Elias Portolu is an emblematic story of the head-on collision between the modern civilisation of bourgeois individualism and the archaic law of the clan which still prevails among the Sardinian people. The novel follows the story of a young man, Elias Portolu, returning to his native Sardinia from the mainland where he has spent several years in prison. His experience of prison life and the repressive methods of the new Italian state has left him uprooted. He is split between his nostalgia for a fixed value system he can become a part of — the island and its customs — and the longing to affirm his own independent personality. His discomfort develops into the tragedy of a guilt-ridden love that violates patriarchal law — that ancient and universal regulation which makes incest taboo — love of his sister-in-law. Incapable of firm resolve, (he is ‘a youth as weak and beautiful as a woman’), he does not give full expression to his emotion, but nor can he manage to overcome it, overwhelmed as he is by a dark and persistent sense of guilt, alleviated only by his eventual decision to become a priest.


The motif of the book is the portrayal of the moral battle raging in Elias’s conscience and, to a lesser degree, the battle which equally disturbs the soul of his sister-in-law Maddalena. Torn between the temptation to yield to his emotions and the terror of the ensuing sin, between the desire for good and surrendering to evil, Elias chooses to abdicate from life and proclaim his own defeat. In this way he pays for his betrayal of his homeland through unhappiness.


Like a vast mirror, the harsh Sardinian landscape reflects the protagonist’s fate, participating in the unfolding drama are the silences of the huge expanses of the tancas (fenced grazing lands), where nature accepts the sense of guilt which Elias keeps hidden from the community.


The novel has met with conflicting reviews in the years since its publication, but in this book Deledda progressed with assurance from her initial folklore-inspired work to psychological analysis, coming close to a completely mature style.

‘The women prepared lunch, as usual, leaving the carving of the lamb to Zio Portolu; however, Maddalena obstinately followed Elias as though drawn by a magic thread, and every time he raised his eyes he met hers that seemed to want to bewitch him. Suddenly they were alone. Pietro had gone to the hunt, Mattia was chasing a lamb more restless than the others and Zio Portolu went to help him.

Elias had a moment of confusion, of fear, of indescribable pleasure at finding himself alone with Maddalena; alone amidst the grasses and high flowering thistle. His heart pounded and dizzy desire whirled through her being when his eyes met those passionate and pleading eyes of Maddalena.’ p76