Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation : Literary Cultures in Italian and English [1 ed.] 9781441129369, 9781847060037

Citation preview

Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation

Continuum Literary Studies Series Also available in the series: Active Reading by Ben Knights and Chris Thurgar-Dawson Beckett’s Books by Matthew Feldman British Fiction in the Sixties by Sebastian Groes Canonising Hypertext by Astrid Ensslin Character and Satire in Postwar Fiction by Ian Gregson English Fiction in the 1930s by Chris Hopkins Ecstasy and Understanding edited by Adrian Grafe Fictions of Globalization by James Annesley Joyce and Company by David Pierce London Narratives by Lawrence Phillips Masculinity in Fiction and Film by Brian Baker The Measureless Past of Joyce, Deleuze and Derrida by Ruben Borg Modernism and the Postcolonial by Peter Childs Novels of the Contemporary Extreme edited by Alain-Phillipe Durand and Naomi Mandel Romanticism, Literature and Philosophy by Simon Swift Seeking Meaning for Goethe’s Faust by J. M. van der Laan Women’s Fiction 1945–2000 by Deborah Philips Forthcoming titles: Beckett and Phenomenology edited by Matthew Feldman and Ulrika Maude Contemporary Fiction and Christianity by Andrew Tate Money, Speculation and Finance in Recent British Fiction by Nicky Marsh Representing Marginality in the Contemporary British Novel by Nicola Allen

Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation Literary Cultures in Italian and English

Edited by Daniela Caselli and Daniela La Penna

Continuum The Tower Building 11 York Road London SE1 7NX

80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704 New York NY 10038

www.continuumbooks.com # Daniela Caselli, Daniela La Penna and contributors 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-8470-6003-7 (hardback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by YHT Ltd, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk

Contents

Contributors

vii

Acknowledgements

xi

1

Historicizing Value, Negotiating Visibility: English and Italian Poetic Canons in Translation Daniela La Penna

1

Section I Contexts of Translation: Twentieth-Century Transactions 2

3

4

An Enquiry into Linguistic and Stylistic Features of Modern Translation into Italian Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

25

Translation and the European Tradition: The Italian ‘Third Generation’ Anna Dolfi

45

Value and Authority in Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English (1956–1992) Daniela Caselli

55

Section II Reading Communities and the Politics of Translation: Value and Visibility in Three Case Studies 5 6

7

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno Matthew Reynolds

71

Acts of Literary Impertinence: Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets Carol O’Sullivan

85

Trilussa: A Case Study in the Translation of Dialect Poetry Laurence Hooper

99

vi

Contents Section III Translation, Identity and Authority

8

9

Arsenio’s Alchemy: Notes on Eugenio Montale’s 1933 Translations of T.S. Eliot and Le´onie Adams Marco Sonzogni

115

Going after ‘La Bufera’: Geoffrey Hill Translates Eugenio Montale Sara H. D’Orazio

127

10 Translating Larkin Enrico Testa

135

11 Translation as Resurrection: Charles Tomlinson’s ‘The Return’ Thomas Day

145

Section IV Theories of Translation: Ethics and Genre 12 Translation and the Question of Poetry: Jacques Derrida’s Che cos’e` la poesia? Kate Briggs

153

13 From a Morality of Translation to an Ethics of Translation: In Step with the Play of Language Carla Locatelli

165

Notes

177

Bibliography

209

Index

229

Contributors

Daniela Caselli is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester. She has published on critical theory, modernism, and translation studies and is the author of Beckett’s Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism (Manchester UP, 2005) and of Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes’s Bewildering Corpus. (Ashgate 2008). Daniela La Penna is Lecturer in Italian Literature at the University of Reading. She has published on futurist fiction, contemporary Italian poetry, narrative and cinema, and poetic translations. She is the author of La dinamica delle fonti nell’opera trilingue di Amelia Rosselli (Carocci, forthcoming). She is currently working on a study of Anna Maria Ortese’s non-realist fiction. Kate Briggs is a Research Fellow in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Trinity College, Dublin. She is writing a book on modern theories of the practice of literary production. Her translation of Michel Foucault’s Introduction to Kant’s ’Anthropology’ (co-translated with Roberto Nigro) is forthcoming with Semiotext(e)/MIT in 2008; she is currently working on a translation of Roland Barthes’s The Preparation of the Novel for Columbia University Press. Thomas Day is a Lecturer in English literature at the University of Central Lancashire. He has published a number of essays and articles on modern poetry, and is currently writing a monograph on Geoffrey Hill. Anna Dolfi is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Florence. She has published extensively on literary theory, Italian nineteenth-century and twentieth-century fiction and poetry. Among her most recent publications: Le parole dell’assenza: Diacronie sul Novecento (Bulzoni, 1996), Ragione e Passione: Fondamenti e forme del pensare leopardiano (Bulzoni, 2000), Le parole e il tempo: Giuseppe Dessı` e l’ontogenesi di un roman philosophique (Bulzoni, 2004). She is the editor of Traduzione e poesia nell’Europa del Novecento (Bulzoni, 2004). Sara H. D’Orazio teaches at at Manchester Metropolitan University and is currently completing her Doctorate on intertextuality and translation in the poetry of Geoffrey Hill.

viii

List of Contributors

Laurence Hooper is a doctoral student in Italian Literature and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He is working on languages of exile in Dante and Pier Paolo Pasolini. He has adapted Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Orgia and Affabulazione for the British stage. Carla Locatelli is Professor of English Literature, University of Trento, Italy and Adjunct Professor of English, English Dept, University of Pennsylvania. She has published widely on Samuel Beckett, literary theory and English Romanticism. Among her publications, Unwording the World: Samuel Beckett’s Prose Works after the Nobel Prize (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) and Descrizioni e i(n)scrizioni: politiche del discorso (University of Trento Press, 1998). She has edited Co(n)testi: Implicazioni testuali, (University of Trento Press, 2000) and co-edited with Anna Dolfi Retorica e interpretazione (Bulzoni, 1994), and I silenzi dei testi e i silenzi della critica (University of Trento Press, 1996). Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo is Professor of History of the Italian Language at the University of Padua. He has published extensively on nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Italian fiction and poetry, history of the Italian language and philology. Among his most recent publications, Storia della lingua italiana: Il Novecento (Il Mulino, 1994); La tradizione del Novecento (1991, 1996, 2000, 2003), Studi su Salvatore Di Giacomo (Liguori, 2003), Gli incanti della vita: Studi su poeti italiani del Settecento (Esedra, 2003). Tra due linguaggi: Arti figurative e critica (Bollati Boringhieri, 2005). He also prefaced Giorgio Caproni, Quaderno di traduzioni (Einaudi, 1998) and Vittorio Sereni, Il Musicante di Saint-Merry (Einaudi, 2001). Carol O’Sullivan is Lecturer in translation studies at the University of Portsmouth. She has published on translation theory, pseudo-translations and on the role played by translation in the reception of contemporary Italian culture in the anglophone literary market. Matthew Reynolds is Times Lecturer in English, Oxford University. He is coeditor of Dante in English (Penguin, 2005) and author of The Realms of Verse 1830-1870. English Poetry in a Time of Nation-Building (Oxford University Press, 2001). He co-edited the translation of Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997). Marco Sonzogni is Lecturer in Italian at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has edited Or volge l’anno-At the Year’s Turning: An Anthology of Irish Poets Responding to Leopardi (The Dedalus Press, 1998) and Eugenio Montale.«Caro Maestro e Amico». Lettere a Larbaud (1926-1937) (Archinto, 2003). He is currently working on the Italian translations of Gilbert and Sullivan’s librettoes. Enrico Testa is Professor of History of the Italian Language at the University of Genoa and a poet. He has edited the anthology Dopo la lirica: Poeti italiani 1960-

Contributors

ix

2000 (Einaudi, 2005) and translated Philip Larkin’s High Windows (Finestre alte, Einaudi, 2003). He is the author of Il libro di poesia (Il Melangolo, 1983), Simulazione di parlato (Accademia della Crusca, 1991) and Lo stile semplice; Discorso e romanzo (Einaudi, 1997). Alex Marlow-Mann (Translator) received his doctorate in Italian cinema from the University of Reading in 2006 and has published essays on Italian film epics, British silent cinema, and Italian musicals. He has taught at the Universities of Reading, Cardiff and Leeds. His thesis, which focused on Neapolitan contemporary cinema, is currently being worked into a book.

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the contributors to the volume for their collaborative attitude throughout the production stages. The participants in the international conference ‘Value and Visibility: Poetic Translations Across Italy and Britain in the Twentieth Century’, held in 2004 at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, helped us to think about issues of translation from new perspectives and paved the way towards this volume; we are grateful for their collective and individual inputs. Our special thanks go to George Steiner who offered a thoughtprovoking paper and gave his support to the conference, and to Francesca Billiani, Riccardo Duranti, Alessandro Gallenzi, Penelope Johnson, Jamie McKendrick, Elisabetta Minervini, J.G. Nichols, Martina Ozˇbot, Maria Panarello, Erminia Passannanti, Peter Robinson, Gigliola Sulis, Lawrence Venuti, Shirley Vinall and James Womak. Our gratitude also goes to Alex MarlowMann for his translations and to Jonathan Hensher for his editing work. The editors and authors are grateful to the copyright holders for permission to quote poems and extracts from the following: Granta, and Ciaran Carson for Ciaran Carson, The Inferno of Dante Alighieri: A New Translation (2002); Penguin Ltd for Geoffrey Hill, ‘Tenebrae’, Collected Poems (1985), The Triumph of Love, CXXXIV (1999), The Orchards of Syon, LIII, XLVI, XXVI, VII, X, LXVI, XVI, LXVIII, XXXVIII, LVI, LV, LIV, LXXII (2002), and ‘The Storm’, Without Title (2006); Mondadori for Eugenio Montale, ‘La bufera’, Tutte le poesie, ed. Giorgio Zampa (1984), Giuseppe Giacchino Belli, I sonetti, edited by Giuseppe Vigolo (1952), and Trilussa, Tutte le poesie (1955); John Du Val and University of Arkansas Press for John Du Val, Tales of Trilussa (1990); Blossom Kirschenbaum for Fables from Trastevere: Translations by Blossom Kirschenbaum from Verses by Trilussa (1976); S.F. Vanni for Grant Showerman, Trilussa: Roman Satirical Poems and their Translations (1945); The Anthony Burgess Estate for Anthony Burgess, Abba Abba (1990); Carcanet Press for Charles Tomlinson, ‘The Return’, Selected Poems (1955); Jargon Press for The Roman Sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, trans. Harold Norse (1960); W.W. Norton & Company for Adrienne Rich, ‘Poem 5’ and ‘Poem 7’, ‘Twenty-one Love Poems’, The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978); Einaudi for Philip Larkin, Finestre alte, trans. Enrico Testa (2002); Faber and Faber for Philip Larkin’s ‘The Mower’ and for excerpts from ‘To the Sea’, ‘Old Fools’, ‘This Be the Verse’, Collected Poems, edited by A. Thwaite (1988); Marco Fazzini and Roberto Deidier for their Italian

xii

Acknowledgements

translations of Philip Larkin’s ‘The Mower’, in Fading, trans. Marco Fazzini (Grottammare: Stamperia dell’Arancio, 1994) and ‘Tre Poesie di Philip Larkin’, Il gallo silvestre 12 (1999): 18, respectively; The Italianist for Lawrence Hooper’s translation of Trilussa’s ‘L’affare de la razza’, 25:2 (2005): 280–306. Every effort has been made to trace and correspond with copyright holders. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. Daniela Caselli Daniela La Penna

Chapter 1

Historicizing Value, Negotiating Visibility: English and Italian Poetic Canons in Translation Daniela La Penna

Value and Visibility: Translation and Literary Traditions Moving away from notions such as excellence, exemplarity and prestige, contemporary critical debate has increasingly come to consider the concept of literary value as a historically determined ideological construct. This shift has entailed a theoretical redefinition of aesthetic value: once an intrinsic, immanent and self-evident feature of the canonical work, value is now thought of as a dynamic that reacts to, and is the product of, hegemonic discursive practices.1 This new focus on the political and social character of the literary canon has coincided with a progressive questioning of the social nature of the critic’s position and function both within and outside the institutions that control and disseminate knowledge. This has, in turn, led to a questioning of the boundaries and foundations of literary criticism itself. When the canon ceased to be perceived in terms of its immutability, its monolithic consistency and its untroubled identity, the function of the critic ceased to be evaluative and classificatory. In the wake of Foucault’s ‘discursive formations’, Althusser’s ideological state apparatuses and Anderson’s description of the nation as an ‘imagined community’,2 the critic’s aim is now to critique the institutionalized authority that envelops the canonical text and to analyse the tightly knit discursive webs preserving this ‘monument’ from the infiltration of the subaltern’s narratives. Among the militant critic’s compelling new tasks are the creation of the conditions under which long-excluded sections of society, and entire linguistic traditions, can voice their demands for expression, and the mapping out of the ways in which the subaltern’s narratives reject, ignore, complement or interact with hegemonic discursive practices. These novel and exciting approaches to literary historiography also shed new light on the authoritative, canonical texts of hegemonic literary traditions, enabling the critic to highlight how the economy of the canon is dialectically regulated by exclusion on the one hand and ever-widening participation on the other.

2

Daniela La Penna

The contributions collected in Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation: Literary Cultures in Italian and English seek, through the sharply defined filter of poetic translations, to reassess the cultural transactions between the Anglophone and Italian literary traditions in the twentieth century. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Italian poetry enjoyed a privileged status in the English literary system, with an abundance of translations and adaptations testifying to this presence.3 This asymmetrical relationship has changed over the centuries, and in the twentieth century, and especially in the post-World War II period, the political power of the US and, symbolically at least, Britain has been reflected in a similar position of dominance in the literary field, thus relegating the Italian poetic tradition to the subsidiary role of a repository of earlier innovations, while producing a large market for translations of American and English poetry and fiction. The second half of the Italian twentieth century, however, proved very politically dynamic in literary and linguistic terms, seeing a progressive decentralization and revision of the aesthetic, linguistic and ideological values associated with a monolingual and monological version of the canon. In this crucial historical period, Italy was characterized by an energized social mobility after the fall of the fascist regime, and by extended episodes of social unrest. These new social and historical conditions contributed to alter the literary and linguistic scenario, engendering a progressive decentralization and revision of the aesthetic, linguistic and ideological values associated with a monolingual and monological version of the canon. Even more crucially for the shape that literary studies have come to assume today, and more dramatically in political terms, the social changes which occurred in the US and Britain after World War II, have shown that – when these are reflected by the literary mirror and become object of debate within the academia – the canon is an unstable ideological formation, prone to reconfigurations wrought by fluctuations in the levels, and ownership, of the currency of cultural and symbolic capital.4 The canon’s existence lies, quite literally, within a vaster territory of non-orthodox – and in some cases, potentially subversive – linguistic utterances and textual productions. This can give a new, unexpected meaning to the words of T.S. Eliot in his 1919 ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, when he wrote: No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone . . . the existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered.5

The shift from a literary politics ruled by essentialism and grounded on immanent aesthetics towards one informed by plural notions of identity presenting diversified claims to visibility has raised awareness of the importance of historicizing value. We now need to identify the agencies contributing to value formation, the ideological stakeholders that have vested interests in genres,

