d’Italia. Il patrimonio e la memoria della tradizione letteraria come risorsa primaria, Proceedings of the 11th ADI Congress, Naples, 26-29 September 2007, Graduus, Grottammare, 2008. In the present text it is cited from the website: https://www.pirandelloweb.com/appunti-per-suo-marito-di-luigi-pirandello/. An essay which, besides having been very useful to our research, is recommended for a fuller understanding of the chronology and historical context of the setting of Her Husband.

[16] M. Onofri, Un appuntamento mancato: Grazia Deledda e Luigi Pirandello in Saggi sul Novecento, Viterbo, Edizioni Sette Città, 2010, cited in R. Dedola, Grazia Deledda, cit., p. 239.

Gianfranco Bogliari taught Italian Language and Literature and History of the Theatre at the University for Foreigners of Perugia. Together with the musician Stefano Ragni, he has organised events on the relationship between Music and Literature. He also collaborates with bodies and institutions for lectures and themed readings.