Talk about coincidence…

Rome, 5 May 1905

Most illustrious Signor Conte,

I thank you warmly for your kind postcard and for your goodness towards me. I shall await the reply of M. Ganderax […]. I still need help, encouragement: I am still young, I can yet do much: I am thirty years old: at my age many have begun, and I feel that this is truly the age in which the artist, looking upon life at the summit, so to speak, of his own youth, can savour and contemplate it as one contemplates a landscape from the top of a hill, and reproduce it serenely and faithfully in his own work. In Italy the literary path is so harsh, so mean: we Italian writers all look towards France as towards a land of justice and of beauty: but you know this better than I, and will perhaps smile at my ingenuousness […]. [1]

That same 5 May, someone else was writing to the ‘Signor Conte’:

[…] I trust that a word from you, most authoritative, Signor Conte, will at last bring the directors of the Review [the “Revue de Paris”] to accept my novel, which is already appearing in German translation in the supplements of the “Fremdenblatt” of Vienna and will soon appear in English translation by M. Nathan Dole. Signor Maurice Muret has already written of it three times, in the “Renaissance Latine”, in the “Journal des Débats” and lately in the “Revue”. Here at the “Nuova Antologia”, in less than six months, the first edition is already sold out and the second will soon appear. [2]

Let us begin with the addressee: the Count is Giuseppe (Gégé) Primoli, a prominent figure in Roman culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a friend, among others, of Gabriele D’Annunzio, Eleonora Duse, Matilde Serao and Cesare Pascarella. Besides having close ties with France and the Parisian artistic world (Alexandre Dumas the younger, Sarah Bernhardt…), he was also a great photographer.

And now to the senders: the first letter is by Grazia Deledda, who writes to press for the publication of her first ‘continental’ novel (written, that is, after her move to Rome) Nostalgie, referring to Louis Ganderax, co-director of the “Revue de Paris” and literary critic of the “Revue des Deux Mondes”; the second correspondent is Luigi Pirandello, who urges Count Primoli to urge in turn the aforementioned Ganderax to publish The Late Mattia Pascal in the review he directs.

The irony of fate could not have offered a better occasion for this second part of the article concerning the case of Her Husband, the novel in which Pirandello had taken his cue from the husband-secretary of Grazia Deledda, causing embarrassment to the publisher Treves, who was to have brought it out, and controversy between the two writers (never addressed directly, and never resolved either).

In depicting the Roman literary world, Pirandello had trained his gaze precisely on the editorial strategies that, in the letters to Primoli, we see put into practice: both writers, divided a few years later (1911) over the much-discussed novel, are at this moment united by the desire to see their creations circulated and recognised in the prestigious Parisian milieu. To satisfy the reader’s curiosity, we may say that the epistolary entreaties met with differing outcomes: the carrière in French lands of the Sardinian writer, already launched in 1903, continued happily in the years that followed. [3]

Pirandello was less fortunate: from a letter to Primoli of 21 December 1904 we learn that the French translation of The Late Mattia Pascal, by Henry Bigot, was already finished; and from another, of 20 January 1905, we come to know that

this translation has for about three months been under consideration at the offices of the “Revue de Paris”, which has promised to read it «dans le plus bref délai». Well then, would it be too much, Signor Conte, if I, availing myself of the honour you were once already willing to grant me, were to address to you the plea that you deign once more to spend on my behalf one of your so coveted, most authoritative words, so that the work of Signor Bigot and myself may be accepted by the “Revue de Paris”? [4]

But things dragged on. After the by now famous letter of 5 May 1905, here is another, of 18 November:

At the “Revue de Paris” they have read and liked my novel The Late Mattia Pascal, and they promised the translator M. Henry Bigot that they would publish it with a few cuts here and there, that is, in those points of the narration that had seemed to Signor Ganderax a little languid […]. About three months have passed, and not only has the manuscript still not reached Bigot, but they have not even answered a courteous letter of reminder. Now, my novel having pleased them, and things being well under way, I have firm hope, Signor Conte, that an authoritative word from you to Ganderax would at this moment be precious to me and would serve to break the delay that so harms and dismays me […]. [5]

The story did not end well, given that the novel appeared in feuilleton in the “Echo de Paris” only from 15 September 1909; while the “Journal de Genève” published it in instalments from 22 July to 7 September 1910, the same year in which it would at last be issued in volume form by the Calmann-Levy publishing house of Paris.