Poetic Canons in Translation

3

styles, representational vehicles and grammars, and the relationships they entertain with one another. Crucial to this understanding has been the realization that the author and her work exist within a vast and complex social and cultural network which, as well as setting out the conditions for fruition, also contributes to the work’s dissemination. The role of translation in securing the transmission, assimilation and inscription of a foreign literary work in a receiving culture has been rightly emphasized by the development in literary theory which can be succinctly described as the shift from hierarchy to plurality. More specifically, over the last 25 years, a vigorous revision of traditional translation theories which envisaged the interlingual process as a seemingly transparent presentation of an existing object through an unproblematic linguistic reconfiguration, has taken place. Through its synergy with Subaltern Studies, and through the use of the analytical tools provided by deconstruction, translation has come to be seen as a powerful strategy of containment of otherwise potentially subversive textualities, above all when it is carried out within a context of asymmetrical power and symbolic relations. In her 1992 study of post-colonial translating practices, Siting Translation, Tejaswini Niranjana re-discussed the writings of Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida on translation in the light of the rapidly growing impetus of post-colonial theoretical production. Niranjana proposes a useful hybridization of translation theory with ethnography, arguing that ‘[c]aught in an idiom of fidelity and betrayal that assumes an unproblematic notion of representation, translation studies fail to ask questions about the historicity of translation.’6 The political radicalism of the arguments put forward in Niranjana’s call to historicize translation and in Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak’s contemporaneous manifesto on translation in a post-colonial context7 was quickly absorbed within translation studies, as a redefinition of the discipline had been ongoing since the early eighties. Itamar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury’s Theory of Translation and Intercultural Relations (1981), Antoine Berman’s L’e´preuve de l’e´tranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique (1984), Theo Hermans’s The Manipulation of Literature (1985) and Joseph Graham’s Difference in Translation (1985) all seemed equally concerned with the ‘trial of the foreign’ in a receiving culture and were often painfully aware, albeit to varying degrees, that translation foregrounded important ethical questions concerning the cultural construction of otherness in a literary field increasingly conceptualized as a loosely hierarchical poly-system. Often grounding their theoretical conclusions in analyses of translations of European literary texts, all these scholars helped pave the way for what Antoine Berman defined as the ‘Copernican revolution’8 in translation studies where the ‘mise en rapport’ and the ‘horizon traductif’9 steered the discipline towards a relational system in which emphasis is placed on the location of agents within the space of cultural production (whether vertically within a system, or horizontally between systems). Following renewed discussion of the role of the critic’s habitus in the politicizing of literary theory, and in the light of the developments described above, in the late nineties Lawrence Venuti called for a

4

Daniela La Penna

reconsideration of the role of the translator, and of her visibility and invisibility within the academic, social and economic contexts of cultural production. Geographically transient and historically transitory in nature, translation is an active transactional reading practice between cultures; as such, translation is a cultural activity which can be used to measure and assess the ways in which literary traditions are shaped by narratives of national identity. Most importantly, translation demonstrates how the relationships between tradition and identity condition the production of literary canons, both domestic and foreign.10 When acting as a vehicle for literary innovation in the receiving culture, translation can either propel the literary system in question towards a tipping point, or highlight its need for renewal, forcing it to reconsider its defining aesthetic factors.11 If assessed diachronically in a given literary system or between systems, the practice of translation reveals itself to be a complex process of linguistic transference which allows the cultural permutations which occur in the aesthetic, linguistic, stylistic and literary interests of the domestic constituency to become visible. These permutations are most evident in the case of retranslations, which, according to Lawrence Venuti, ‘constitute a special case because the values they create are likely to be doubly domestic, determined not only by the domestic values which the translator inscribes in the foreign text, but also by the values inscribed in a previous version’.12 The translator can align herself with the norms of contemporary translating culture or reject them, be more or less aware of the existence of a text’s translating lineage, and engage in translation as a personal decision or in response to editorial requirements. Whatever the combination of these factors, a retranslation is always evidence of a need to modernize and actualize a given text in the light of changes in the cultural discourse of the domestic constituency. In the twentieth century, the translator’s agency is regulated by the everincreasing pressures exerted by a diversified and highly competitive economic context, where publishing houses’ marketing strategies are often projected on a global scale, where the scope of copyright law is truly international, and where mass education in the Western world has brought about the need for a readable and accessible translated product for an ever-widening public. The translator’s intellectual trajectory, and the theorizations upon which the translation depends, are at once subsumed and coerced by the editorial destinations of the product. Retranslations, furthermore, can become a highly contentious product, because they bring into play the notion of competing versions in a single publishing market. In the light of the economic dynamics briefly described above, translation is now, more than ever before, considered the best indicator of the ways in which the politics of publishing and the marketing of national literatures merge and interact with one another. The translated text is finally acknowledged as the site of complex linguistic negotiations that go beyond the single agency of the translator. Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation: Literary Cultures in Italian and English is a contribution to this emerging line of enquiry.

Poetic Canons in Translation

5

Poetic Translations in Italian and English This book examines the role played by poetic translation in the cultural transactions between Italy, Britain and the US in the twentieth century. More specifically, the contributions assess the function of translating conventions and the role played by retranslations of poetic texts in the relationship between value-formation processes and the idea of a ‘poetic tradition’ in Italy, Britain and the US. The decision to focus on poetry rather than fiction stems from the realization that translations of poetry bring to the fore, more dramatically than translated prose, issues of language, register and readership. Translations of poetry are linguistic artefacts that partake in the wider dynamics of tradition and innovation at the core of the historical, cultural and social development of national literatures. Furthermore, poetic translation allows us to assess the impact of readability strategies, and makes all the more apparent the translating norms to which the translator has decided to adhere. Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the second half of the twentieth century, the following essays open up an unexplored domain as far as poetic translations from English and Italian are concerned.13 Several studies have been devoted to the examination of English and Italian poetic translations in the first half of the twentieth century. Anglophone scholarship has, in particular, investigated the role played by the translation of the Italian classics in the establishment of the high modernist tradition. Scholarly investigations have, for instance, been devoted to the relationships of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce to Dante and Cavalcanti.14 The potentially subversive role of translations of English and American literature and poetry in the supposedly culturally autarchic fascist regime has also been fruitfully analysed by scholars in Italy and abroad. Recent studies have persuasively challenged the historical picture of a fascist regime successfully implementing a watertight censorship policy against literary products coming from the Anglophone market. In particular, they have shown how some Italian publishers managed to feed their public’s appetite for foreign fiction and poetry by claiming that they were actually conducting a cultural campaign of fascist colonization, by inscribing these foreign products with ‘wholesome’ fascist values.15 Moreover, the transmission and translation of English poetry in the twenties and thirties did not exclusively obey the overarching fascist cultural ethos. The first scholar ever to be appointed to a professorship in English literature in Italy, at the University of Rome in 1932, was Mario Praz. Praz’s contribution to the understanding and appreciation of English culture in Italy would also, in unexpected ways, assist the renewal of both Italian and Anglophone poetry.16 Revealingly, his 1925 study, Secentismo e Marinismo in Inghilterra: John Donne, Richard Crashaw, was instrumental in the revival of the seventeenth-century poet instigated by T.S. Eliot and was eagerly read by Eugenio Montale, whose work exhibits more than a little resonance with Eliot’s poetry and criticism. The study of American literature and poetry would lead Cesare Pavese to pursue a renewal of language and metre in his

6

Daniela La Penna

poetry that eventually brought him to pen some memorable English lyrics, opening up a new strand of Italian poetry in English which runs from Amelia Rosselli to Giulia Niccolai and Gabriele Frasca, to name but a few.17 Despite the acknowledgement, then, that ‘Italian writing represents one of the richest strands in the history of English-language translating, one woven with the succession of trends and debates that have characterized AngloAmerican cultures’ and that ‘[o]n occasion this translating has also been decisive in the emergence of new literary styles and forms in English’,18 the relationship between literary cultures in Italian and English (especially with regard to that allegedly most ‘elitist’ of all modern literary genres, poetry) in the second half of the twentieth century has so far remained largely unexplored. This volume aims to fill this gap while also paving the way for a fuller understanding of the persistence of some distinctly high-modernist features of poetic translation in a post-war period which should, it is often suggested, have absorbed poetic revolutions within a more diffuse and pervasive post-modern game of literary allusion. The present volume addresses the role of the translation of poetry in the Anglophone and Italian contexts with a focus on the cultural agents who promoted it. It deliberately focuses on cultural operators engaging with distinct modernist agendas who had close links to the literary establishment and the institutions where culture, whether domestic or foreign, is configured, preserved and disseminated. When discussing Ezra Pound’s translations of Guido Cavalcanti’s sonnets, Lawrence Venuti argued: The remarkable thing about modernist translation is that, even though in theoretical statements it insists on the cultural autonomy of the translated text, it still led to the development of translation practices that drew on a broad range of domestic discourses and repeatedly recovered the excluded and the marginal to challenge the dominant.19

The appreciation of the legacy of these complex dynamics, which encompass social as well as cultural values and were at the core of the twentieth-century Anglophone ‘modernist’ translating tradition, is the thread that unifies the essays in this volume. Rather than developing a single thesis or seeking closure, this collection intends to provide a topology of the contentious negotiations between the cultural contexts in which the translation of poetry in English and Italian flourished in the second half of the twentieth century, by merging historical, cultural and theoretical perspectives through the analysis of select but highly representative case studies. It would have been beyond the scope of this volume to produce a history of twentieth-century poetic translation; the remainder of this essay will, however, after first illustrating how Twentieth-Century Poetic Translation identifies key issues in the century’s translating practices, attempt to map out some of the main trends and developments in poetic translation in the post-World War II period to provide a context to our case studies and, hopefully, pave the way for a fuller history of

Poetic Canons in Translation

7

translation and of the role it plays in the relations between Italian and Anglophone cultures in the twentieth century. The attempt to account for a wide array of poetic translation practices and their cultural implications is central to this volume. In the first section, ‘Contexts of Translation: Twentieth-Century Transactions’, the essays by Mengaldo, Dolfi and Caselli are historical in scope and method. Mengaldo’s contribution focuses on recurrent linguistic and stylistic problems within the history of translation; the constraints of endogenous developments in literary language are analysed in relation to poetry, opera, and film dubbing. Dolfi’s chapter analyses how the specific translating practices of a generation of poets (the so-called ‘third generation’) mediated the exchanges between different kinds of poetry in Europe and shaped literary styles. Caselli analyses how anthologies of Italian poetry in English affect not only the cultural values and literary markets of Anglophone countries (mainly the UK and the US), but also shape discourses of lyrical authenticity and cultural visibility. The contributions by Reynolds, O’Sullivan and Hooper, in the second section, ‘Reading Communities and the Politics of Translation: Value and Visibility in Three Case Studies’, concentrate on the recent translation of Dante and Roman dialect poetry into English and put to work recent advances in reception theory. Specifically, these essays question, from a variety of angles, the political and cultural implications of the inscription, in a poetic translation, of a historically located, geographically and linguistically contingent implied reader, in order to raise questions about what kind of readers are produced by translations which employ the vernacular or other variations of the standard dialect in a given literary system. The third section, ‘Translation, Identity, Authority’, contains essays by Sonzogni, D’Orazio, Testa and Day. The contributors explore instances of that peculiar typology of poetic translation that is defined as an ‘encounter between poets’, understood here not only as a translation undertaken by a poet (D’Orazio and Testa), but more widely as a complex cultural relationship, defined by peculiar triangulations with cultural mediators of various sorts (Sonzogni), and as a textual transposition of personal allegiances crucial for one’s poetical development (Day). The encounter of two poetic subjectivities through translation is assessed in terms of the linguistic and stylistic choices put forward and also understood as a dynamic act of appropriation, and rewriting, of literary history. In the final section, ‘Theories of Translation: Ethics and Genre’, Briggs and Locatelli explore the relationship between theoretical discourse and the translation of poetry, challenging the assumption that a theory of translation is a theory of untranslatability and concentrating instead on the ethical potential of translation.

8

Daniela La Penna

Marketing Italian Poetry in Britain and the US As Frank Kermode’s seminal study, ‘Institutional Control of Interpretation’,20 has established, the anthology represents the textual typology that best serves the institutionalization of canons. In the twentieth-century Italian scene, however, the anthology is also the elective vehicle for the visibility of anticanonical literary formations, as Lucia Re’s insightful 1992 essay persuasively demonstrates.21 The anthology’s modelling power on the perception and reception of new or established literary trends is usually reinforced in the case of anthologies edited in a foreign market, owing to their dependency on critical readings and formulations created in the literary system of origin. The critical and ideological underpinnings of Edoardo Sanguineti’s controversial Poesia italiana del Novecento (1969) and Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo’s highly influential Poeti italiani del Novecento (1978) have, with their emphasis on dialect poetry (Mengaldo) and on Futurist and experimental poetry (Sanguineti), shaped the most important anthologies of Italian poetry published in the last thirty years in the UK and US. Similarly, Biancamaria Frabotta’s 1976 anthology Donne in poesia and Laura di Nola’s 1978 collected volume Poesia femminista italiana laid down the core of The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present edited by Beverly Allen, Muriel Kittel and Keala Jane Jewell in 1986. In the present volume, the textual economy of the anthology as a vehicle for the visibility of Italian poetry in the UK and the US is assessed by Daniela Caselli’s contribution. In this essay, Caselli analyses how Italian poetic modernism and neo-avanguardia have been received in Anglophone culture, highlighting the ways in which the current opposition between an anti-experimentalist British late twentieth century and the focus on the avant-garde found in its American counterpart has also conditioned the penetration of Italian modern poetry into these two literary markets. As the critic herself argues, however, if the picture is looked at closely, divergences from the established paths can easily be observed. The challenge to the hegemonic cultures of the twentieth century brought about by what have been traditionally considered ‘marginal’ groups (above all, women and ethnic minorities) has given rise to growing interest in noncanonical Italian authors in English-speaking academia, especially in the US. As far as poetry by women is concerned, two recent translating projects are worth highlighting: Lawrence Venuti’s translation of Antonia Pozzi’s poetry published in 2002 and the award-winning translation of Amelia Rosselli’s War Variations by Paul Vangelisti and Lucia Re, published in 2005. The English translation of the first collection by Amelia Rosselli (1930–96), Variazioni belliche (1964), represents a notable translating achievement given the difficulty of her poetry, characterized by multilingual experimentalism and a peculiar sense of syntax and daring word-formation, in turn highly influenced by the author’s trilingual background.22 Antonia Pozzi (1912–38) had already been accorded a book-length partial translation of her posthumous work in 1955 by Nora Wydenbruck. However, Venuti’s efforts led to the emancipation of Pozzi’s

Poetic Canons in Translation

9

poetry from the established reception tradition of Italian hermetic poetry in the Anglophone world (and from related translating norms) by translating her work using styles and a typographical layout akin to those found in the American tradition of modernist women poets. Venuti’s translation of Pozzi’s work, even more explicitly than his previous work on the poet Milo De Angelis (b. 1951), is informed by the principles of his call for the translator’s visibility. As regards the English reception of Italian dialectal poetry, a case in point is, for instance, Hermann Haller’s 1986 bilingual anthology of dialect poetry Hidden Italy, followed in 1999 by his scholarly work The Other Italy: The Literary Canon in Dialect. Haller’s pioneering work has been taken further by the poet and scholar Luigi Bonaffini who has edited a multi-volume anthology of Italian dialect poetry whose first volume, Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy, appeared in 1997. Haller and Bonaffini’s agencies must be contextualized in a recent redefinition of the values attached to the canon of Italian poetry in translation that has increasingly acknowledged the undisputable multilingual dimension of the Italian linguistic system, where the standard dialect has served a primary, but not exclusive, expressive function.23 The essays by Carol O’Sullivan and Laurence Hooper in this volume critique the general tendency to favour standard English as the linguistic medium for translations in the Anglophone literary market through the analysis of translations of Italian dialect poets such as Gioacchino Belli (1791–1863) and Trilussa (1871–1950). O’Sullivan’s study of the translations of the Romanesco poet Gioacchino Belli starts by demonstrating how the poet’s supposedly low profile in English is belied by the interest he has aroused in poets and translators of the calibre of Anthony Burgess, Robert Garioch and Harold Norse. Norse’s ‘Brooklynese’, Garioch’s Scots and Burgess’s Lancashire dialects push the boundaries of a preconceived notion of appropriate literary language, demonstrating how the source text often requires a non-standard quality as well as a wider variety of lexical choices, as argued for instance by John McRae and Bill Findlay.24 Hooper’s study deals with related issues by addressing the role of translation in the reception of the Romanesco poet Trilussa in the Anglophone market. A translator of Trilussa’s poems in his own right, Hooper conducts a comparative analysis of the linguistic and stylistic choices made by the other translators of the Roman bard, Grant Showerman, Blossom Kirschenbaum and John Du Val, who used standard US English to translate the popular subject matter of Trilussa’s dialect poems. Reaching similar conclusions to O’Sullivan’s, Hooper also argues for a demotic symmetry between source and target languages, as demonstrated by his own translating praxis. Another contribution focusing on the encounter with the Italian dialectal otherness in poetry is Thomas Day’s essay, which explores translation as a theme in Charles Tomlinson’s poetry by discussing the poet’s relationship with Ligurian dialectal poet Paolo Bertolani (1931–2007). In his essay, Day provides a close analysis of Tomlinson’s address to his friend in his poetic sequence ‘The Return’ (1987). While not a translation strictu senso, Tomlinson’s sequence falls between the imitative translation and what John Holmes has defined as the metapoetic poem. Bertolani had

