In this week’s Translation Tuesday, a small community’s hike to an old church becomes a sacred portrait of the pastoral in Grazia Deledda’s short story “On the Mountain.” On a cool day portending rain, our protagonist observes and participates in this exhausting climb through the fields, the woods, and finally the mountain. We can almost smell the petrichor and wet leaves of the forest, and see the ashen expanse of the clouds above the moss-covered boulders (and the Mediterranean Sea makes a brief but memorable cameo). But Deledda’s genius is not merely in the exquisite imagery of this journey; it’s also in how her attention to detail manipulates narrative time. One afternoon feels like an arduous and prolonged pilgrimage through the wilderness. Through sensory parallels and contrasts, nature almost becomes an extension of the old temple; and once their day ends, time immediately accelerates as the spent travellers descend the mountain under a newly cleared and vivid sky.
It’s a morning in August. In the vast sky, closed in by the thin broken lines of the mountain chain, turned turquoise in the distance, glide ashen clouds, like herds of fog, which vanish on strips of still limpid azure. We are on a trail that leads to the mountain, before it reaches the woods. During the night, it rained: the earth, humid but mudless, has taken on dark tobacco-colored hues; it is lined in serpent-like channels of flowing rivulets, and rows of stones that seem made of slate.
Great granite boulders, naked, burnt by the sun, end the trail. No trees yet: just huge thickets of mastic, and fields of ferns, their dentelated leaves turned yellow by the hot sun.
The people climb the trail slowly, in groups, or alone.
There are all kinds: men and women; ladies and farm women in brightly colored costumes with baskets and bundles; and children, so many children! They are all happy, and vivacious, because they are not tired yet. They all climb up and up, little by little, careful not to trip and fall, to tear their clothes, or ruin their shoes. They turn every now and then to admire the infinite landscape, and to catch their breaths.
The cool breeze, heavy with the scent of the damp underbrush, sweeps down to tousle our hair and our clothes.
And we climb, climbing always. Under the ashen sky, in the opaque light that filters down, no object, no color is varied, is brilliant: all the gradations are distinct, all the profiles are clearly defined; just a little white church, on the slopes of the mountain, seems to cast light shadows round and around.
We enter the woods: it is a forest of hundred-year-old ilex trees, enormous, that stretch their majestic boughs to the sky, luxuriously green, in a whisper that seems to challenge every other element, from the furious winter whirlwind to the blazing summer sun.
What impresses us most is the inebriating smell, which had, up to that moment, swept down lightly with the breeze. The scent is strong, almost bitter, like hay or wet soil; there are hints of cigar, coffee sizzling on a fire, wet paint, and other sweeter aromas, like burnt incense and myrrh.
How beautiful and scenic the enormous trees are with their knotted, hollowed trunks covered in moss, with their canopies which, when they meet, form a mobile vault with innumerable wavering hues that go from yellow-green to reddish-green, from pale, almost white-green to dark almost pitch-black green! Among the grey veined leaf bottoms, which vary in color with every breath of wind, hang huge boughs of ivy with their elegant leaves, soft and golden, and from these fall heavy drops of water that form tiny pools where they land.
Now the great granite boulders are swathed in a coat of moss; and the ferns are green; and a stream snakes through the reeds, intricate green lace. Now the earth is covered in tall grass and the mossy roots of trees. The horizon lies there, framed by the forest; and the light rains down from above, a hoary half-shade; and the quivering drops of water that rest on everything, oddly, glimmer, but fleetingly, but sullenly, as if they were made of bronze.
We start to tire: a child whines; the farm women in costume have untied their headscarves, flaps pushed back; the faces are flushed; and the wind has loosened the ladies’ curls.
Finally we are on the top! Forest still, but the church, which is our destination, is not among the trees, but set on arid land covered in stones, ferns, dry hay, and thickets of mastic. In front of the church, lower down, there is a white cabin, and behind it the forest.
Passing high above us in the sky is an odd cloud, elongated with red strokes running through it: it looks like a mirage in shapes that resemble domes, houses and trees. To the east, before moving into the woods again, there is another field of arid rocks, a well, a house in ruins, and boulders, boulders in granite still; then, in the distance, at the outmost limits of the horizon, almost veiled by the infinite distance, there is a pure line, drawn on the edges of the sky, a soft stroke of azure fluttering lazily, bluish-green, reflectionless. It’s the Mediterranean!
Sunbeams fall from time to time through the slivers in the blanket of clouds that cover the sky and cast golden rays on everything, rapid flashes that look like lightning.
We enter the church: it is a modest church with a dusty floor, with dusty walls, swathed in sorrowful, ashen semidarkness in which a circle of reddish light is cast by an oil lamp; the brown line of the iron railing divides the altar from the rest of the church. The steps to the altar are covered in a soft cloth turned yellow with age.
To the right, there is a small red chest and a wooden bench. The altar is not richly adorned, it, however, is clean and shiny, and on the front, shadowed by the lacy white covering, we can see two colored letters: V. M., Virgin Mary.