The bitterness arising from the difficulty of circulating The Late Mattia Pascal in France, and, conversely, the sight of Deledda’s success, might explain the acrimonious irony directed at the writer’s husband: accentuated, obviously, in letters to friends such as Ugo Ojetti – and more explicit with regard to Deledda herself – than in the pages of the novel. [6]

It would take time before Paris embraced Pirandellian art without reservation (and it would be above all with the spread of his theatrical works); but in the meantime Primoli introduced the writer into the French circles of Rome, and here we like to close the affaire of Pirandello’s first difficult dealings with France «with a most exquisite and truly ‘Pirandellian’ letter» [7], which one would almost be tempted to read as the studied reply to the incomprehension of a part of French culture.

Let us read a few lines of it:

Rome, 14 March 1908

Signor Conte,
the invitation you convey to me on behalf of H. E. the Ambassador of France for next Monday places me in the gravest embarrassment, which you will perhaps not even manage to imagine. My embarrassment lies in the tail, Signor Conte, where – as you know – the venom too is wont to nestle: in cauda venenum. Indeed the tail poisons for me the pleasure of the invitation. I – I blush to confess it, but it is truly so – I have no dress coat, Signor Conte: I have never had one, in view of my retiring disposition, which condemns me to an utterly secluded and solitary life. […] I beg you to convey my devoted respects and my most respectful thanks to H. E. the Ambassadress and to her kind Daughter, for the signal good fortune, which I myself envy myself, of their regard… [8]

To return to the novel Her Husband (whose protagonists are the writer Silvia Roncella and her consort Giustino Boggiòlo, accountant-secretary-literary agent, more or less the functions performed by Palmiro Madesani, husband of Grazia Deledda), let us recall that, faced with the difficulties of publication owing to the reservations of the publisher Treves out of delicacy towards the writer, Pirandello, though showing himself surprised, is not discouraged and reacts by envisaging other, more amenable publishers.

Nor does he scruple to suggest to his trusted Ugo Ojetti that he “hint”, with discretion he urges, to the prospective new publisher at “the titillating backstory” that makes the novel more appealing from a commercial point of view:

And I turn to You to ask you to propose Her Husband to the Baldini Castoldi house, whom I do not know. Will you? The novel, I repeat, well launched, could meet with great fortune. Perhaps you, in writing, might also, discreetly, hint to Signori Baldini and Castoldi at the titillating backstory. [9]

We have already stressed how editorial strategies, besides being practised by Pirandello in real life, are also a central theme in the novel, to such a degree that a present-day critic pushes his analysis so far as to assert, in presenting Her Husband in a new 2017 edition, that the relationship of Silvia and Giustino

might be read – from a present-day perspective – also as the story of a new firm, a start-up: Silvia and Giustino would be two partners in a company for the production and distribution of literature, born of the meeting between a genius of sales and marketing and a genius of literature. The competences and responsibilities of the two partners are divided in the clearest fashion: to Giustino, head of the sales office, fall the investments of the substantial revenues, which he will reinvest in modernising the production and public-relations facilities (Villa Silvia). This makes Giustino a sort of chief executive, if not chairman, of the little enterprise. [10]

[1] M. Spaziani, Con Gégé Primoli nella Roma bizantina, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 1962, pp. 266-267.

[2] Ibid., p. 268, note 2.