10

Daniela La Penna

inscribed his poet friend as a character in his 1976 Italian collection Incertezza di bersagli, thus making Tomlinson’s belated tribute all the more poignant. Day contextualizes this homage within Tomlinson’s own ideas on the ethical dimension of translation, even though Tomlinson has not translated Bertolani, as he has Attilio Bertolucci (in 1993), Giuseppe Ungaretti and several other Italian poets featured in his 1980 translation anthology. The poems in this sequence meditate on the processes of poetic translation, adding a further dimension to the act of translation as an intimate assimilation of a foreign creative universe. The recent interest spurred in the US by dialect poetry and poetry by women may be seen in parallel with the more established reception of canonical Italian figures in the Anglophone literary world. Contributions to the present volume examine the cases of Dante and Eugenio Montale. The Florentine poet held a lasting allure for English-speaking poets, as has been shown by Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff’s The Poets’ Dante (2002) and Eric Griffiths and Matthew Reynolds’ Dante in English (2005).25 In the last twenty years, alongside numerous translations of the Commedia aimed at the general public and university students, a number of translating experiments have been authored by poets who have sought to highlight Dante’s multilingual experimentalism by using non-standard English, thus aligning the English reception of Dante with the recent trend of critical reevaluation of the Italian multilingual culture of which Dante is now considered the foremost representative. Steve Ellis, for instance, in his 1993 translation of Dante’s Inferno, drew heavily on Yorkshire dialect, in order to preserve a sense of the work’s linguistic foreignness and embedded multilingualism. Matthew Reynolds’s essay in this volume focuses on Ciaran Carson’s re-translation of Dante’s Inferno and scrutinizes the Northern Irish poet’s translating strategies in terms of the inscription of a new, challenging linguistic interpretation of the Commedia within the established translation tradition of the text in both British and American culture. Reynolds also introduces the helpful notion of varifocal translation which not only accounts for the poet’s skilful circumventions of the lexical norms of standard English (preference is given to Romance words over Saxon forms), but also highlights the modalities through which Carson’s captivating translation of the Inferno endeavoured to match the most linguistically experimental and stylistically multifaceted of the Commedia’s three canticles. The personal allegiances of living poets, and translators’ individual preferences, combined with an explicit translating agenda, have all contributed towards the publication of translations of authors who enjoy a diverse standing within the Italian poetic scene of the second half of the twentieth century. A rapid glance at Robin Healey’s Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation gives a sense of the penetration of twentieth-century Italian production in the Anglophone market between 1929 and 1997. If one excludes the venerable corone of the Italian tradition (Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto) from her census of poetic works in translation, enshrined as they are in an

Poetic Canons in Translation

11

established translating tradition in English-speaking culture, twentieth-century Italian poetry constitutes a little under 200 of the 1,400 titles which form Healey’s corpus, ranging from single-authored collections to anthologies published in book form or as single issues of specialist journals. The authors who feature most prominently in Healey’s survey are Salvatore Quasimodo (1901–68), Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970) and Eugenio Montale (1896– 1981). Montale leads the field with his 26 book-length publications and 37 occurrences in anthologies. Quasimodo has 9 books and 33 appearances in collections, while Ungaretti has 6 titles and 38 appearances in anthologies. Montale in English, a recent book edited by Harry Thomas, examines the varied and sometimes surprising reception of the Ligurian poet in the Anglophone world. Since the first English translation of ‘Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato’ as a prose poem by G. B. Angioletti in T.S. Eliot’s The Criterion in 1928, numerous renderings of Montale’s poetry have been produced several times by translators such as Edwin Morgan, Glauco Cambon, G. Singh, Charles Wright, Jeremy Reed, Edith Farnsworth, Jonathan Galassi and William Arrowsmith, with pride of place going to Montale’s major collections (Ossi di seppia, Le occasioni and La bufera e altro). The poetry and prose composed in the sixties and seventies seems to have attracted less attention, even in anthologies dedicated to his work. However, a noteworthy tradition of poets translating Montale can be discerned within the great range of English translations dedicated to his work. In her contribution to this book, Sara D’Orazio analyses Geoffrey Hill’s ‘The Storm’, from his 2006 collection Without Title, as an example of a striking translation of Eugenio Montale’s ‘La Bufera’ and traces the literary bond between these two leading figures in twentieth-century poetry, from Montale’s first appearance in Hill’s The Triumph of Love (1999) to Without Title. This consistent Montalean presence in Hill’s work should not surprise: the poet who, in his 1978 lecture, defined poetry in terms of ‘menace’ and ‘atonement’ displays an affinity that goes beyond simple, cursory appreciation for the single most significant figure of Italian twentieth-century poetry.26 Both poets have used their verse to meditate on the human condition and on the possibility of redemption. D’Orazio convincingly argues that the poetic relationship established by Hill with Montale’s poetry of La Bufera, while grounded in the poet’s empathic understanding of the aesthetic values condensed in that particular collection, is also made more significant by a parallel treatment of politics in poetry. Montale, Quasimodo and Ungaretti are at the head of a solid cohort of poets who have all been honoured with at least one book-length English translation: Attilio Bertolucci, Carlo Betocchi, Nanni Cagnone, Dino Campana, Giorgio Caproni, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Milo De Angelis, Gilberto Finzi, Franco Fortini, Guido Gozzano, Tonino Guerra, Margherita Guidacci, Primo Levi, Mario Luzi, Valerio Magrelli, Dacia Maraini, Alda Merini, Giovanni Pascoli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cesare Pavese, Sandro Penna, Camillo Pennati, Albino Pierro, Antonio Porta, Antonia Pozzi, Amelia Rosselli, Umberto Saba, Roberto Sanesi, Edoardo Sanguineti, Rocco

12

Daniela La Penna

Scotellaro, Vittorio Sereni, Leonardo Sinisgalli, Adriano Spatola, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Trilussa, David Maria Turoldo, Diego Valeri, Emilio Villa and Andrea Zanzotto. However, the reasons why these poets have gained visibility in the Anglophone market can vary greatly. When assessing the actual availability of titles and volume of circulation of twentieth-century Italian literature in English translation, Healey points out that, unsurprisingly, this has been very limited. In contrast to the achievements of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino in the fiction department, and of the all-conquering Dante in the translation industry, there have been few poetic commercial successes. Considering the already restricted publishing market share enjoyed by the genre, taken into account in the numbers of copies circulated, ‘[t]he poets have fared better, but the publication of poetry in translation is often directed towards the small but consistent academic market of libraries, scholars, students and fellow poets who look to the small editions published, with subsidy, by university presses and small presses.’27 Despite the fact that the market for foreign poetry in translation can hardly be considered a profitable venture, publishing houses often trade on the established reputation and selling potential of foreign writers. For instance, the marketing of Primo Levi’s collected poems Shema (1976), translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, could count on the established reputation of the author of If This is a Man; the pulling power of the Nobel prize may account for the volume of translations of Quasimodo’s work after 1959 and of Montale’s oeuvre after 1975 with highly regarded presses such as Chatto & Windus and Bantam Press, whereas Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poetry could only find a way into the Anglophone market after he had established himself as a cinematic auteur. The use of authoritative paratextual material, as well as the use of prominent poets as translators, can also facilitate and support the publishing of lesser-known poets and can establish somewhat unexpected connections with figures who are considered essential to the twentieth-century development of Italian poetry but are less well known in the Anglophone academic and literary scene. An emblematic case in point is Ruth Feldman’s translation of Lucio Piccolo’s Collected Poems. The collection was published in 1972 by Princeton University Press with a foreword by Glauco Cambon, the American Italianist and translator, with an afterword penned by Eugenio Montale. Lucio Piccolo (1903–69) can hardly be considered a fundamental author in post-war Italian literary culture: an aristocrat and friend of Leonardo Sciascia, his collections of poetry were nevertheless praised in Italy for their precious and unusual vocabulary, and appeared at a time when the baroque was beginning to be understood as a postmodern game of allusions. The promotional use of the authoritative paratext can be employed by both high-volume and more specialized presses: for instance, when the Poems of Camillo Pennati, a distinguished translator of English poetry (Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn, Jacquetta Hawkes and Ted Hughes), were translated in 1964 by Peter Russell for the London Keepsake Press, they were issued with an

Poetic Canons in Translation

13

afterword by Salvatore Quasimodo. Guido Gozzano’s collected poems The Man I Pretended To Be, a select anthology of one of the most prominent exponents of Italian crepuscolarismo, published by Princeton University Press in 1981 (translated by Michael Palma), was accompanied by an essay by Montale. The reception of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poetry in the American market also exemplifies the use of paratext. The first book-length translation of Pasolini’s Poems was by Norman MacAfee (with Luciano Martinengo) for Random House in 1982. The choice of translator was most apt. MacAfee had already translated Pasolini for various anthologies, and his work had been the recipient in 1979 of the prestigious Renato Poggioli Translation Prize. In addition to this, the collection Poems benefited from an afterword by Enzo Siciliano, a long-standing commentator on Pasolini’s work and a household name in Italy. A smaller, specialized press like the San Francisco-based City Lights Books could adopt similar strategies: Pasolini’s Roman Poems, published in 1984, were translated by beat poet and editor-in-chief Lawrence Ferlinghetti together with Francesca Valente, but were issued with a preface by Pasolini’s friend Alberto Moravia who, together with Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, can be considered the Italian novelist most translated into English. Perhaps the most prolific and renowned translators of Italian poetry into English are Allen Mandelbaum, Ruth Feldman and Paul Vangelisti, all published and critically recognized poets. Allen Mandelbaum, with six volumes of poetry to his name, and an emeritus professor of Italian literature at the Graduate Center of the University of New York, is, of the translators mentioned above, the operator who has most consciously worked within the august boundaries of the classical and high modernist canon. A translator of Dante’s Commedia in verse (Inferno of Dante 1980; Purgatorio of Dante 1982, and Paradiso of Dante 1984, all published by Bantam Books) and of Homer, Virgil and Ovid, he translated Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Vita di un uomo in 1958, a version which has been reprinted several times since, and Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo in 1960. A personal predilection for mystical poetry and for a faithful rendering of the limpid clarity of the classics led Mandelbaum to produce a translation of David Maria Turoldo’s work in 1993. Turoldo (1916–92), a radical Catholic priest who had for many years been out of favour with the Church, might be considered an odd choice; however, on closer inspection, the aesthetic values conveyed by his poetic development fit in perfectly with Mandelbaum’s own agenda. Turoldo’s verse, although underpinned by a controversial theology, sounds simple and timeless because of his dependency on the Bible, from which Mandelbaum himself has on occasions derived his own inspiration for his modernist poetics. Mandelbaum has served as a translator of many other Italian poets, and his renderings have appeared in numerous anthological outlets. Also the author of translations of Mario Luzi (1914–2005) and Giovanni Giudici (b. 1924), his predilection for nonexperimental poetry and his endorsement of the value of communicability are confirmed and further strengthened by the three-volume anthology of his verse translations, which carries, quite pertinently, a title evocative of Dante:

14

Daniela La Penna

Convivio: From Modern Italian Poetry (forthcoming, University of California Press). Similarly, Ruth Feldman’s translating choices display a predilection for a seemingly simple, communicative Italian poetic diction, although this preference does not determine her translating agenda in any exclusive way. In fact, Feldman has a repertoire that is more varied than that of Mandelbaum, and less closely identified with the canon. As a translator of Italian poetry, her name is inextricably linked to that of Primo Levi (1919–87), whose poetry is threaded through with the questioning of the very presence of God while closely linked to the memory of Shoah. A Jewish poet, herself sensitive to issues of troubled religiosity in the post-Auschwitz world, Feldman has engaged with poets who deal with the problem of the divine absolute, such as Margherita Guidacci (1921–92), a poet close to the Italian hermetic school who has herself translated Feldman into Italian, and selections of whose work Feldman has translated twice (A Book of Sybils in 1989 and Landscape with Ruins in 1992). Furthermore, as has already been seen, it is to Feldman, in partnership with Brian Swann, that the American and British public owe the translations of lesser-known figures such as the Sicilian poet Lucio Piccolo. Feldman’s translations, some of which first appeared in journals, prompted the circulation of Piccolo in the Anglophone market. His poetry has subsequently been translated by, among others, Charles Tomlinson.28 This penchant for a complex and uneasy mixture of alleged naturalness and formal expressionism achieves its most distinctive form in Feldman’s translating experiments with Italian poets who are usually connected by way of their opposition or adherence to the aesthetic values promoted by hermeticism. Some of the poets who can be grouped under this term had been published in English translation in various anthologies since the late fifties, a mode of transmission which contributed to the shaping of British and American perceptions of contemporary Italian poetry at this time.29 For example, her translations from Rocco Scotellaro (who criticized hermeticism for its aloofness and lack of communicability) and Vittorio Bodini (a distinguished translator of Spanish poetry and academic, who was extremely close to the theorists of Florentine hermeticism) encapsulate this contradictory predilection but are unified by their shared exploration of a magical, barbaric Italian south. In collaboration with Brian Swann, Feldman translated the Tricaricoborn Scotellaro (1923–53), who had already been translated by Cid Corman in 1962 and by Paul Vangelisti in 1976, in The Dawn is Always New (1980), and the Pugliese Bodini (1914–70), who had been translated by Thomas G. Bergin in 1963, in The Hands of the South (1980). The groundwork for this exploration of the work of poets whose diction dips into the lower registers of both standard Italian and dialect was laid by Feldman’s long-standing engagement with one of the most linguistically complex poets of the second half of the Italian twentieth century, Andrea Zanzotto (b. 1921), who also went through an early hermeticist phase, and whose selected poems she first translated, again with Swann, in 1975. Her commitment to Zanzotto’s work led her to translate, with

Poetic Canons in Translation

15

John Welle, Zanzotto’s Filo`, a suite written in Friulan dialect, as Peasant’s Wake for Fellini’s Casanova and Other Poems in 1997 for Illinois University Press, an edition that placed both the dialect and the standard Italian originals alongside the translations. Paul Vangelisti’s translating repertoire is located firmly within the Italian experimentalist and anti-hermeticist tradition. Vangelisti’s work as a translator is characterized by the exploration of the networks of solidarity that are typical of transnational avant-garde movements, since for a long time he worked outside academic circles, operating within the relationships of poetic affinity and dialogue between contemporary poets. Vangelisti’s career as a translator of Italian poetry started with an author whose work falls firmly within shadows cast by Montale and, like that of Ungaretti, is heavily influenced by the personal experience of war, Vittorio Sereni (1913–83). Sereni, translator of William Carlos Williams (1957), had seen several translations of his work into English: Peter Robinson published the latest translated collected works of the Luino poet in 2002. Vangelisti’s chapbook translation of Sereni’s Poems in 1971 also began an enduring collaboration with the Californian Red Hill Press, with which Vangelisti has published most of his poetic translations. After Sereni, all Vangelisti’s choices have been experimentalist in scope and nature: from Scotellaro’s The Sky with its Mouth Wide Open (1976), to the translation, in the same year, of visual artist Franco Beltrametti’s Another Earthquake, to his longstanding fascination with the work of Antonio Porta (1935–89), a member of the Novissimi group and also an Italianist at Yale, whose work Vangelisti has translated twice (As If It Were a Rhythm, 1978, and, with Anthony Baldry and Pasquale Verdicchio, Invasions and Other Poems, 1986).30 Noteworthy in this respect is Vangelisti’s commitment to one of the most uncompromising Italian avant-garde artists, Adriano Spatola (1941–88), a former member of the Gruppo 63, and a poet who combined visual as well as typographical devices in order to promote the phonic dissolution of the word. Vangelisti translated Spatola’s Diversi accorgimenti (Various Devices) in 1978, in 1982 he co-edited with the author Italian Poetry: 1960–1980: from neo to post-avanguardia and in 1993 he edited and translated Material, Materials, Recovery of for Sun and Moon Press. The translation of visual and concrete poetry, an experiment begun with Spatola, continued in 1989 with the editorship of Foresta Ultra Naturam, containing verses and drawings by Emilio Villa, Giulia Niccolai and Luciano Caruso. It comes as no surprise, then, that Vangelisti co-translated, along with Luigi Ballerini, Dick Bradley, Michael Moore and Stephen Sartarelli, the anthology-manifesto of the first incarnation of the neo-avanguardia movement in Italy, Novissimi: Poetry for the Sixties, for Sun and Moon Press in 1995. To date, however, Vangelisti’s tour de force has been the translation, with Lucia Re, of Amelia Rosselli’s War Variations. Amelia Rosselli, herself a translator of Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Paul Evans, had participated in the founding conventions of the neo-avanguardia and was included in the early Gruppo 63 anthologies. The translation was published in 2005, and was the recipient of the 2006 Pen-America Prize for best poetic translation.