Above it a dark dark Madonnina smiles among withered flowers behind a pane made opaque by the partial darkness: there is a painted curtain on the wall, and flowers and decorations, all faded.
There is a moving shadow in a corner: it is that of an old man, a poor man with long, long legs, and a hunched back; it is a body in equilibrium, covered in worn grey garments.
He is praying, his large emaciated hands folded, his body rocking. A child pulls at his huge foot: he does not move. He pulls the hem of his tattered jacket, and again he does not move.
He keeps rocking. His eyes are closed: is he praying, thinking, sleeping?
We are in a cumbissia (this is what the ground-floor rooms that surround the church are called). The room is long, irregular, white. A strip of coarse yellowed linen is nailed to the window to keep the wind out; the light is soft, smoky, heavy with the warm smells of food: it is time for lunch.
We usually eat outside in the cool shade of the trees, but this time, because it looks like it will rain, we have set a table inside. The tablecloths are stretched on the floor: the plates shine as if they were filled with water; the wine trembles red in the glasses and the glass bottles; columns of warm smoke rise from the large platters filled with food. There are, among the household goods, near some white cushions that look damasked, huge watermelons of dark, shiny green with tiny yellow lines running through them, and bunches of green-gold and blue-black grapes. There are seventeen of us sitting around this democratic table: in the shadow of the door, the pale face of a child shines. She is blonde and has blue eyes—a little Madonna of sorts—while in the light, near the shiny barrel of his rifle, is the dark, unshaven face of a shepherd.
In the afternoon we dance. The sky is still ashen, and the fresh breeze passes over the trees, which sway with a sound of cascading water. All around us are tethered horses of varying colors, from black to coffee-colored: tall, elegant horses, and nags with donkey eyes, solemn and sleepy. A young man, slumped between two rocks, is playing an accordion: the notes are shrill or sad or joyful, depending on the pace. There are groups of younger and older gentlemen, and groups of farm-folk with open smiles; and a row of younger and older ladies with tall, cottony coiffures. There is a rainbow of garments, of costumes, and of shawls tied around the waist.
The dancing couples, however, are few, and the almost indistinct dust that is raised by their dragging feet is lost down below, among the thick of the trees. The sky casts a dark pallor on the faces and on the garments; there is no vitality, just a soft murmur and the sound of the accordion; and the whisper of the wind that passes high over the forest.
But every now and then a streak of trembling pinkish light shoots past: perhaps it is the reflection of the wide and gracious pink gown of a ballerina.
And we go home.
We are in the woods again: in high spirits we descend, for the day was almost tedious. The sky looks like a lugubrious bronze vault, immobile, without a sign of variation. Down from the peak of the mountain fall the last notes of the accordion, while the sad echo repeats the dark rumble of thunder in the distance. Between the slits in the foliage, we can see the mountain crests that frame the horizon; they are lashed by red streaks that cut like the blades of fiery swords, and yet it is all so beautiful, for it is veiled as if by a silvery gauze: it looks like a distant landscape in which you can only discern the black berries on the briars and the fern leaves, yellow and glass-like. The rain stops, the clouds come undone, and great strips of azure sky illumine the air.
A fiery eye appears in the distance. It is the sun among the clouds which, just before sunset, sends one last smile our way, one last glimmer so bright it looks like a shower of diamonds. Above the sky, above the forest, above the mountains, the flicker of a flame darts and enchants.
Then the sun sets, leaving behind it a luminous trail, a cloak of purple and silver.
And dusk falls with its ashen shadows: in the valley shine the fires of distant shepherds; and above the sky, where the sun’s ray dispersed the clouds, the first stars of the night appear. The horses come galloping down the mountain and disappear like brown specks. The crickets send their first monotonous tunes into the air, and the boulders, the trees, and the thickets of mastic take on the strange nebulous shapes of enormous ghosts, of ruins, of gigantic nuraghes—black and mysterious towers.
We have arrived: we sit silent and spent, wrapped in our shawls, and we look at the mountain, the valley, the horizon. The sky is limpid, the earth brown, and over all things, the first stillness of the night reigns.
Translated from the Italian by Matilda Colarossi
Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro, Sardinia on September 27, 1871. At the age of eleven her formal education ended, but she continued her studies by reading Italian, French, Russian, and English literature. She began to publish in local papers at a very young age. Although she is best known for her novels and short stories, she wrote poetry, theatrical works, essays, and articles on folklore, children’s stories, and even one translation. In 1926 she received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Matilda Colarossi is a translator, blogger, and teacher. Her translated books include Fiamma by Dana Neri, and Leonardo da Vinci Fables and Legends (MutatuM Publishing, 2018). Her work can be found in Asymptote, Lunch Ticket, Ilanot Review, Sakura Review, and Poetry International Rotterdam; her translations of poems by Marta Lo Brano are forthcoming in AzonaL. She blogs at paralleltexts.blog.
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