«Dear Director,

The Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded a hundred years ago to Grazia Deledda, was an event of extraordinary importance for Sardinia and for Italy as a whole : remembering it today helps us reflect on its roots, on the path it has taken through history, and on the witnesses who helped to illuminate it.

The citizens of Nuoro, and those of the entire island, are rightly proud of this highly original writer, who was able to speak to the world and draw universal values from her full immersion in the reality of Sardinia and from her being a woman at a time when it was difficult to overcome prejudice and break away from marginalization.

In this cordial greeting to Grazia Deledda's readers and all her fellow citizens, I would like to echo the intense yet simple words with which she publicly welcomed the Nobel Prize. A tribute to the Sardinian land, to its people, but also a desire for humanism without borders or barriers : "I have seen the dawn and the sunset, the rising of the moon in the immense solitude of the mountains, I have listened to the songs, the traditional music, the fairy tales and the speeches of the people. And so my art was formed, like a song, or a motif that flows spontaneously from the lips of a primitive poet."

Roots, as well as being lifeblood, are capable of generating culture. And, if we consider them carefully, they push us forward, to progress. They are not a brake. The life and literary work of Grazia Deledda are clear proof of this. Her "power as a writer, sustained by a high ideal" —as the Nobel Prize citation states—had as its horizon human emancipation, to which female courage and talent provide crucial resources .

Remembering Grazia Deledda, the first Italian woman to receive the Nobel Prize, we think of yesterday, but also of today. Because the voice of her novels lives on.

Sergio Mattarella

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