16

Daniela La Penna

When the body of work by Mandelbaum, Feldman and Vangelisti is considered together with the activity of J. G. Nichols, Jonathan Galassi and Peter Robinson,31 to name just a few, the corpus of twentieth-century Italian poetry in English translation, and above all the set of complex and dialectical motivations that govern aesthetic choice, ideological commitment and translating norms, seem to adapt only reluctantly to what Emily Apter has recently defined as the ‘internationalised aesthetics that gives special treatment to translationfriendly prose and artistic genres’.32 These considerations should, then, compel the critic to reconsider the role of poetry when assessing the factors that have historically conditioned the dynamic between domestication and foreignization in the British and American translating tradition.

Translating Contemporary English and American Poetry in Italy The role of the translation of foreign poetry in modernizing Italian literature has been a cause ce´le`bre since the early nineteenth century, when Madame de Stae¨l famously urged Italian intellectuals to translate modern European poetry in the hope of energizing a tradition ossified in its imitative approach to the classics.33 Italian attitudes towards translation have since changed so dramatically that the twentieth century may be defined as the ‘century of translation’. If, at the beginning of the twentieth century, French poetry was still at the centre of the Italian canon of foreign poetry with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme´ and Verlaine, things began to change noticeably during the thirties, with the tightening of fascist censorship control over the major publishing houses. The foreign poetry in translation on offer during the fascist years was at first circulated mainly through poetic anthologies and specialized reviews and magazines. As shown by Anna Dolfi’s contribution to this volume, the generation of poets active during the fascist regime who utilized a precise yet highly allusive poetic style which came to be called hermeticism assigned great value to poetic translation, and interpreted their translating activities, in some cases, as a veritable act of resistance against fascist oppression. Anna Dolfi’s essay constitutes a genealogical enquiry into the cultural and historical contexts in which poetic translations in the thirties and forties were produced. Her analysis is sensitive to an idea of translation which conceptualizes the act as a conflictive site in which wider cultural and historical echoes come to be inscribed in domestic aesthetic configurations. Her essay focuses on the poetic translations of the ‘third generation’, a group of poets whose translating efforts shaped the perception of foreign poetry in Italy before and after World War II. Analysing, among others, Oreste Macrı` and Piero Bigongiari’s theories of translation, Dolfi reveals how, in the third-generation poets, anti-fascist sentiments and a modernizing impetus intersect with a rather pre-modern belief in poetical archetypes which transcend the letter of the text. This pre-

Poetic Canons in Translation

17

modern, essentialist and immanent belief conditioned the hermeticist canon of foreign poetry, favouring the French and Spanish symbolists over English and American modernism, which appeared too compromised with realism and polyphony. The poets who had been most active as translators during the first half of the century, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Salvatore Quasimodo, attached great importance to their translating activities and considered the translated poem as part of their own repertoire. It was for this reason that these two poets inaugurated the tradition of publishing quaderni di traduzioni (translation notebooks), which they included in their self-edited Complete Works. However, when one looks closely at their choices of poetry in English, marginal yet significant changes between the two emerge. Ungaretti, for instance, was attracted to the classic canon of English poetry: in his 1936 Quaderno di traduzioni the only modern English-speaking poet is Eliot. He went on to translate a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets (1942, 1946), and in 1965 he published Visioni di William Blake.34 Shakespeare also features prominently in Quasimodo’s oeuvre, as the Sicilian poet translated several of the Bard’s plays in verse. However, he also translated e.e. cummings in 1958, inaugurating the reception of this poet in Italy.35 In both Ungaretti and Quasimodo, as would later be seen with Eugenio Montale and others, certain constants of verse translation apply. The general tendency, as pointed out in this volume by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo’s essay, is to domesticate foreign metrical structures, and all forms of parallelism, within a recurrent set of Italian predilections which, de facto, constitute the defining linguistic and stylistic features of literary translation into Italian. In his study, Mengaldo analyses recurring linguistic choices made in translations into Italian, looking at a range of examples spanning film and novel titles, opera libretti and poetry originating from the French, German, Russian and Anglophone cultural systems. His essay proceeds to scrutinize the role of domestic traditions in determining the stylistic and rhythmic features of foreign poetry in translation. He argues convincingly that, within the Italian literary setting, the process of poetic translation throughout the twentieth century is characterized by two stable features, which are intimately linked to the stylistic nature of Italian poetic language. The first of these is lexical in nature: the tendency to avoid any kind of repetition and to favour instead variation. The other concerns metrical and some syntactic elements: the increased use of enjambement when translating lines containing whole sentences. This latter feature can be considered a prominent constant of twentieth-century poetry in English, together with a strong preference given to the coexistence of low and high registers. One of the reasons adduced by Riccardo Capoferro, in a recent survey of Italian anthologies of poetry in English, for the belated and very partial reception of T.S. Eliot in Italy, and especially of The Waste Land, is precisely this daring mixture of styles which, somewhat ironically, the poet drew from his reading of Dante’s major work.36 It was the act of translating some of T.S. Eliot’s poems, as well as a consonance between the American’s theory of the objective correlative and

18

Daniela La Penna

Eugenio Montale’s own poetics, that would in some ways determine the first phase of the Ligurian’s stylistic development. Eugenio Montale was the poet who would dominate Italian poetic production for more than thirty years. The first edition of his Quaderno di traduzioni (1948) includes translations from Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot. In the present volume, Marco Sonzogni’s essay analyses Eugenio Montale’s translations of T.S. Eliot and Le´onie Adams’ poetry, arguing that, despite their different standing in the Anglophone poetic canon, they each played a crucial role in the development of Montale’s poetic language. These ‘refashionings’, produced in 1933, are central to Montale’s transition from his de´but collection, Ossi di seppia (1925), to his second collection, Le occasioni (1939). Drawing on his first-hand consultation of unpublished letters and notes by Montale, and the recently published correspondence between Montale and his American ‘muse’, Irma Brandeis, Sonzogni is able to shed light on the role played by these translations in Montale’s own development as a poet, connoisseur and promoter of American poetry in Italy. It was this central role that Montale attributed to translation, and particularly translation of English-language poetry, that would determine a lasting shift in the Italian canon of foreign poetry in translation, which was reinforced by the new poetry produced in the wake of the neo-realist revolution in content and style which had taken place in narrative from the forties onwards. The experience of World War II affected the Italian reception of poetry in English, determining in significant ways the emergence of an antagonistic poetic style, colloquial, less cryptic, more syntactically plain than that adopted by the hermetic school. An event that can be considered crucial in this respect is Fernanda Pivano’s translation of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology (retranslated by Antonio Porta in 1987) commissioned by Cesare Pavese for the Turin-based Einaudi, and published in 1943. The ideological, anti-establishment connotations embedded in the translation of innovative foreign poetry from Anglophone shores were further enhanced in the sixties by the poets of the neo-avanguardia, with their emphasis on an intensely experimental and modernist anti-canon. The poetic translations of the neo-avanguardia were essentially carefully aimed attacks on the foreign canon in translation: authors were selected on the basis of their ideological urgency and their political stance in the source literary establishment. The neo-avanguardia poets, both as translators in their own right and in their capacity as in-house intellectuals commissioning translations, promoted stylistic revolutionaries such as Dylan Thomas, while also creating interest in the poetic output of the high modernist canon in English. The predilection for poetry produced, in certain cases, some thirty years earlier, signals the contradictory and belated nature of the Italian neo-avanguardia experience. For instance, Samuel Beckett’s English poetry was translated by the poet Juan Rodolfo Wilcock in 1964; James Joyce’s poetry was translated by Edoardo Sanguineti, Alfredo Giuliani, Adriano Rossi and Wilcock for the edition published by Mondadori in 1961. Giuliani also translated Dylan Thomas’s poetry, and some of his translations were included in his collection Il cuore zoppo

Poetic Canons in Translation

19

published in 1955. Elio Pagliarani translated Black Mountain poet Charles Olson’s The Distance in 1967 for the Milanese Rizzoli.37 Possibly spurred by the neo-avanguardia revival of the high modernist canon, Mario Praz translated T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in 1965 for Einaudi, while Ezra Pound’s Cantos were translated by the poet’s daughter Mary de Rachelwitz in 1970 for Mondadori. In reaction to the militant use made of translation in the sixties, in subsequent decades poetic translation was monumentalized, with a new recognition that poets’ exercises in translation were worthy of consideration as works in their own right. Resuscitating an editorial venture started in 1958 by the small-scale specialist Milanese publishing house Scheiwiller, which launched a series entitled ‘Poeti stranieri tradotti da poeti italiani’ which was significantly inaugurated by the volume T. S. Eliot tradotto da Eugenio Montale, one of the major Italian publishing institutions, Einaudi, has published several auto-anthologies of foreign poetry in translation, and in these English and American poetry feature prominently. The editorial project was masterminded by the poet and translator Franco Fortini and by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo. The volumes published are the following: Sergio Solmi, Quaderno di traduzioni (1969 and 1977); Vittorio Sereni, Il musicante di Saint-Merry (1981); Franco Fortini, Il ladro di ciliege (1982); Giovanni Giudici, Addio, proibito piangere (1982); Mario Luzi, La cordigliera delle Ande (1983); Giorgio Caproni, Quaderno di traduzioni (1998); Edoardo Sanguineti, Quaderno di traduzioni: Lucrezio ShakespeareGoethe (2006). Among these high-profile poets, Giovanni Giudici is the cultural operator most committed to his role as a mediator between the Italian reading public and anglophone poetry. With two auto-anthologies of translated verse (A una casa non sua: Nuovi versi tradotti was published in 1997), he has worked on the American canon (Emily Dickinson, Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, John Crowe Ransom, Sylvia Plath) and its English and Irish counterpart (John Donne, John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Graves). The translation of English-language poetry in the late seventies and eighties was also conditioned by two concomitant factors, namely the claim to visibility of poetry by women, and an increasingly dialogical turn in Italian lyric poetry, and this led to the publication of non-canonical – in the modernist sense – contemporary poets. As a result of the latter tendency, the works of poets such as Ted Hughes (the most notable translations of his work being those of Camillo Pennati in 1973 and Nicola Gardini in 2000 and 2008), Thom Gunn (translated by Pennati in 1968 and Luciano Erba in 1979) and Philip Larkin, among many others, began to be translated. In the present volume, Enrico Testa provides an insightful contextual analysis of the linguistic and metrical strategies that he and other translators of Philip Larkin’s works have adopted. The linguistic texture of Larkin’s poetry is assessed, taking into account the ways in which imagery relates to the phonic structure as well as to the rhythmic patterns emerging in the individual poems. The refashioning of Larkin’s poetry into Italian is characterized by a profound awareness of the dialogic and

20

Daniela La Penna

generally narrative turn taken by Italian poetic language over the last twenty years, which Testa himself has helped map and assess.38 In this light, the poet and scholar compares and contrasts his own version of Larkin’s ‘The Mower’ with Marco Fazzini and Roberto Deidier’s translations. By doing so, Testa is able to extract the different translating strategies, highlight the metrical, rhythmic and phonic implications and assess them within the context of the development of Italian poetic language in its post-experimentalist phase. During the seventies in Italy, the dialogical and narrative development of poetic forms, together with an explicitly political agenda, fostered the translation and circulation of a feminist canon of poetry in translation in which the ‘confessional’ mode is prevalent. However, the feminist revolution had also spurred a re-reading of the history of the reception of some key female figures, and in Italy the reception of Emily Dickinson is a case in point. With single texts translated by, among many others, Montale and Novissimo poet Alfredo Giuliani, a book-length translation of Dickinson’s poetry was first published in 1947 by Margherita Guidacci, an edition which would be reissued in 1961, 1979, 1993 and 2004 with different presses. In the seventies, Dickinson’s work was retranslated and edited in collections which, unlike the mystic reading of Guidacci’s translation, place the emphasis on her feminist credentials, as was the case, for instance, with Barbara Lanati’s translation, issued in 1977 with an essay by communist intellectual Rossana Rossanda. At the contemporary end of the feminist spectrum, a number of American women poets have been eagerly translated in the light of the emergence of women’s studies as a sub-discipline of English and American studies taught in university institutions. Sylvia Plath’s poetry was translated by Giovanni Giudici in 1976 and Raffaella Morisco and Amelia Rosselli in 1985. It is interesting to note that both Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath figure as the only women poets in the highly esteemed Mondadori series I Meridiani, whose prestige usually implies canonical status in Italy (Dickinson in 1996 and Plath in 2002). In the late nineties, the feminist canon of poetry in translation also included Anne Sexton, with two volumes published under the editorship of the poet Rosaria Lo Russo (Poesie d’amore, 1996, and Poesie su Dio, 2003), and Adrienne Rich, whose Cartografie del silenzio, translated by Maria Luisa Vezzali, was published in 2000 by Crocetti. The cultural hegemony of American culture over the last twenty years has not failed to influence the availability of translations of English-language poetry in Italy. The latest Italian publishing ventures in poetry in translation include, for instance, poet and translator Elisa Biagini’s anthology Nuovi poeti americani (Einaudi, 2006) and the multi-volume Mondadori anthology edited by Luigi Ballerini and Paul Vangelisti, Nuova poesia americana, which, with volumes on poets based in Los Angeles (2005) and San Francisco (2006), concentrates on and emphasizes poetry produced in urban centres, thus aiming to market American poetry in a format more agreeable to Italian polycentrism while at the same time providing a more fragmented and therefore more accurate portrait of the contemporary poetry of the United States.

Poetic Canons in Translation

21

The Translation of Poetry and The Problem of Theory Although the twentieth-century Italian literary scene has proved to be highly receptive towards foreign literary innovations and the Italian book market has been moulded by its enthusiasm for English-speaking cultures, Italian scholarship on translation has shown a characteristic reluctance to incorporate and react to the international theoretical impetus in the field which has been accumulating since the seventies. Instead, Italian studies on translation have remained attached to the strong traditions of historical linguistics and stylistics. For instance, Benvenuto Terracini’s Il problema della traduzione (first published in Spanish in 1951, then in Italian in 1957) is imbued with the principles put forward by Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of translation, Hugo Schuchardt’s methodology of historical and cultural enquiry and Charles Bally’s historical stylistics. Yet Il problema della traduzione foregrounds the ‘conflict of cultures’ with a poignancy whose full implications would be developed by translation theory in a post-colonial world. Terracini’s study, as well as Gianfranco Folena’s Volgarizzare e tradurre (1973 and 1991), demonstrate that a historicist approach to translation in Italy can be fruitfully read in relation to theory. More recent studies, devoted to contemporary cultural history, such as Alberto Cadioli’s Letterati editori (1995), Gabriele Turi’s Storia dell’editoria nell’Italia contemporanea (1997) and Luisa Mangoni’s Pensare i libri: La casa editrice Einaudi dagli anni trenta agli anni sessanta (1999), have included in their analysis less prominent but nevertheless essential professional figures in the publishing market, such as freelance and in-house translators, thus conferring visibility upon ideological and cultural dynamics that are also central to any theoretical investigation of translation. Another reason for this neglect of translation theory in Italy may be traced back to Benedetto Croce’s towering and enduring influence over the interdisciplinary junction between literary studies and philosophy of language. His idealistic philosophical system led him and his followers to deem worthy of investigation only that which was ‘peculiar’ and ‘pure’ in a work of art. In his Aesthetic, the philosopher explained that ‘the irreducible variety of the forms of expression corresponds to the continual variation of the contents’. A necessary corollary of this premise was the ‘relative possibility of translations’.39 Subsequent Italian scholarly reflections on the theory of translation have been largely derivative and limited in scope compared to the wealth of thoughtprovoking contributions originating from France (Berman, Meschonnic, Derrida, de Man), the UK (Steiner, Baker, Hermans, Bassnett and Lefevere), Germany (Wilss, Apel), the US (Venuti), and India/South Asia (Niranjana, Spivak). The essays closing this volume reflect the international breath of translation theory, by looking at the relations between translation, poetry and ethics. Kate Briggs’ contribution focuses on Jacques Derrida’s essay ‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’ (‘What is poetry?’) which first appeared in the Italian monthly magazine Poesia in 1988 and has subsequently always been published together

22

Daniela La Penna

with the French original. Briggs’ analysis of this text takes as its starting point Philip E. Lewis’ perceptive analysis of the challenges that Derrida’s daring philosophical language poses for the translator.40 Briggs achieves this by establishing the context to the philosopher’s long-standing interest in the paradoxes of poetic translation and in theoretical production concerning the plurality of meaning and the presumed stability of the word. The critic draws parallels between Derrida’s text, Walter Benjamin’s influential 1923 essay ‘The Task of the Translator’, published as a foreword to the German translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens, and Ezra Pound’s theory of translation, as set out in the poet’s numerous essays on his own poetic and translating praxis. Carla Locatelli’s essay highlights the challenges posed by the act of poetic translation in contemporary critical discourse, and develops a theory which distinguishes between a morality of translation and an ethics of translation, to conclude by laying down an epistemological and ethical challenge. Locatelli takes into account the shifts from oeuvre to texte, analyses the implications of ‘the task of the translator’ and dissects the notions of ‘equivalence’ and ‘visibility’. Her contribution aims to challenge the now fashionable equation of theory with rabid and uncritical anti-humanism; to redress this, Locatelli argues in favour of the ethical potential of translation as a practice. By making this case, this last study renders explicit – through its exploration of theory and its consequences – what other contributions in this volume show by means of textual, historical and linguistic analysis: namely, that essential to the dynamics of the translating act is the recognition and implicit celebration, on the one hand, of the heterogeneous discursive practices involved in twentieth-century literary praxis and, on the other, of the continuous structural adjustment of domestic literary values to the challenges posed by foreign literary and interpretive communities. The appreciation of these elements, both in theoretical production and in textual criticism, can only reinforce our understanding of the exciting, if not unproblematic, porosity of the literary systems involved in cultural transactions.

