Gavino Ledda

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Gavino Ledda (born December 30, 1938 in Siligo , Sassari Province , Sardinia ) is an Italian writer .

Life

childhood

At the age of 6, Gavino was taken out of elementary school as the firstborn after just a few weeks and was forced by his patriarchal father to tend the sheep on the family's pastures in Baddevrústana. Later, the father brought the whole family into the hut on the sheep pasture, and since the brother was now also used to herd the sheep, Gavino had to do all the other hard, agricultural activities on the side. At the age of 18, like almost all young people, he wanted to emigrate from the village , but his father had refused to sign, so that the minor was forced to stay.

The army as the first separation from the rule of the father

In 1958 (at the age of 20) he signed up for military service and quickly caught up with the fifth grade examination, which he was passed because the military needed as many strong young men as possible. During military service on the mainland, he was always an outsider because of his poor knowledge of Italian and poor schooling. Due to an incorrect information at the draft, he came to Cecchignola to train as a radio technician, where he was completely overwhelmed by the demands in the natural sciences. Another student helped him, however, and with his insatiable thirst for knowledge he managed to pass the exams in radio technology. Then he completed a non-commissioned officer course. Next he studied in the barracks in Rieti for the examination of the third middle school class, which he passed in Pisa in 1961 . In May 1962 he signed his departure from the army because he did not want to be the “executioner of that society” “that stands against the poor and shepherds”. Now he returned to Siligo, where he was constantly at odds with his father, who equated the desired path of learning with laziness and shirking.

Further education

So he decided to go to mainland Italy again to enroll at a boarding school in Salerno , where he also worked as an educator in order to keep costs relatively low. Because of the poor diet, he developed a duodenal ulcer and decided to cure it in Siligo, which succeeded after a few months. The next year he passed the exam for the upper classes of the Humanistic Azuni High School in Sassari, although he had only prepared himself for it self-taught. Then Ledda worked again in Siligo in agriculture. From October 1st, 1963, he drove daily to the Azuni-Gymnasium in Sassari and passed the school leaving examination there in 1964 with an average of 8 of max. 10 points. In the 1965/66 semester he began studying philology in Rome.

academic career

In 1969 he completed his doctorate at the University of Rome . From 1970 he worked at the Accademia della Crusca (Society for the Maintenance of the Italian Language) with Giacomo Devoto . From 1971 he worked as an assistant for Romance philology and Sardinian linguistics at the University of Cagliari. Until 1978 he was employed as a glottology assistant at the University of Cagliari and then in Sassari .

Freelance work on the further path of life

After his resounding success with his autobiography, Ledda was, among other things, author, director and actor in the film Ybris (1984), which also shows an excerpt from his life.

Ledda later moved back to his home village of Siligo, where he lives as a freelance writer and farmer in a house on Via Vittorio Emanuele.

In October 2005, Ledda applied to the local authorities for protection of the area around Baddevrústana, the pastureland of his childhood, as there were various types of construction and garbage dumped there. On December 17 of the same year, shots were fired at his house in the evening, which pierced the door and destroyed a display case in the corridor. Ledda, who was watching the news in front of his fireplace, was not injured. He announced that he would not be intimidated by this because he believed in justice, loved nature and asked to be respected.

In 2006 Gavino Ledda won the Premio Nonino in the literature category. The prize, which has been awarded since 1977, is given to works that tell of rural life and culture. The award took place on January 28, 2006.

For several years now, Ledda has been working on a story entitled “The gait of nature”. He is also planning a short story entitled “Il tempo del minore”, which will look more broadly at the problem of children who have been deprived of their childhood by being forced to work.

Works

Padre Padrone

Since the summer of 1970 Gavino Ledda has been writing drafts of his autobiography, and from 1972 to 1974 he worked on the final version of the story. In 1975 the first part of his autobiography was published by Feltrinelli under the title Padre Padrone . The book describes his life from 1944 to 1962. The novel was awarded the prestigious Premio Viareggio literary prize in 1975 , sold more than 1.5 million copies in Italy and was translated into 40 languages ​​- in 1978 it was published as My Father, My Lord in German. The film adaptation of the book by the brothers Vittorio and Paolo Taviani won the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 1977 . The book marked a turning point in the history of Sardinian tales - with the exception of Grazia Deledda, there is no other Sardinian author who has been read so much worldwide.

Lingua di falce

In 1977 Feltrinelli published the sequel Lingua di falce , which was translated into German in 1980 as The Language of the Sickle . The time told in this book is less long (only from 1962 to 1966), but Ledda brings in more socially critical considerations and reproduces many Sardinian stories that he had been told in the village.

Other works

  • In his avant-garde autobiographical film Ybris (1984) Gavino Ledda plays himself. The film was awarded the Premio cinema nuovo .
  • Aurum Tellus poetry collection (Scheiwiller 1991)
  • Novella I cimenti dell'agnello (Scheiwiller 1995)

literature

  • Tullio De Mauro , Due libri all'interno del linguaggio , "L'Ora", June 6, 1975;
  • Giulio Angioni , Il figlio di Abramo , in Il dito alzato , Palermo, Sellerio, 2012.
  • Maria Schäfer: Studies on modern Sardinian literature. The representation of people and landscapes in Grazia Deledda, Salvatore Satta, Giuseppe Dessi and Gavino Ledda . Dissertation, Saarbrücken University 1986;
  • Dino Manca, Un caso letterario: Padre Padrone di Gavino Ledda , in D. MANCA, Il tempo e la memoria , Rome, Aracne, 2006, pp. 33-47;
  • AM Amendola, L'isola che sorprende. La narrativa sarda in italiano (1974-2006) , Cagliari, 2007 ISBN 88-8467-356-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IMDb

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ledda, Gavino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Siligo , Sassari Province