[3] «Deledda was without doubt the Italian writer most widely represented in the two great Parisian reviews. Here is the exact tally. In the “Revue des Deux Mondes”: Elias Portolu, April-May 1903; Cendres, February-April 1905; L’ombre du passé , February-April 1908. In the “Revue de Paris”: “Contes sardes”, September and November 1905; La voie du mal, May-July 1908; La mort et la vie (Sino al confine), June-August 1910», Ibid., p. 80. For those wishing to explore further the theme of the “French” Deledda: M. Rasera, Varianti significative delle dinamiche familiari nelle edizioni italiane e francesi dei romanzi di Grazia Deledda, in La letteratura degli italiani 4. I letterati e la scena, Proceedings of the XVI Adi National Conference, Sassari-Alghero, 19-22 September 2012, Adi Editore, Rome, 2014.

[4] M. Spaziani, Con Gégé Primoli nella Roma bizantina, cit., p. 268, note 2. It is interesting to note – en passant – the recognition of the translator’s role as co-author.

[5] Ibid.

[6] See, in the first part of this article, the letters to Ugo Ojetti in L. Pirandello, Carteggi inediti, edited by S. Zappulla Muscarà (“Quaderni dell’Istituto di Studi Pirandelliani”), Bulzoni Editore, Rome, 1980.

[7] M. Spaziani, Con Gégé Primoli nella Roma bizantina, cit., p. 80.

[8] Ibid., p. 269. We merely point out, so explicit is it in its emphasis, the close of the letter: «… the signal good fortune, which I myself envy myself…». More interesting is to recall that in 1913 (in the “Corriere della Sera”) Pirandello would publish a short story, L’abito nuovo, which, along the lines of his canonical humour, develops (perhaps) the germ of this occasional, and almost moody, reply to the invitation of the Ambassador of France.

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

[10] M. Roessner, La sbalorditiva attualità di Pirandello, preface to Luigi Pirandello, Her Husband, Mondadori Libri, Milan, 2017, p. XIII.

2. (to be continued)

Whoever set up the “Casa Deledda” museum in Nuoro grasped and brought into relief something that was constantly part of the writer’s personal and professional life, namely the crucial importance of letters. At the centre of her bedroom stands her writing desk with an inkwell, some envelopes and some writing paper. In that corner of the house, remote from the European cultural scene, Deledda used «to the utmost and to the best the only instrument she had at her disposal» [1] to look out upon the world of literature: the letter. The missives, for their part, in their slow but ceaseless rhythm, marked out the days and months of the woman and of the artist, with the force of an absolute point of reference: they appear to us like the logbook of a seafarer who, drawing away from the coasts for days on end, must fix his eyes on the distant firmament in order to find his bearings and regain contact with dry land. The correspondences represent the architecture by means of which the writer was able to plan out her opportunities, her relationships; in a few words, through epistolary writing she arranged a structure that allowed her to bring about the future she dreamed of. Only through letters did she manage to defeat that destiny, so often evoked in her plots as inescapable, contriving to smooth her own way towards the goals dear to her. Put otherwise, Deledda meticulously composed a veritable “castle of letters”, functional to the realisation of her dreams, both artistic and personal. [2]

To carry on with Grazia Deledda and her well-aimed editorial strategies, this exemplary quotation, drawn from a doctoral thesis defended in 2015 at the University of Cape Town, has seemed apt.

Letters, then: yes, Pirandello had seen aright when, in sketching in Her Husband the efficient and well-established publishing enterprise of the “firm” Silvia & Giustino, he had taken as his model the equally efficient and solid one of Grazia & Palmiro. But, perhaps out of an incomplete knowledge of the situation in the Deledda household, or perhaps out of no great faith in a woman’s entrepreneurial gifts, he could not imagine the extent to which Grazia had «everyone at her feet, everyone at her command»:

Palmiro even studied foreign languages in order to manage relations with his wife’s foreign publishers, and when she had to contact someone important, for instance Eleonora Duse, to whom she wished to entrust the leading role in L’edera, it was he who came forward, testing the ground like a secretary ready for anything. […] As for their sons Sardus and Franz, born a year apart at the start of the century, not only did both devotedly tend their mother’s papers, but Franz even acted as his mother’s “ghostwriter”, compiling in her stead the primary-school textbook that had been commissioned from Grazia by the Fascist Ministry of Education. [3]