Section I Contexts of Translation: Twentieth-Century Transactions

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 2

An Enquiry into Linguistic and Stylistic Features of Modern Translation into Italian Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

In this chapter I will follow two lines of enquiry. I will touch on phenomena that concern translation into Italian in general and can indeed be considered ‘universal constants’ of translation: the rendering of words which testify to different, albeit neighbouring cultures, such as characteristic idioms, various types of proper noun, and allocutive and formal pronouns. And I will focus upon my own area of expertise (the history of the Italian language) and use examples from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century intellectual debates, cinema, opera libretti and contemporary poetry, referring to French, English, Russian and Latin translations into Italian in order to identify central constants in the translation of poetry in recent years.

Words and Civilizations In the course of the first great meeting between the intellectual cultures of France and Italy in the late seventeenth century (the so-called Orsi–Bouhours controversy) it became clear to Italians that Italian words such as genio or ingegno were insufficient to render the French terms esprit and ingenium (or its near equivalent ge´nie). It is no accident that Gianbattista Vico, in a passage from De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, recently discussed by Elisabetta Graziosi, mentions this very separation between ‘esprit’ and ‘ingenium’, which constitutes much more than a merely connotative difference.1 To be more specific, given the frequency with which ‘esprit’ appears in the works of, say, Pascal or La Rochefoucauld, one begins to wonder whether its translation should not tend more towards the meaning of intelletto (‘intellect’) or sensibilita` (‘sensibility’). In another example from the same linguistic and chronological sphere, meanwhile, a question of historical semantics is at stake. In one of his many admirable variations on the evangelical episode of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, Pascal refers, in a phrase that is as powerful as it is brief, to ‘Je´sus dans l’ennui’.2 The most recent Italian editor, Carlo Carena, realizing that something other than the simple substitution of the Italian word noia

26

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

(boredom) was required, renders it as ‘Gesu` nel tedio’. However, I suspect that the meaning of ennui here is the primitive one, essentially close to the old Italian meaning of noia, in other words anguish, desperation, de´tresse. It is the same meaning that persists in a great line by a contemporary and kindred spirit of Pascal, Racine, in his Be´re´nice: ‘Dans l’Orient de´sert que devint mon ennui.’ These two brief seventeenth-century examples lead me to an even more crucial point in interlinguistic relations, which can be observed even between languages with a close and long-standing cultural and historical relationship, that is, that of characteristic idioms. Here the pie`ges open wide at every step, and lazily literal versions can result in misleading or frankly comical effects. To zoom forward in history and think about a different cultural context, some years ago a film by the great French director Claude Sautet was released under the title Un cuore in inverno (‘A Heart in Winter’), although winter had nothing to do with the story. The explanation is not that the Italian title hints at some other, obscure meaning, but rather that the phrase was a passive version of the French title Un Coeur en hiver, which can be taken to mean ‘a heart as cold as ice’ (Giuseppe Cassola would have said ‘un cuore arido’ (‘a barren heart’)). This is not an isolated case: Franc¸ois Truffaut’s wonderful first film has always been distributed in Italy under the title I quattrocento colpi (‘The Four Hundred Blows’), a senseless and servile calque of the French expression faire les quatre cents coups, which means ‘to sow one’s wild oats’ or ‘to get up to no good’. A fine novel by Georges Simenon, however, was recently translated into Italian under the title La pioggia nera. This is a good choice because it suggests the novel’s context and atmosphere, whereas the original Il pleut berge`re . . . , which alludes to a popular French song, would have been unclear if rendered literally. At a certain point in the novel, though, during a difficult family discussion around the table the Italian translation reads Passo` un angelo, an opaque and incomprehensible expression if taken literally because it is a slavish calque of the French Un ange est passe´, an evocative metaphor for the start of a prolonged and embarrassing silence during a conversation, which is precisely what happens in this passage. This figure of speech was similarly mistranslated as ‘Volo` un angelo’ in the Italian version of Le Dernier des justes by Andre´ Schwarz-Bart.3 As far as titles are concerned, a brief discussion of the toponym Washington Square by Henry James will suffice. In the work’s Italian versions, this is sometimes rendered as Piazza W. and sometimes as W. Square. Given that this is a case of the eternal split between assimilative translation and source-oriented translation it is perhaps worth bearing in mind that, apart from its esoteric charm, the second, non-assimilated title is far better integrated with all the indicators of period and setting in the novel than the first. Or, to put it another way, the first title is merely a pointer whereas the second adheres more closely to the text and is an integral part of it. Whether or not this is the place to lament the recent, or not so recent, tendency in Italy to manipulate and trivialize original titles, it will nevertheless

Modern Translation into Italian

27

be useful to consider a few examples of this habit, which is particularly widespread in the cinema, even in the case of classic films. For example, Ford’s Stagecoach is rendered as Ombre rosse (‘Red Shadows’), which alludes to a particular sequence of the film and undoubtedly contains a streak of racism, while Cassavetes’ A Woman under the Influence becomes the anonymous Una moglie (‘A Wife’). This habit also affects literature. Where Angels Fear to Tread, the wonderfully learned and cultured title of an early novel by Forster which derives from the almost proverbial expression uttered by Pope, is rendered by the toponym Monteriano, based on the imaginary Tuscan town – part San Gimignano and part Montepulciano – where the action takes place. Mickey Spillane’s incisively titled I, the Jury, which picks up on a recurrent motif and a line of dialogue from the final scene, is replaced by the generic, vaguely cinematic Ti uccidero` (‘I Will Kill You’), a far less distinctive phrase, resembling many other film titles. A related, yet contrary, tendency which is becoming more and more common nowadays and is equally deplorable, is to preserve the original foreign-language title. This is particularly true of the Englishlanguage titles of American films. It can be seen either as a ploy to attract a larger public by invoking the Hollywood brand or as passive pandering to cultural colonialism. The rendering of toponyms in translation presents a number of different considerations of a diachronic nature. To a modern sensibility it would seem totally absurd to read about one of Balzac’s characters, or Flaubert’s Mme Arnoux, going to mass at ‘San Sulpizio’ or ‘Sant’Eustachio’, but this has not always been the case. For example, the third act of the Italian version of the libretto of Massenet’s Manon which was still in circulation a few decades ago contained the caption ‘San Sulpizio’. Today ‘Via di Rivoli’ or ‘Piazza Trafalgar’ would sound, and do sound, false. The development of the translation of place names may be traced in Sergio Marroni’s useful work on the Italian versions of Maupassant’s Bel-Ami, from the earliest to the most recent, including one by the great poet Giorgio Caproni.4 Here it is clear that only one of the many translators has Italianized ‘Madeleine’ and that the original ‘Ope´ra’ and ‘Bois de Boulogne’ rapidly prevailed over ‘Opera’ and ‘Bosco di B.’ ‘Piazza dell’Ope´ra’ or ‘Piazza dell’Opera’ remained in use until the appearance of Caproni’s translation in 1959; since then it has always been ‘place de l’Ope´ra’. Italians, then, need to be conscious of how different the status of their language is from that of its more powerful and assimilative sister, French. An anecdote will serve to illustrate this: some time ago while reading a French translation of Wo¨lfflin’s classic volume on the Renaissance and Baroque periods, I came across a picture of a church titled Saint-Pierre-e`s-liens. It was only the presence of Michelangelo’s Moses that quickly alerted me to the fact that the church in question was San Pietro in Vincoli (i.e. ‘Saint Peter in chains’ – ‘e`s-liens’). A closely associated issue is the translation of proper names, both Christian names and surnames. It is well known that Italianizations such as ‘Keplero’, ‘Lutero’ and ‘Calvino’ have become firmly established: a monograph by

28

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

Adolfo Omodeo is entitled Giovanni Calvino, while in his Ricordi, Guicciardini provides one of the earliest references to the reformer as ‘Martino Luther’, although the Storia d’Italia prefers Lut(h)er to Lutero. However ‘Durero’, ‘Voltero’ and other such Italianizations used by Carducci, D’Annunzio and Gozzano are no longer in use. Although now much diminished, the drive towards such adaptations has a long history. A good example of this tendency is Algarotti’s Saggio sulla pittura (1764), from the eighteenth century, a decisive period in this regard. As a rule, the decision whether to adapt a name or leave it unaltered may be seen to depend on two factors: the renown of the person in question and the possibility of seamlessly inserting the name into Italian phonology. Thus Algarotti gives, on the one hand, Montagna (i.e. Montaigne), Durero, Pussino, Rembrante and Vandi(c)ke, and, on the other, Rubens, Camoens, Le Brun, Bouchardon, Velasquez, La Bruye`re and various others. The interpretation of Fontanelle remains uncertain given that, even in a poem several decades after Giovanni Fantoni, it is rhymed with sorelle. None of the adapted forms used by the work has endured. It is clear that Christian names lend themselves to transposition to a greater extent than surnames, and thus in Italian the formula ‘adapted first name + original surname’ has long been successful. Guicciardini’s ‘Martino Luther’ has already been mentioned, and two famous, indeed notorious, lines by Carducci read: ‘Decapito` / Emanuele Kant Iddio, / Massimiliano Robespierre il Re’ (although perhaps Carducci thought that it should be pronounced Robespierre?). My own generation read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain in its first translation by Bice Giachetti-Sorteni published by the Milanese publisher Dall’Oglio in 1965, which, for all its merits, always refers to the protagonist and his cousin as ‘Giovanni Castorp’ and ‘Gioacchino Ziemssen’ (and naturally Clavdia is Claudia). Even more significant is the case of La tragedia di Mayerling (first edition 1925) by G. A. Borgese who, despite being a confirmed Germanist, regularly uses the above formula to give ‘il conte Giorgio Stockau’ and ‘il conte Giorgio Larisch’; even the eponymous character of Goethe’s masterpiece is referred to as ‘Fausto’. One can go further still: in Pittalunga’s translation of Euge`ne Fromentin’s Les Maıˆtres d’autrefois (published as I maestri d’un tempo, by the Turinese publisher De Silva in 1943), one finds ‘Quentino Metsis’, ‘Pietro de Hooch’, ‘Giacomo van Ruysdael’ and so on. Pratolini’s 1944 version of Ch. L. Philippe’s Bubu de Montparnasse, published by the Milanese Rosa e Ballo, refers to ‘Pietro’ and ‘Luigi’ (but in the 1989 Einaudi reprint they are once more called ‘Pierre’ and ‘Louis’). From his university chair my own ‘maestro’ Gianfranco Folena referred to the foremost French historian of the last century as ‘Marco’ Bloch, only to revert to ‘Marc’ on less formal occasions. It would seem that the transition from the ancient to the modern approach occurred, more or less, during the years of the Second World War. This is amply confirmed by the dubbing of films: in French, English and American films dubbed before or immediately after the war (and which, whether out of inertia or for economic considerations, are sometimes still in circulation) one quite routinely hears ‘Carlo’ for ‘Charles’ (English) or

Modern Translation into Italian

29

‘Charles’ (French), ‘Giovanni’ for ‘John’ or ‘Jean’, ‘Gianna/Giovanna’ for ‘Jean’ or ‘Jeanne’, ‘Pietro/Piero’ for ‘Peter’ or ‘Pierre’. All of these can be heard in the copy of Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux currently in circulation, which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been re-dubbed since its original post-war release. One potentially misleading case of this tendency deserves particular attention. ‘Fe´licite´’, the immortal protagonist of Flaubert’s Un Coeur simple, appeared as ‘Felicita’ in the Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli (BUR) version that I read as a child, and there would seem to be no harm in this since the notion of happiness is conveyed equally by the French and Italian names. One would therefore expect the same series to provide an Italianized version of Be´atrix, the tragic writer partly inspired by Georges Sand who appears in a novel by Balzac, yet this is not the case, thus leading to a semantic loss, since Flaubert almost certainly alludes to this character through his deliberate inversion of the connotations of Fe´licite´’s name. Flaubert’s heroine is happy while living in apparently unhappy conditions (poverty, a menial job and humble lifestyle), whereas Balzac’s character becomes profoundly unhappy despite – or perhaps because of – her apparently favourable origins. It is clear that here we are dealing with the irresolvable problem of allusive or revealing proper names which is particularly acute in the case of French, a language famously rich in calembours. The undertaking is, both in principle and in practice, more or less impossible. I shall therefore limit myself to another brief mention of Balzac, whom I have had the opportunity of studying from this point of view, to offer another short example: how can one render, without resorting to a footnote, the ironic counterpoint he suggested between the legitimist Chouans and the coquettish chouette? In the translation of Russian texts, this issue is further complicated by the relationship between the onomastic system in Italian and its very different counterpart in Russian. Turge´nev’s Fathers and Sons was immediately translated into Italian, by way of the French translation, and has been repeatedly retranslated up to the present day. The characters refer to the protagonist, the nihilist Evgeni Bazarov, variously by his surname, his first name, three different patronymics (‘E. Vasilevic’, ‘Vasilic’ or ‘Vasilev’) and three nicknames (‘Enjuska’, ‘Enjusecka’ and ‘Enjusenka’). Here the Italian translator is helpless. Only an archaic, early translation attempts the slavish calque of the patronymic (‘Eugenio di Basilio’). However, the first two patronymics are literary versions of the name, the first of which is more formal, while the third is a popular alternative, and the author plays on this variation with great subtlety. When Bazarov introduces himself to his American friend’s father he uses, as an anti-bourgeois gesture, the popular form while his interlocutor spontaneously responds with ‘E. Vasilic’, not the most formal variant but nevertheless one suggesting a more elevated register. As far as the nicknames are concerned, none of the translators have (fortunately, perhaps) attempted to render this with an Italian diminutive like ‘Eugenietto’ or ‘Eugenuccio’. The important point, however, seems to me to be to keep the three Russian

