"After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about, and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper"
About this Quote
A Nobel-winning novelist doesn’t usually get introduced via an elementary school teacher and a stack of homework prompts, which is exactly why Deledda’s recollection lands with quiet force. The line is modest on its face - private lessons, assigned themes, a teacher’s compliment - but the subtext is about access: who gets to enter the “official” language and who has to sneak in through side doors.
Deledda grew up in Sardinia, a place culturally and linguistically peripheral to the Italian literary center. “Private lessons in Italian” isn’t just a detail; it signals a climb from local speech and limited formal schooling into the prestige language that could circulate beyond the island. The teacher being “elementary” matters, too. This isn’t a salon or a university mentor blessing her. It’s an unlikely gatekeeper, suggesting how talent in women and provincials was often recognized informally, almost accidentally, before institutions were willing to take it seriously.
The anecdote is also a miniature origin story about publication as permission. She doesn’t say she decided to publish; she says he told her to. In a world where ambition in a young woman could read as transgression, external validation becomes a socially acceptable engine. The “themes” hint at constraint - assignments, not free-ranging artistry - yet her work “turned out so well” that the constraints become a proving ground.
It’s a snapshot of craft and class at once: writing begins as exercise, becomes evidence, then becomes a claim on public space.
Deledda grew up in Sardinia, a place culturally and linguistically peripheral to the Italian literary center. “Private lessons in Italian” isn’t just a detail; it signals a climb from local speech and limited formal schooling into the prestige language that could circulate beyond the island. The teacher being “elementary” matters, too. This isn’t a salon or a university mentor blessing her. It’s an unlikely gatekeeper, suggesting how talent in women and provincials was often recognized informally, almost accidentally, before institutions were willing to take it seriously.
The anecdote is also a miniature origin story about publication as permission. She doesn’t say she decided to publish; she says he told her to. In a world where ambition in a young woman could read as transgression, external validation becomes a socially acceptable engine. The “themes” hint at constraint - assignments, not free-ranging artistry - yet her work “turned out so well” that the constraints become a proving ground.
It’s a snapshot of craft and class at once: writing begins as exercise, becomes evidence, then becomes a claim on public space.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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