To the question posed by Elisabetta Rasy, a perceptive literary critic, of how Grazia could have transformed «herself into a powerful machine for the literary career, of which her husband and even her sons became devoted collaborators» (4), it is not difficult to reply, given that the writer appears, from girlhood on, tireless, pervaded by an iron will to work and to succeed; enough to sustain –especially at the outset, but then for her whole life – a literary career that she would always keep under firm control (5).

From Nuoro she opened out to the world as early as 1888 (she was under eighteen, having been born in 1871), writing, in order to send her stories Sangue sardo and Remigia Helder , to the Countess Elda di Montedoro, who directed the Roman magazine “L’ultima moda”. The correspondence with the “Countess” continued even when Grazia discovered that this was in reality a forty-year-old man of letters bearing the still resounding but this time authentic name of Epaminonda Provaglio. Writing to him in 1892, she sketches a portrait of herself which seems to seek to break free of the conventions of the women’s papers and to become almost a calling card for a wider reading public:

I shall draw you my silhouette in two or three lines. I am twenty years old and I am dark and a little bit… plain, though not so much as I appear in the horrible portrait on the front page of Fior di Sardegna. I am a most modest young provincial lady, with much will and courage in art, but who, in her inner life, solitary and silent, is the shyest and meekest girl in the world. For the rest, however, I am not a girl like the others: I detest sentimentality, and I take life as it comes, with an almost unwitting undercurrent of scepticism and irony towards the little wretchednesses of existence. [6]

She would grow bolder still some time later when, her friendship with Provaglio now firm, she would show that she had very clear ideas about the circulation of books:

In the matter of réclame, I, you see, am very aristocratic; and I would rather have one good, reputable newspaper speak of me than a hundred little ones, just as I would rather publish a sketch in one of the former than a novel in the latter. [7]

The whole Sardinian period (she would move to Rome in 1900, after her marriage to Palmiro Madesani) is marked by tireless activity as a writer of short stories, novels and, naturally, letters.

If we wish to consider two further examples, the first comes from the correspondence with Angelo De Gubernatis, a great scholar, linguist and orientalist who had spurred her to research into popular traditions and other Sardinian matters, to whom she would send a self-portrait written in the same year, 1892, as the one sent to Epaminonda Provaglio. It will be interesting to compare them, to underline the writer’s attentiveness to her addressees:

Although I retain something wild and characteristic – perhaps the reflection of the setting in which I live, – I in no way resemble the other Sardinian girls, because, across the ring of deserted and legendary mountains that close off my horizon, I feel all the modernity of life, of the new times and the new ideals. I believe too that I have some perception of art, and I am very courageous in the life which, by inner vocation, without studies, without ever having left my small wild nest, I have undertaken. No one ever helped me, few have understood me – not even my family, who are most intelligent, – and the little I have done I have done entirely by myself. [8]

And now to the second example: he, a Roman journalist of the “Tribuna” and descendant of a noble Sardinian family, was named Stanis Manca, and in May 1891 he asked the writer for an article on Nuoro. In September Stanis and Grazia met: «I fell in love with him without having seen him – I loved him although he was the complete negation of my ideal, – a duke, fair-haired, fat». [9]

Grazia’s love for Stanis would make her as insistent, tenacious and obstinate as she shows herself, tenacious and obstinate, in winning fame for herself. He draws back, dismayed by such enterprise, unseemly and unacceptable above all in a woman. It comes to a veritable epistolary clash in August 1892, when Stanis replies to her, after months of silence, with words meant to mark, harshly for the writer, the distance between them. Grazia’s reaction is one of vehement sincerity:

