Whether she is tugging at the end of her intellectual tether or not remains to be seen, but her recent work has not the spontaneity and imaginativeness of her earlier books and she is almost obsessed with describing landscapes, the advent and departure of the sun, and stage-settings generally. Her last story, "The Burning in the Olive Grove," is a conflict between the present and the past, and turns upon a marriage of convention. It gives the author the opportunity to depict the imperious eighty-three-year-old grandmother, her useless brother, the farm lassie whose worldly success in marrying into a family above her station she owes to her beauty, and a pillar of feminine virtue who would live her own life in her own way despite the schemings of the grandmother of feudalistic behavior. The scene is filled with character studies which she likes so well: the old soldier of Garibaldi's legion, his lame son whom the heroine loves, and virtuous heroic peasantry.
Several of Grazia Deledda's novels have been translated into English, but they have not had great success. She is one of the last of the realistic idealizers. The most her admirers can hope that the future will do for her is that it will suggest to those in search of Sardinian color that they should consult her writings. Neither the psychologist nor the literary craftsman will disturb her literary remains.
The most promising successor of these women novelists is Clarice Tartufari, whose "Rete d'Acciaio" ("Nets of Steel") is a powerful though painful study of the Sicilian brand of jealousy.
Arturo Graf (1848-1918), for many years a professor in the University of Turin, was a materialistic poet whose productions during his lifetime were received with some favor and are now being given high rating. Fifteen years ago a very flattering review of his dramatic poems, especially "Medusa," appeared in the Nuova Antologia, and recently Signor Vittorio Gian has published in Gazetta di Torino an analysis of his mental processes and an estimate of the merit and significance of his poetical productions which, should they find general acceptance, may give Graf the most important position in the poetic field since Pascoli. Neither his intellectual reactions nor his point of view, however, is Italian. They show both his Teutonic origin and inclinations. His last verses, "Nuove Rime della Selva" ("New Rhymes of the Forest"), are full of delightful imagery, delicate fantasy, and gentle sentiment and they do not display the materialism, pessimism, or the figurative symbolism of his early works. In 1900 he published a psychological romance entitled "Riscatto" ("Redemption"), admittedly a spiritual autobiography which heralded and prepared his after-faith, which was thus also a battle for a faith against materialistic pessimism, against arid positivism which had seduced him and against which he reacted. "He who seeks God laboriously may become more religious than he who coddles Him in the firm belief of having found Him." His book of poems published in 1895 is the poet's voicings of his struggle to this end. His fame is greater as a dramatist and litterateur than as a poet. Nevertheless some of his poetical writings show a rare imagery, a facile capacity for description and versification, though a pessimistic psychology. His best-known poems are entitled "Venezie" ("Venices"), "Le Rose sono sfiorite" ("Faded Roses"), "Silenzio" ("Silence"), "Anelito" ("Longings"). Gian says of him: "He did not attain in his career as teacher, writer, and poet that outward recognition that fame and fortune usually bestow on their favorites," but as a recompense "he was honored with such hatreds as are never the lot of mediocrities and which for this very reason are the sanction and almost the guaranty of true worth."
Much of the interesting literature of the past generation has appeared in dialect, especially the poetic literature.
Salvatore di Giacomo must be put at the head of all dialectical poets of Italy. He is very little known to English readers, because he has been so little translated, save into German. He is the librarian of the National Library of the Naples Museum. The subjects of his poems are drawn from Naples and its people, its beauty and their ardency; the realism of his verse is sober, its sentiments are healthy and true to human nature but to the human nature of a voluptuous, passionate people. He writes of love in all its aspects, and of death, physical, emotional, and mental. He knows the hopes, aspirations, sympathies, longings, customs of his fellow Neapolitans; he knows them when they are ill, when they are happy, and when they are depressed, when they are fortunate and when they are seeped in misfortune, and he puts them into lyrics that they understand and that poetasters praise.
His lyrics have been collected into one volume called "Poesie." He has been called the Robert Burns of Italy, and it is likely that he deserves it. It is to be regretted that no one has attempted to render him in English.
An Italian poet neglected and almost unknown during his lifetime (1872-1919), whose literary output was very small, is slowly coming to his estate and it is not unlikely that the coming generation will hail Ceccardo Roccatagliata-Ceccardi as one of Italy's greatest modern poets. "Sonetti e Poemi" contains practically all of his verse save a small collection published when he was twenty.