30

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

variants distinct so that the reader has the sensation of a shift in register and, perhaps, manages to grasp the significance of this shift. Similarly in one of Chekhov’s masterpieces, A Joke, the young protagonist is by turns referred to by her first name and patronymic Nadezda (i.e. Hope) Petrovna, the pet name Nadja or its diminuitive Nadenka. Once again, any attempt at Italianization would probably result in failure or be met with ridicule, but it is essential that Chekhov’s clever play with the three variants is conserved. A diligent reader not unfamiliar with Russian literature, even in translation, will quickly realize that the first name is the official, bureaucratic and impersonal one, while the other two, and in particular the second, are more affectionate. Nevertheless, even characteristic terms of nineteenth-century Russian life need not always be simply reproduced. While kopeka resists translation, Fausto Malcovati, who recently translated a number of Chekhov’s novellas, has jokingly stated his position in this respect: ‘no more versts, puds or similar units of measurements when there is a more or less exact equivalent. I don’t understand why one puts a footnote explaining ‘‘verst: Russian unit of linear measurement equal to 1067 metres’’ when it is much simpler to translate it as kilometre, letting the character who walks those thousand metres off the last 67: he will get less tired.’5 Even if one loses a bit of local, and historical, colour, it is hard not to agree. For these and other problems on the translation of Russian literature one can now consult Giuseppe Ghini’s excellent book on the translation of Eugene Onegin.6

Allocutive and ‘Formal’ Pronouns The study of allocutive and formal pronouns in Italian, the volume by Alexandru Niculescu being a particularly useful example, is sufficiently well established to allow me to add with some confidence my own observations.7 Detailed study is not required to realize that in recent decades the rendering of the formal you, vous and the like as ‘Lei’ is not as standardized as one might expect. This is particularly noticeable in the dubbing of films, but may also be seen in theatrical and literary translations, as Marroni has shown. The use of ‘Lei’, curiously, first breaks the Fascist-imposed hegemony of ‘Voi’ in a translation of Bel-Ami from 1931, at the height of the Fascist era.8 However, it only begins to prevail after 1959 with Caproni’s translation of the book (Milan, Garzanti), while in the penultimate translation, produced very recently, ‘Voi’ rears its head once again. Incidentally, Marroni also observes in these versions the continuation of the tendency to place tu and other personal pronouns before the verb in question. Doubtless, as he suggests, this is the inadvertent product of the influence of French, but it is perhaps also related to a stillcommon type of literary style similar to that found, for example, in D’Annunzio. It should also be noted that, as far as subject pronouns are concerned, the language used in a given translation generally confirms the

Modern Translation into Italian

31

situation with respect to the point in question in Italian usage of the time. Egli, which was already tending to be suppressed or replaced by lui or a nominal syntagm in the definitive 1840 edition of Manzoni’s I promessi sposi, is today obsolete in oral language but largely resists in written language, and not solely in formal texts. As far as the feminine equivalent is concerned, ella was virtually eradicated from the second version of I promessi sposi but remained in translations until about the 1950s. For example, it is regularly used, together with essa, in Vittorini’s 1939 translation of Faulkner’s Light in August, published by Mondadori as Luce d’Agosto. Essa, the predominant form in more polished, formal writing, also appears in oral translations (dubbing) to indicate a ‘standard’ (‘Received Pronunciation’) accent in English. Returning to formal pronouns, it is difficult to explain satisfactorily the persistence of Voi. The presence of this form in dialects and regionally accented Italian from the Centre-South perhaps partly explains its use in dubbing, but it is difficult to account for the persistence of this Fascist-imposed usage, especially in the translation of films and writings of the immediate postwar period. A widespread tendency to allude to the original version is out of the question. Generally speaking, it is rather a case of inertia, as frequently occurs in the phenomenology of translation. The result is a literary and formal, rather than colloquial, aftertaste that makes the dialogue less immediate. It is perhaps necessary to clarify this further, especially in diachronic terms, through an examination of some post-war translations of Chekhov’s stories. In the first two published in the 1950s,9 as in Carlo Grabher’s pivotal translation of Chekhov’s plays,10 the use of ‘Voi’ is uncontested. Surprisingly, the same is also true of the Garzanti edition, produced by various translators and published more than thirty years later. It is only with the Malcovati translation mentioned above that the use of ‘Lei’ is definitively established. A few brief conclusions may be drawn from this. In the case of translations of works from the nineteenth century or earlier the use of ‘Voi’, which coincides with the Italian of the period, contributes to their historical flavour, or simply to the suggestion of distance, as in the translations used in various editions of the novels of Thomas Hardy. The use of ‘Lei’, on the other hand, lends a more contemporary feel to a text. In more recent texts the use of ‘Voi’, which still hangs on in some dubbed films, must be considered a hangover from the past with heavily literary connotations. It is perhaps more regrettable, however, when a formal vous (or even Sie) is rendered in Italian with the now pervasive tu. This occurs, for example, in the Italian subtitles (produced in France) of another Truffaut film, L’homme qui aimait les femmes (1977) in which the director deliberately has his protagonist and the women with whom he has relations continue to refer to one another as vous even after making love. In one of many memorable scenes from Renoir’s La grande illusion (1937) Gabin’s working-class officer asks Fresnay, his aristocratic co-detainee, whether, after such a long time spent imprisoned together, they should not finally refer to each other as tu. Fresnay declines, specifying that he even refers to his wife as vous, a sociological dig worthy of

32

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

the director who, two years later, would film the bitter bourgeois-aristocratic comedy La re`gle du jeu. A few general framing observations are now in order to conclude this section. Literary translations mirror, or bear traces of, the fairly radical change in standard written Italian that has taken place over the past decades and continues to take place ever more rapidly. Translations therefore age quickly. The publisher Einaudi continues to reprint Leone Ginzburg’s version of Anna Karenina, but admiration for this intellectual and political martyr does not prevent one from recognizing that his translation is now completely outdated (for example ‘ella’ is used throughout).11 Not to mention the version of Tolstoy’s La felicita` domestica (Family Happiness) prepared by the poet Clemente Rebora in the 1920s and still, it would appear, in print today, which is literally unreadable due to its over-refined expressionism, a hangover from the 1910s which does a great disservice to the classical sobriety of Tolstoy’s original. The same may be said of the dubbing of films like Wyler’s Wuthering Heights or Hitchcock’s Rebecca, which have never been updated. In these and other films of the period one can find forms like the Tuscan ‘fo’, ‘desinare’ and ‘inteso’, no longer in standard usage. This observation leads us directly on to the next point. Not only Italy, but every country, has reason to complain about the old-fashioned quality of their translations, and not only those produced by mere hack translators. This is probably truer today than in the past, although in one of his letters Antonio Gramsci complained about the tackiness of Filippo Tomaso Marinetti’s betrayal of Tacitus in which ‘exigere plagas’ became ‘esigere le piaghe’ (to exact the wounds rather than ‘esaminare le ferite’ to examine the wounds),12 while Pier Paolo Pasolini, translating Aeschylus with the Belles Lettres to hand, gives us ‘ruota’ for ‘odo`s’ (apparently via the French ‘rou[t]e’) and ‘via’ for ‘bı`os’ (by way of ‘vie’). One of the most obvious aspects of the evolution in written Italian is the function and register of the Tuscan variant. More or less up until the 1950s, it remained relatively central to standard Italian; now it has slid to the margins, where it carries dialectal, decorative, literary or archaic connotations. In general, the isolation and ‘vernacularization’ of the Tuscan regional variant is one of the outstanding features of the recent history of the Italian language. A striking example of this is to be found in the translation of one of Chekhov’s masterpieces, A Boring Story, from the aforementioned edition of his stories translated by Agostino Villa, who was most likely Tuscan (indeed, if he was not, this example is even more revealing). It abounds with completely outmoded Tuscan expressions, both idiosyncratic ones that a non-Tuscan (I speak here as a northern Italian) could only understand with the help of a dictionary, and ones that a non-Tuscan can more or less grasp but would never use. Examples of the first type include risecco (‘dried up’), arrivare a gola (‘to be unable to take any more’), carestoso (‘meagre’ or ‘poor’), scattosamente (‘brusquely’ or ‘nervously’), assettatuzzo (‘composed’ or ‘dignified’, again carrying a rather precious, literary flavour) and scorbacchiare (‘to mock’ or ‘to make fun of’). Examples of the second type, which are undoubtedly more numerous, include

Modern Translation into Italian

33

codesto (‘that one’), d’avanzo (‘since before’), farsi a (‘to get ready to’), racchetarsi (‘to calm down’), divagarsi (‘to enjoy oneself’), sposare, as opposed to the pronominal sposarsi, for ‘to get married’, salutevole (‘hygenic’or ‘healthy’), portarsi (‘to behave’ or ‘to act’), and many others. In certain cases, such as sossopra, there is an overlapping of regional and literary connotations. Two additional, brief remarks need to be made here. As far as gender is concerned, it may simply be noted that ‘death’ is feminine in Italian and masculine in German and Russian, a difference with two implications beyond purely linguistic or literary considerations. The first is that the difference in gender has important iconographic consequences, for instance in the treatment of the theme of ‘death and the maiden’, as in the painting by Hans Baldung Grien in Basle. The second relates to music: should a man or a woman interpret Schubert’s great lied, Death and the Maiden? Having a man sing the role of Death is essential to the depth of the music, although a speaker of Romance languages might feel some disorientation as a result. Another well-known example works in the opposite direction. Famously, Leopardi strongly personifies the moon as feminine. However, in German Mond is masculine, although the German poetic tradition, at least from Classicism to Expressionism (e.g. Heym), also possesses the classical feminine Luna. Yet in German the term has mythical and formalist connotations, while in Leopardi the connotation is strongly personified (as may be seen from his sentimental invocations) and thus the problem remains. And what will the translator of Ugo Foscolo’s Sepolcri make of the line ‘e di fiori odorata arbore amica’? Foscolo, drawing on Latin in which both genders are applicable to the word, creatively feminizes the word albero (‘tree’), transforming it, figuratively, into a woman who consoles the dead (‘le ceneri di molli ombre consoli’). A second point relates to the changes in meaning of Italian words that are often referred to as falsi amici (‘false friends’). These changes are generally due to the influence of foreign words on certain specialist areas of language and to the production of immediate semantic calques by people of different nationalities belonging to the same trade. A typical example, although there are many others, is conferenza, which, through the influence of French and, above all, English, has assumed the meaning of ‘conference’ (i.e. as in ‘press conference’ or in a business context) rather than the traditional meaning of ‘lecture’. It is noteworthy that one of the best dictionaries of Italian usage gives the English meaning of ‘conference’ as its primary meaning and that this usage is completely normal among scientists, while in the humanities the term convegno is still preferred. On the other hand, it would seem that from a diachronic point of view the ‘second’ meaning precedes, or is at least contemporaneous with, the first. Something similar could be said for the ‘synonym’ colloquio (‘colloquium’), although more research is undoubtedly required in order to prove this conclusively.

34

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

Translations of Opera Libretti Issues of music and translation have already been touched upon above, but let us now examine this topic more thoroughly, with reference to the substantial corpus of ‘rhythmic’ Italian translations of opera libretti, in particular from German and French. The quantity of material to be studied is indicated by the fact that until fairly recently (the early post-war period) foreign operas were generally staged in Italian. From a literary point of view this produced unforgettable results; for example, the opening of the ‘Habanera’ from Carmen, despite the demands of the music, is written in rhyme and utilizes an old ` l’amore uno strano augello / che niuno and degraded poetic language: ‘E puote dimesticar, / sempre mostrasi a noi rubello’ as opposed to the much more fluid and modern French original, ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle, / que nul ne peut apprivoiser, / et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle.’ Admittedly, no more than thirty years ago in London I witnessed a performance in English of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman which contained an exquisitely bourgeois rendering of Wagner’s mythography. And, as strange as it may seem, Germanspeaking countries continued to stage Italian operas in their own language for many years, and not solely Verdi or Puccini, but even Mozart. Indeed, the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro in its original language took place in 1937, a year before the Anschluss, as part of the solemn Festival of Salzburg under the direction of Bruno Walter, the century’s greatest interpreter of Mozart. Idomeneo had to wait even longer, receiving its first performance in the original language in 1951 under the direction of Fritz Busch. The translations of rhythmic libretti amount to a collection of archaic expressions and stale poetic borrowings, much more so, it should be noted, than ‘original’ Italian libretti. In both cases this is undoubtedly due to the recognition of the highly conventional nature of the genre. For instance, I have in my possession a copy of Meyerbeer’s L’Africana, an opera that is rarely staged nowadays. At one time, however, it was fairly regularly performed in Italy, and the text states that this version was to be staged at the Teatro sociale in Treviso in the autumn of 1875. Here we find such archaic expressions as chieggo, fer, schifo, batello, affrena, debbe, ei, augellin (to rhyme with other words ending in ‘-in’), deggio, regi, de, dei, adduce, bontade, traggi, imen, voluttade. It could be that such poetic forms derive from the memory of earlier libretti; ‘In braccio al mio rival’, for example, undoubtedly derives from Il trovatore. Similarly, the libretto contains expressions that recur in the work of what are, in every sense of the word, ‘noble’ modern poets. It would thus seem indisputable that ‘Il varco e` la`’ produced the ‘Il varco e` qui’ in Montale’s La casa dei doganieri. Some examples will serve to confirm the observations given above. In the musical version of Fra Diavolo produced by Scribe and Delavigne for the music of Auber we can find ‘Milord’ (although pronounced, I would wager, without the ‘d’), ‘Miledi’, written according to the Italianized pronunciation, and then ‘Beppo’, ‘Giovanni’, ‘Lorenzo’, ‘Giacomo’, etc. It makes one wonder whether

Modern Translation into Italian

35

names were more easily Italianized in a comic opera, although this only occurs partially in Ka`lma`n’s Princepessa della Czarda (‘The Gypsy Princess’) – which, of course, Italians pronounced /kzarda/ – in which the exoticism of its Hungarian setting is a significant factor. It is not surprising that something similar takes place in operas undoubtedly intended as bourgeois comedies – something new for the period – such as Charpentier’s Louise in which we find ‘Camilla’, ‘Giuliano’ and the Tuscan-inflected ‘La piccola cenciajuola’ (the little rag seller). On the other hand, in Massenet’s Thaı¨s, written by Louis Gallet from the novel by Anatole France, all the names are Italianized, mostly with a Greek or Jewish inflection (‘Atanaele’ and so on) with the exception of that of the protagonist, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Dante’s debased ‘Taide’ was readily available. In some cases the constraints of the music, or simply of metre, can engender a monster. In the original French libretto by Me´ry and Du Locle, two lines from Filippo II’s aria from Don Carlo(s), one of Verdi’s highest achievements, read ‘Je dormirai dans mon manteau royal, / quand aura lui pour moi l’heure dernie`re.’ In the Italian rearrangement by de Lauzie`res and Zanardini approved by Verdi for Italian performances of the opera, the line becomes ‘Dormiro` sol nel manto mio regal / quando la mia giornata `e giunta a sera’, thus scrambling the verbal tenses in order to keep the metre. On the other hand, in the third act of La traviata the excellent Francesco Maria Piave – the quintessential author of Verdi libretti whose work is as richly dramatic as it is linguistically simple – has Alfredo say, ‘se morra` per mano mia, / un sol copo vi torria [in the sense of ‘strapperebbe’]/ con l’amante il protettore.’ The present conditional (‘torria’) is thus used as a future indicative or imperfect subjunctive. However it goes without saying that linguistic factors cannot explain everything; there are political and moral factors as well as selfcensorship (what philology terms ‘forced authorial correction’). These factors explain the softening of a passage that follows the one cited above: to the Inquisitor, Filippo says, in French, ‘Tais-toi, preˆtre’ and in Italian ‘Non piu`, frate’, when he could easily have said ‘Taci, prete’ (although to be fair the music requires emphasis on the second syllable). While these examples will suffice here, it is clear that a fruitful area of research would be to ascertain whether and to what extent the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century rhythmic translations of German libretti, especially those of Wagner, were mediated by French, as was the case for the first wave of Italian translations of Russian literature. But one should proceed cautiously: the first words of the opening aria sung by Lohengrin in the Italian version of the eponymous opera in use until the 1950s or thereabouts are ‘Merce`, merce`, cigno gentil’ which one might suspect was influenced by the French ‘merci’ (the German reads ‘Nun sei gedankt, mein lieber Schwan’). However, merce` in the sense of ‘thanks’ was still widely used in Italian literature of the nineteenth century, especially in libretti. Ernani’s first words in Verdi’s opera of the same name are ‘Merce`, diletti amici’ and this is echoed by Elena’s opening words ‘Merce`, diletti amici’ in I vespri siciliani (interestingly by the same composer

