Helsinki Celebrates Grazia Deledda 100 Years After Her Nobel Prize

(ANSA) - HELSINKI, 14 OTT - One hundred years after Grazia Deledda was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, a seminar hosted at the University of Helsinki traced the work and success in Finland of the Sardinian-born writer, the first and only Italian woman to receive this highest literary honor, and the second in the world after the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf. At the heart of the event—which inaugurated the program of initiatives in Helsinki for the 26th Week of the Italian Language in the World—was Deledda’s original poetic style, which allowed the self-taught author to establish herself among the great female voices of 20th-century Italian and European literature. Her popularity in Finland dates back to the 1920s, when the Nobel Prize and Jalmari Hahl’s translations introduced her novels to the public of the young Finnish nation. Organized by the Helsinki committee of the Dante Alighieri Society, with the support of “La Dante - Roma” and in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute and the University of Helsinki, the seminar featured presentations by Professor Giovanni Capecchi, an associate professor of Italian literature at the University for Foreigners of Perugia, in dialogue with Professor Outi Merisalo, full professor of Romance philology at the University of Jyväskylä, and with linguist Professor Enrico Garavelli of the Department of Italian at the University of Helsinki. “Grazia Deledda’s greatness lies in her extraordinary ability to transform the ancestral roots of her homeland’s civilization into a universal narrative capable of deeply resonating with the imagination of the Nordic peoples, thereby contributing significantly to the dialogue between Italian and Finnish cultures.” These were the words of the Italian Ambassador to Finland, Nicola Todaro Marescotti, as he kicked off the celebrations at the historic Italian Residence, which was acquired as part of the national heritage in 1926.
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