See, Stanis, I have two passions in my heart, two ardent, indomitable passions, which are the pivot of my existence, my very life. They are my motto, the chivalric enterprise of my soul: Love and Glory! – Yes, I love, deeply, absolutely, exclusively, perhaps more than you do, – but together with the immense passion of my girlhood, I have the continual, tormenting, feverish dream of fame. And so I attach myself, almost unwittingly, to whoever promises to help me make a name for myself, to whoever does something for me. You had made me this promise, you had begun to fulfil it, – and I, quite apart from the personal affection I had consecrated to you, attached myself all the more to you, ever hoping in your help, counting on it too». [10]

And, after a little note from Stanis that like «the crack of a whip» has «gashed and bloodied her face», here is Grazia’s reply:

I will ask you once more why I frighten you, why my girlish ambition […] seems to you monstrous. But are you not, then, an artist? And if you are an artist, what a strange artist you are if you do not dream of raising yourself high, high, high? No, my dream is not monstrous, – it is not selfish. […] According to you, perhaps, I dream of fame for myself, only for myself, – out of a perverse and dreadful selfishness, – to acquire for myself a rank, a fortune… a highly placed and illustrious husband!… And I prostitute friendship, love, talent, everything, for my ambitious and selfish ends! […] Farewell! I want nothing more from you… nothing more: neither esteem, nor love, nor pity, nor friendship, nothing! And still less your literary help. Oh, thank you, thank you, Stanis: you have helped me enough! – I do not even ask you for secrecy… Go ahead and spread the story of my heart, make a boast of it […]. [11]

Grazia would nonetheless try to ask for the letters back, but she would never get them again: «besides, she is a judicious and practical woman and knows that in reality they compromise nothing, neither her honour, nor a possible marriage, nor her career». [12]

[1] L. Monne, Grazia Deledda. Una donna, un Nobel, Milan, Mursia, 1979, p. 79.

[2] Patrizia Linossi, Grazia Deledda epistolografa, Thesis Presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Italian Section of the School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape Town (UCT), 2015, p. 5. From the Web.

[3] E. Rasy, Tre passioni. Ritratti di donne nell’Italia Unita, preface by Paolo Mieli, BUR Rizzoli, Milan, 2011, pp. 13-14.

[4] Ibid., p. 13.

[5] «Deledda was a woman in love with literature first and with her craft afterwards; she proved capable of an attentive self-assessment, not only artistic but also economic, taking a first-hand interest in questions relating to fees and to publishing promotion. Profit and marketing seemed to her reasonable subjects, since, in their respective fortunes, literature and earnings shine forth in the Deleddian correspondence like two bordering territories». (P. Linossi, Grazia Deledda epistolografa, cit., p. 155).

[6] E. Rasy, Tre passioni, cit., pp. 54-55. The letter is dated 15 May 1892.

[7] Ibid., p. 56.

[8] Ibid., pp. 52-53.

[9] Ibid., p. 73, in a letter some years later to De Gubernatis. To Stanis, Grazia «seems a dwarf, but there and then he does not tell her so. Indeed, when he returns to Rome, he writes for the fortnightly “Vita sarda” a review of Fior di Sardegna with a profile of the writer, which then appeared in an issue of February 1892. The profile is mannered and picturesque, and, in its way, in its conventional insincerity, flattering. The girl met in the pink house appears there endowed with the stigmata of romantic charm: “pale with an aristocratic pallor, high-strung, with a smile now genial now mocking, elegantly dressed in black, with jet-black hair loosely arranged”, a ”fragile creature who, without ever having left her quiet nest, nonetheless knows, in a way that is almost astonishing, the mysteries of the human heart”». (Ibid., p. 74).

[10] G. Deledda, Amore lontano. Lettere al gigante biondo (1891-1909), edited by Anna Folli, Feltrinelli, Milan, 2010, p. 109. The letter bears the postmark of 9 August 1892.

[11] Ibid., pp. 114-115. Postmark of 16 August 1892.

[12] E. Rasy, Tre passioni, cit., p. 118.

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