36

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

but with a libretto by a different author). As a general remark, it could be illuminating to study systematically the Italian ‘adaptations’ of French operatic texts. For instance, some years ago I purchased the libretto for Mozart’s Idomeneo published together with its original ‘source’, Antoine Danchet’s libretto for Campra’s Idome´ne´e. Here I could observe a systematic ‘translation’ of the structure of the text and the poetic use of language despite the mediocrity of the libretto’s author, who was recommended by and supervised by Mozart himself.13

Poetic Translations Thus far we have dealt with translations ‘at the service of’ the original. It is nevertheless often the case with literary works that autonomous versions come to stand in for the original, appearing without the accompaniment of a facing text. This is the case for monumental works such as Caro’s Eneide (Aeneid), Monti’s Iliade (The Iliad) and Pindemonte’s Odissea (The Odyssey). However, this also occurs for practical reasons in modern translations of opera, and it is not restricted to libretti in Slavic languages. The constraints of translation are most clearly evident with regard to metre. Recently, a student of mine, Tobia Zanon, produced an excellent thesis on eighteenth-century translations in verse (by Baretti, Da Ponte, G. Gozzi and others) of classic French plays, from Corneille to Racine, Cre´billon senior and Voltaire, obviously written in rhyming alexandrine couplets. At that time Pier Jacopo Martello had relaunched the Italian alexandrine, or ‘martelliano’, which, after significant success during the early medieval period had been in decline of late.14 Despite this fact, the majority of lines in the translations are in hendecasyllabic blank verse, in other words in the metre typical of Italian verse drama as well as many narrative, as opposed to lyric, poetic genres. In Italy, the expediency of rhyme was widely questioned in the rationalist eighteenth century. It is indeed unquestionable that blank verse, with its free accentuation, lack of rhyme and the greater freedom that it introduces to the play of rhythm, helps to avoid all that which, on this side of the Alps, appears monotonous about French alexandrine verse: the obligatory rhyming couplets, the scansion in two equal hemistichs with a central caesura and the frequent repetition of the third and sixth syllables.15 Apart from any specific motivation, what is significant about Martello’s choice, then, is the fact that it so rigidly follows tradition. It is evident that, in verse, rhyme is much more important than metre. Therefore in Italian the iambic pentameter, the dominant verse of English and German metre, is rendered either freely or with the hendecasyllable, its mensural equivalent. However the Italian hendecasyllable is a very free form of verse with great scope for variation in accentuation; for this reason, Pascoli, in response to Marinetti, asserted that in Italy there was no need for free verse. In

Modern Translation into Italian

37

Italian poetry, the truly iambic hendecasyllable is rarely used, although when it is, it can, for this very reason, produce extraordinary effects, as in Dante’s ‘Di qua, di la`, di su, di giu` li mena’ (Inf., V, 43). Here, however, the effect is obtained through rigorous, synchronic accentuation in conjunction with oxytonic monosyllables and asyndetic parallelism. As Fubini has noted, the adjacent, and still completely iambic, ‘con l’ali alzate e ferme al dolce nido’ (Inf., V, 83), is very different in character.16 In any case, this type of verse, employed in sequence, can sound mechanical and monotonous to an Italian ear. Therefore the translator of, for instance, the Zueignung of the first version of Faust can either ignore the rhyme and perhaps, also, the metre, of the original, or allude to it with partially iambic rhyme such as the second–fourth–eighth–tenth structure well established in Italian poetry or a fourth–sixth–eighth–tenth structure (less opportune given the course of the ictus), or even a second– fourth–sixth–tenth structure (which would produce a large atonic section at the end and result in a ‘light’ rather than ‘heavy’ verse). The last great translator of Goethe’s works, Franco Fortini, decisively chose this ‘free’ solution. Similar questions are raised by other entirely iambic or entirely trochaic verses. Much of the destructive power of Goethe’s Meeres Stille rests on its closeknit stresses over disparate syllables (‘Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser, / Ohne Regung ruht das Meer’). Such an insistent rhythm does not work well in Italian, for the reasons explained above. Nevertheless, I would like to qualify what has been said so far with two general observations. Firstly, the difference between a verse-metre system and one that is freer lies not in the distribution of the ictus and even less in the system of verses, but rather in what might be called, as we have just seen, the overall rhythmical pattern. For example, the last line of a poem in iambic pentameters by Chamisso, Winter, goes ‘Das esenlose Schweigen, meine Klagen’, which the recent excellent translation by Mario Santagostino renders as ‘il silenzio dell’essere, il mio pianto’. It seems clear to me that the principal difference between the two is not simply that the beat of the German original is regular, but that it is ‘heavy’, whereas the hendecasyllable of the Italian is ‘light’, with an anapaestic flight and a wide atonic stretch between the sixth and tenth syllable. Secondly, a good translator usually manages to allude to the original system and to some extent to compensate for what is inevitably lost (I understand ‘to compensate’ here partly in the way that Gianfranco Contini uses it in his criticism of variants and partly in the manner of physicists who introduce a new factor into an equation to restore the ‘symmetry’ that would otherwise be lost). However, one should not linger on this aspect, which pertains to what Barthes called ‘mathesis individualis’, in other words being a question of individual stylistics rather than of literary institutions. A celebrated episode concerning translation clearly illustrates the resistance of the tradition of metre. It is well known that in preparing his quantitative metrics (metrica barbara), which allude, but no longer conform, to classical metre, Giosue` Carducci always used traditional Italian verses on their own or in pairs. And there is no doubt that his choices of the hexameter and of alcaics

38

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

contributed to the success, above all with Pascoli, of the nine-syllable line, often termed the dactyl, but which I prefer to call ‘amphibrachic’ (second– fifth–eighth). However, in a challenge to his master, Pascoli came up with a different metre, which he termed ‘neoclassical’, based on the personal idea that Italian could be understood quantitatively (for which he formulated a set of ostensible rules), which respected the classical ictus. The exemplary result was Salon, set in his neoclassical metre, the ‘alcaic’ Italian hendecasyllable accentuated on the fifth syllable, which Italian poetry, at least since Petrarch (or, essentially, Dante), had never really accepted: ‘splende al plenilunio l’orto; il melo / trema appena d’un tremolio d’argento’ (We can read the second line, equally irregularly, as third–eighth). In Carducci, the sapphic hendecasyllable always has an ‘Italian’ rhythm. While it is true that in the poetry of the early twentieth century, in particular Govoni, one can find quite a few hendecasyllables with the accent on the fifth syllable or with irregular accentuation, this is not due to the neoclassical verses of Pascoli but rather to the influx of French poetry of the late nineteenth century. Pascoli adopted a similar approach when translating the epic decasyllable, La Chanson de Roland. He forced it into the equivalent apocopated quadrisyllable or pentasyllable with the accent on the penultimate syllable + caesura + apocopated senarius or heptasyllable with the accent on the penultimate syllable, rather than limiting himself to the hendecasyllable common both before and subsequently. In this form, half the time the accent falls not on the tenth but on the eleventh syllable, making the verse resemble the hendecasyllable that it is not (or, depending on the scansion, one can read it as a hypermetric hendecasyllable), as in ‘Qui sente Orlando che la morte gli e` presso.’ Such a result is also favoured by the fact that Italian has many more unaccented words than French. Apart from its immediate adoption by the ever-rapacious D’Annunzio in Elettra and Canzone di Caprera, Pascoli’s second metric innovation also failed to find success, as can be seen from subsequent translations of La Chanson de Roland. Another, earlier, episode is also illuminating in this respect. Ippolito Nievo translated popular Greek and lyric poetry by Heine from the French prose versions, the second of them by no less than Nerval. Nievo changed this prose back into poetry since in Italy, unlike France, it was almost inconceivable to present the translation of a poetic text in prose form. One could ask whether translations, or even ‘metric’ translations, have introduced innovations into the Italian system. The important case of the nine-syllable line/verse has already been commented upon. A more recent example is the so-called ‘translation verse’: a free verse, somewhat flaccid, that is common among anthologies of foreign lyric poetry translated mostly by academics or professional translators since the 1930s, such as those by the highly influential Bo or Izzo. This form became part of accepted poetic practice at the precise moment that traditional metre, after the initial vogue of Hermeticism, was in radical crisis. I would argue, for instance, that the ‘translation verse’ also had a strong influence on Pasolini. A more

Modern Translation into Italian

39

circumscribed but nonetheless notable case is that of Giudici, an excellent Italian poet who translated Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin several times in an attempt to ‘reproduce’ the original strophe pattern as closely as possible (occasionally changing the word to be rhymed or replacing a rhyme with assonance). In Giudici’s later output, and in particular the collection Salutz (1986), this pattern is implicit. More importantly, however, it largely coincides with the pattern of the Elizabethan sonnet already introduced into Italian poetry by four texts in Montale’s La bufera.17 Put simply, the Elizabethan sonnet and Pushkin’s verse essentially follow the same model, which has since found expression in the current vogue for the sonnet in Italy. This model may unobtrusively, or even ‘heretically’, have contributed to this vogue. Moving on to lexical and syntactic phenomena, it is possible to identify two real constants in the translation of poetry in Italy, particularly in renderings produced by translators who are themselves also poets. The first is the abhorrence of repetition, both lexical and syntagmatic, which leads to an emphasis on variation. The second is a certain propensity for the verso-frase (‘verse-sentence’) that ends with a strong, or fairly strong, pause, or for a sequence of these versi-frasi. The use of enjambment obviously goes hand in hand with this choice. If one accepts that this second tendency can also be ascribed, albeit less explicitly, to the preference for variation, in measure or melodic segments, then this point would seem to hold true. The epic, from Homer to the various traditional epics (although to a lesser extent Virgil, even in a translation by a refined classicist like Caro), in which it is standard practice to use the formula fixed epithet + noun (proper name), suffers particularly from this first tendency. Beginning with Monti’s version of the Iliad (first completed in 1810), which for many years served as a school text, the rule has been to vary the formulary epithets. There have been a few significant exceptions, such as Calzecchi Onesti’s version published by Einaudi (first edition in 1950). In fact, even Pascoli, in his extraordinary (partial) translations of Homer, was moving in this direction: Achilles is always ‘il pie`rapido’, or at most ‘il pie`-celere’. In a footnote, Pascoli duly observes that ‘since Homer always uses one word, the translator should do likewise’. Moreover the great translator alternates Monti’s traditional Pelide with the faithful calque Peleiade, which preserves the flavour of antiquity. Returning to Monti, one could cite the example of boo`pis, dagli occhi di giovenca (‘the heifereyed one’) which Homer always attributes to Hera, which becomes by turn i suoi grandi occhi (‘her big eyes’), gli sguardi divini (‘the divine glances’) and i divini occhi (‘the divine eyes’). Here the animal trait, or rather the permeability of divine, human and animal nature characteristic of Homer, conveyed by the simile is lost. Much is thus sacrificed by this tendency. From a stylistic point of view, the fixed epithet, given that it is always at one with the name, fixes the character – be it warrior, divinity or woman – as an immutable being in and of itself, giving it a heroic, mythic aura and insulating it from the changeability of fate and psychology. Moreover, modern studies of traditional poetry have shown that the formulae (applied to human beings, gods and much besides,

40

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

such as the rose-fingered dawn or the wine-dark sea) were indispensable props or reminders for the bards. Varying these epithets deprives Homer, or the Serbian epic, or the Romanian colinde, of much of their oral quality. This is typical of the destiny of these and similar works in our culture. Such considerations are also true of translations of plays. For example, one could argue that the allocutive pronouns typical of Greek theatre such as (o) teknon, pai and the like should not be rendered in the Italian translation with a similar degree of repetition, avoiding translations which use amplificatio, like ‘caro figlio’ or ‘caro ragazzo’. Something similar also happens in the translation into Italian of lyric poetry. One of the first translations by Montale, one of the principal translators and re-inventors of poetry in Italy in the twentieth century, was that of A Song for Simeon. It repeats three times, with obvious biblical-religious overtones, the expression ‘Grant us / me thy peace’, which the Italian renders in three different ways, using three synonymous verbs and maintaining or eliminating the personal pronoun: ‘Accordaci la pace’, ‘dacci la pace tua’, ‘Concedici la pace’.18 Then there is Montale’s splendid translation of Hardy’s The Garden Seat. The original is made up of three quatrains, the final couplet of which is always composed of a repeated line (only the final occurrence contains a slight variation). This repetition functions as a genuine refrain, as is found in the popular poem which held such deep fascination for Hardy: ‘soon it will break down unaware, / soon it will break down unaware’ – ‘quite a row of them sitting there, / quite a row of them sitting there’ – ‘for they are light as upper air, / they are light as upper air’. In Montale’s version, this becomes ‘presto d’incurvera` senz’avvedersene, / presto s’affondera` senz’avvedersene’, ‘e qui vengono in molti e vi si posano, / vengono in bella fila e si riposano’, and finally ‘perche´ sono leggeri come l’aria/ di lassu`, perche´ sono fatti d’aria’.19 Here the variation of the final refrain produces a marked enjambment and the impression that the words have been stolen from an earlier line. It is like the note of an accordion, with one longer phrase and one shorter one. Another example of the work of a magisterial poet-translator is Sereni’s translation of Apollinaire’s ‘De´sir’. Many of the finest elements of this poem were founded on expressive effects of iteration reminiscent of litany, as in: ‘Mon de´sir c’est la butte du Mesnil / Mon de´sir est la` sur quoi je tire.’ In Sereni this reads: ‘La mia voglia e` la Butte de Mesnil / Verso la` dove tiro e` la mia voglia.’20 Solmi’s translation of Hesse’s second version of Knarren eines geknickten Astes is similar: ‘Noch einen Sommer, noch einen Winter lang’ is rendered as ‘ancora per un’estate, per un inverno ancora’.21 In both cases the spirit of the refrain, its parallelism, is transposed into the more elegant and ‘poetic’ form of the inclusio or redditio. Solmi translated Spender’s ‘O’ using a different technique in which the parallelism reinforced by the use of two sets of homophonic verb–noun pairs, such as in ‘Hoop thy own hoop / Loop thy own loop’, is weakened by the use of synonyms in ‘lega il tuo proprio laccio / annoda il tuo stesso cappio’.22 There is at least one example of movement in the opposite direction in Caproni’s stylization of the ‘popular’ iterative

Modern Translation into Italian

41

qualities of Apollinaire, which creates a genuine refrain with an oral, songlike quality: ‘Vers un village de l’arrie`re / S’en allaient quatre bombardiers / Ils e´taient couverts de poussie`re / Depuis la teˆte jusqu’aux pieds’, rendered as ‘Verso un villaggio di retrovia / Se n’andavano tre bombardieri / Verso un villaggio di retrovia / Pieni di polvere da capo a piedi.’ In considering the latter point, one could also refer to Montale’s remarkably faithful emulation of three Shakespeare sonnets in which he maintains the hendecasyllable and sustained rhyme (or a substitute for it). In Sonnet XXXIII, Shakespeare uses only one instance of enjambment out of the 13 that are possible. Significantly, it occurs in the pause between the first and second verses. Montale, however, gives no fewer than five enjambments, symmetrically arranged in lines 1–2 (as in the original), but also 5–6, 7–8 and then in the couplet. His intention was probably to accentuate the progression through the quatrains, but it nonetheless introduces pauses in mid-line that originally came at the end of a line. One of these enjambments, ‘il desolato / mondo’, is particularly marked. The result is a constantly varied phrasing – the couplet in particular is manipulated in a manner that, given Montale’s treatment of Hardy, should be no cause for surprise – which maintains both the meaning and the wording of the original: ‘Yet him for this love no whit disdaineth: / suns of the world may stain when heaven’s staineth’ becomes ‘Pur non ne ho sdegno: bene puo` un terrestre / sole abbuiarsi, se e` cosı` il celeste.’ It is worth noting the similar rendering of the couplet of Sonnet XXII: ‘il tuo riprendere / vorresti’, which is perfectly in keeping with the personal solutions adopted by Montale in an Elizabethan sonnet in La bufera: ‘verra` di giu`: dove ai tuoi lobi squallide / mani, travolte, fermano i coralli’ or in ‘che Dio mi vede e che le tue pupille / d’acquamarina guardano per lui’. The predilection for a succession of phrases of varied length in these translations also manages to offset the fixed character of the rhyming couplets, which are, moreover, imperfectly rhymed in both cases. It should perhaps be made clear, however, that Montale, at least up until La bufera, remains strongly bound to the Italian poetic tradition, in relation to which he can be, and indeed has been, described as a reformer and not a revolutionary. In his translations, he aims to compose texts that allow the traces of the original to clearly shine through, or, to put it another way, appear in a sense as variants of their originals, but which at the same time remain compatible with the Italian poetic tradition including what has often been referred to as the ‘twentieth-century tradition’. Conversely, those who might be termed translator-professors (one could, for example, cite Elio Chinol’s translation of Shakespeare’s Sonetti for Laterza published in 1996) typically adhere closely to the English text. Above all, in his 40 sonetti di Shakespeare, Ungaretti, who is much less bound to the Italian ‘classical’ tradition than Montale, follows a different path from his colleague, eschewing rhyme and using lengthy, generally free – and occasionally alexandrine – verses that can almost casually shift to hendecasyllables, and consequently preserving the character of the original versi-frasi. Ungaretti translates the couplet of Sonnet

42

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

XXXIII thus: ‘Non ha disdegno tuttavia il mio amore; / Astri terreni possono macchiarsi se il sole del cielo si macchia.’ Nevertheless, the first line is hendecasyllabic, while the second hemistich of the second line, which follows a similarly hendecasyllabic first hemistich, is in the nine syllables characteristic of Pascoli. Giovanni Giudici’s recent translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets use an approach which is much closer to that of Ungaretti than that of Montale. However, here, and even more so in Sanguineti’s recent Shakespearean translations, one must also acknowledge both the imprint of the conservative style of the two earlier translators and the effects of diachronic shifts in weakening the traditional metrical conventions in favour of a return to the greater metrical freedom of the late eighteenth century.23 Even so, Montale’s solutions, in relation to Shakespeare and elsewhere, can be considered representative and, in some cases, generative, of the choices made by many of the greatest Italian translators of poetry of the last century, in particular Solmi, but also Caproni, Luzi, Erba, Orelli and even Sereni and Fortini, who nonetheless in certain ways also seem so different from the maestro. Once again it will be useful to examine some examples of their work. Solmi translates Hardy thus: ‘On how I had walked when my sun was higher – my heart in its arrogancy’ becomes ‘mi parlava della via percorsa quando piu` alto / era il mio sole, piu` fiero il mio cuore’. Caproni translates Fre´naud: ‘Quand je remettrai mon ardoise au ne´ant / un de ces prochains jours’ into ‘Quanto aggiustero` il mio puffo / col nulla, uno di questi giorni.’ Luzi translates Louise Labe´: ‘Apres qu’un tems la gresle et la tonnerre/ Ont le haut mont de Caucase batu’ (note the slight enjambment) as ‘Dopo ch’hanno la grandine e la folgore / sopra i monti di Caucaso infierito.’ Here a classical hyperbaton (see below) is in evidence, although it should be remembered that Luzi, like Solmi and Sereni, avoids marked, or, one might say, merely decorative, enjambments such as in the ‘aux’, ‘o’ of Vale´ry’s Le Cantique de colonnes. Orelli’s translation of Goethe, ‘Die ihr Felsen und Baume bewohnt, o heilsame Nymphen’ runs ‘Voi che alberi e rupi abitate, o salutari / Ninfe.’24 It is also worth noting that in poems characterized by a diffuse, colloquial character (as opposed to elaborate precision) such as those of Orelli and others of the post-Hermetic generation, the enjambment is used not to create lyric asymmetry or suspension but rather to create the continuity typical of prose or conversation. The same is true for verse drama. Luzi, for instance, translates the passage of Racine’s Andromaque which reads ‘Et mon coeur, aussi fier que tu l’as vu soumis, / Croit avoir en l’amour vaincu mille ennemis. / Conside`re, Phoenix, les troubles que j’e´vite’ as ‘Fiero quanto fu vile il cuore crede/ d’aver vinto mille avversari. Pensa, / Fenice, a quanti turbamenti scampo.’ As far as the question of enjambment is concerned, the work of Leopardi may be taken to represent the characteristics of the Italian poetic tradition at its best: in many texts, such as L’infinito, or in sections of texts, there are more verses with enjambment than without. The issue of syntax may be considered complementary in this respect. Until recently, the Italian poetic language enjoyed much greater freedom than

Modern Translation into Italian

43

other European languages as far as the placement of words is concerned (inversions, hyperbatons and so on). This freedom, justified by the Latin model, affects the linearity of the verse and, once again, differentiates successive verses in terms of intonation and syntax, as has already been discussed with regard to rhythm and enjambment above. In Sereni, one of the greats of the twentieth century and a master in this regard, it is clear that it is, above all, the interspersion of literary figures in his verses that is responsible for their ‘poetic’ character, conforming to an expressive model that now appears laborious and outdated. This poetic character cannot, in the case of Sereni, be explained in terms of regular metre or lexical distinction (which in translation also compensates for what is inevitably lost on other levels, above all in terms of phonic character). Sereni’s translations are no less exemplary in this respect than are his original works. For example, Pound’s ‘Murmuring for his own satisfaction’ is rendered as ‘d’intima soddisfazione mormorare l’udii’; Williams’ ‘And he left behind / all the curious memories’ becomes ‘E tutte si lascio` alle spalle le strane / memorie’ (here with enjambment). But why do these constants exist in Italian translations of poetry? As far as variatio is concerned, it is sufficient to consider what has been said, in particular by Contini, about the elaboration of texts by Petrarch, Ariosto and Leopardi (three greats to whose names one could add Sannazaro, Parini, Pascoli and many modern poets) in order to see quite clearly that the censoring of repetition and the search for variation (even at a distance) are perhaps the guiding principle of Italian reworkings of such texts.25 As far as enjambment is concerned, this syntactic–metrical construction is so common, not only from Della Casa and Tasso but from Dante and Petrarch onwards, that it constitutes more than just an open stylistic possibility, justified by the classics. Rather, it is a stable and, as it were, closed formal institution that derives from certain salient metrical characteristics of Italian poetry, such as the alternation between the hendecasyllable and the shorter, spontaneously conspicuous seven-syllable line or hendecasyllabic blank verse, with its primarily narrative function. It is worth recalling here that the demon of variatio affects, both diachronically and synchronically, not only Italian poets but also prose authors, and that these two groups have influenced one another mutually. To take as an example a writer who claims only to be interested in the naturalistic use of language, in the definitive edition of I promessi sposi Manzoni corrects the largely ‘spoken’ passage between Don Abbondio and the bravoes, reducing two uses of ‘occhi’ (‘eyes’) and two uses of ‘uomo’ (‘man’) to just one.26 Clearly, behind this taste for variatio lie the classicism and humanism that are the mark and characteristic form, or perhaps the affliction, of Italian literature. Indeed, the extent to which great classics like Virgil and Horace are rich in interesting enjambments has not been sufficiently emphasized. We can now turn our attention briefly to the third point mentioned above: that the studied and surprising word order in the work of a master like Parini derives from the great Latin poets. Here the morphological– syntactic characteristics of the language permit a freedom in arrangement that

44

Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo

can produce extraordinary effects: for example, Horace’s ‘Vides ut alta stet nive candidum / Soracte’, with its masterly prolongation of the noun-theme, or his ‘Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi / finem di dederint, Leuconoe.’ These should be seen in relation to the supreme naturalness of this passage from Virgil’s Aeneid IV: ‘Moriamur inultae, / sed moriamur, ait, sic sic iuvat ire sub umbras.’ All this needs to be put in a wider perspective. Picking up on a number of observations made earlier regarding prosody, it is clear that Italian metre, in particular the hendecasyllable, both in itself and even more so in relation to ‘equivalent’ metres in other languages, is dominated by variation, both at the level of the syllabic measure and at the level of adjacent lines. Therefore, the four points touched on above can be brought together to obtain not a sum total but a homogeneous web. In short, the techniques of translation, together with those of ‘original’ Italian poetry, are dominated by common stylistic phenomena in all the pertinent sectors: lexis, syntax, prosody and metre. I would argue, however, that the positive interpretation that I have offered here is not the end of the story. The mastery of a whole set of stylistic devices of a highly ‘poetic’ nature is what allows the translator to compensate on other levels for the irremediable loss of richness in, for example (indeed especially), sound-texture, particularly if the translator realizes that the problem is not to reproduce but rather to allude to the original, not to imitate but to emulate. This is what Orelli did when faced with Goethe’s untranslatable composition, Heidenro¨slein: ‘War so jung und morgenscho¨n?’ By eliminating the verb, Orelli maintains the original third–seventh rhythm. He then finds a partial, but nonetheless close, semantic equivalent to ‘morgenscho¨n’: ‘mattutina’. And finally he recovers the rest of the meaning of the composition by translating ‘jung’ as ‘fresca’ to produce the excellent translation ‘cosı` fresca e mattutina’. I would therefore also like to suggest a negative explanation of the constants described here. This is a point I made some years ago, but I feel that it is worth repeating here. Italian poesia d’arte – I use Benedetto Croce’s formula quite deliberately here – and therefore, by extension, Italian poetic translations that attain the status of art, has always borne little relationship to the poetic forms that in other cultures (Spain, Germany, England and Russia) instigated the use of repetition, the verso-frase and regularly rhythmic prosody, namely popular poetry and the Bible. Given that exceptions prove the rule, a poet who makes great use of repetition is the great dialect author Salvatore Di Giacomo, but here we are dealing with a truly subtle stylist of poetry and popular melos. It is often said, and not without justification, that a good translator produces something that floats somewhere between the language of the original source text and his own. Perhaps it would be better to say that it exists at the junction between the original language, the translator’s language and the conventions and constrictions, both ancient and modern, of the poetic tradition. (Translated by Alex Marlow-Mann)

Chapter 3

Translation and the European Tradition: The Italian ‘Third Generation’ Anna Dolfi

In Italy, the twentieth century was, from the outset, characterized by a pressing European vocation. It is no accident that the most significant poet belonging to what is usually called the first generation, Giuseppe Ungaretti, received his formation abroad, immersed in French culture (in Egypt and in Paris) and is now considered an exemplary bilingual poet.1 Nor is it by mere coincidence that the practice of translating the great, foreign classics began with Ungaretti’s translations of Go`ngora, Shakespeare, Racine, Mallarme´ and Saint-John Perse, and that by the time of the second generation it had, with Salvatore Quasimodo, taken in the whole of the ancient world (one could cite Quasimodo’s translations from ancient Greek in Lirici greci or from Latin in the Antologia Palatina). Nevertheless, it was the authors of the third generation, who grew up during the xenophobic and autarchic era of Fascism, who were responsible for a systematic opening-up to European culture. This was not only because, for them, looking to Europe was a way to escape from a suffocating provincialism, but also because, through translation, linked to the legacy of the great romantic–symbolist experience, they re-established a culture which could finally be called modern, and which recognized its masters beyond the national confines of Italy. While their political consciousness fed off poverty, their support for the Republican government during the Spanish civil war and, later, their rejection of the introduction of racial laws in Italy, their culture was nourished by the reading of forbidden works by Proust, Lorca and the Americans – the great twentieth-century European authors who, after the war, they would translate, study and annotate with increasing passion. In short, the twentieth century translated the twentieth century and the period immediately preceding it, beginning with the French maudits and the classics, re-read, however, in a modern light. It is this story, still partially hidden within the pages of journals and in confessions contained in personal correspondence, that I intend to retrace, following its protagonists, its theory, and its practice.2 Oreste Macrı` has on many occasions identified a state of agonized conflict between form and existence as being one of the principal characteristics of the

46

Anna Dolfi

third generation.3 For them, the highest level of existence was that of the ‘vital dwellings’ of literature as life (as Carlo Bo, speaking for all, termed it in his singular ‘manifesto’ of 1938).4 Form was, beyond any literary conceptions (themselves seen as formal), seen as a means of defying thematic content, an attempt to return to the search for the minimum possible ‘differential’ that should culminate, in life and art, in an essential, fully motivated expression. Poetry (or prose, in the case of such remarkable authors as Delfini, Landolfi, Bilenchi and Pratolini, or the rare attempts at prose by the third generation poets, almost all of whom were active in this field in the early 1940s),5 criticism and translation were merely different ways – at times, with conscious sacrifice, pursued simultaneously and in equal measure – to reach this difficult conciliation or unity.6 In the background, the great figures of the romantic– symbolist tradition of European culture (Herder, Hamann, Nodier, Hugo, Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarme´, Vale´ry, Be´cquer) and the Italian authors who belonged to, or who tended to be ascribed to, this tradition (Dante, Tasso, Foscolo, Manzoni, Leopardi) were taken as models.7 In a climate of collaboration (also, perhaps, a product of their shared influences),8 poets and critics, authors and translators, regardless of their stature or position,9 followed a common path towards the ultimate objective of offering what one could call the synthesis between form and existence. The primary aim of this collaborative project was to combine rigour, hermeneutic passion and an attention to the text in the production of critical editions that, in a single volume containing original text, translation, introduction and commentary, combined the idea of unreachable authoriality and multiple attempts at interpreting that authoriality (critical edition, translation, explanatory notes, and so on). If the work thus arose in a kind of perfect circularity, in order to reach it the critic had to regress to its origins, to the indestructibility, or, rather, inexhaustibility, of the archetype. He had to begin outside the final text, in the ‘concave shape of the poem’ in which, in a state of ‘original undifferentiation’,10 the work’s potential had yet to be realized, its signifieds remaining explicit and its signifiers open. The critic could, and should, venture into that empty, Valerian form, ready, as the Germanist Leone Traverso puts it, to dive in ‘pour soi seul, a` soi seul, en soi-meˆme’11 in order to bring to light, like Ungaretti’s porto sepolto,12 the interpretation resulting from this momentary convergence. Depending on the text being studied, the conclusion, whether synchronic or diachronic, of this poetic collaboration (already essayed in the hermetic criticism of Bo and Macrı`) would take place in that singular monstrum of poetry and criticism that is translation. Translation, while helping to reveal values (albeit generational rather than absolute), formulate models, and give new meaning to a fundamental vocation of European culture, also stripped poetry of its form, to return it, in a new form, to its original complex meaning. Translation produced in almost ‘absolute’ terms a new, different meaning, seen as the result of the intellectual activity of criticism, crystallized into a new form. In short, it was as if in translation (as the final

The ‘Third Generation’

47

result of the type of comparative study that had by now become standard practice), poetry and criticism, in theory collaborative activities, in practice existed in a relationship of osmosis, shifting from one form to the other. The poets of the third generation were impassioned not only by the implicit challenge of translation, entailing as it does repeated re-visitations of the source text and the search for a perfectibility that only the existence of textual variants could satisfy, but also by the texts themselves and by the possibility of from them recreating elements of a Judaeo-Christian civilization that would constitute the roots of a European culture.13 This civilization was not merely a thing of the past, as it continued to make its presence felt through Ungaretti’s translations from the French (from Apollinaire to Bergson) and Montale’s translation of Eliot (alongside Shakespeare, Go´ngora and the Ple´iade school), while the Spanish poets of the generations of ’98 and ’25 would arrive in Italy via Bo, Macrı`, Bodini and Caproni.14 Then came the French poets, again via Bo and Macrı` (in his edition of Vale´ry’s Cimitie`re marin)15 and Caproni, who not only worked on prose texts such as Proust’s Le temps retrouve´,16 but also on the disquieting and problematic Ce´line and the poetry of Apollinaire, Char, Fre´naud and even Verlaine and Pre´vert.17 Admittedly, attempts in this direction had already been made by the first generation of the twentieth century, and this in itself would provide sufficient grounds to view the first generation as having launched twentieth-century Italian poetry. Indeed, the names of Ungaretti and Montale, to which one could add Solmi, with his writings on Montaigne and Laforgue,18 testify to this fact. However, with the exception of the bilingual Ungaretti (later interested in Go`ngora and the baroque),19 Comi and Valeri’s work on French poetry,20 Vigolo’s translations of Ho¨lderlin,21 and Quasimodo’s translations from ancient Greek, there is no doubt that it was really the third generation who made the recognition of a great European tradition an indispensable element in the formation of their poetics. In search of what might be termed an ‘onto-metaphysics of the Word’ the authors of the third generation22 followed in the footsteps of their forefathers to the point of reprising their conception of when the religious–existential roots of Western Europe were formed and national sentiments were laid down, and in so doing nurtured the impulse for regeneration and revolt to which the comparative animus of translation led them. As they liked to affirm, they had not only divided the world into linguistic-cultural areas,23 contributing to the circulation, appropriation and re-founding of poetics, but on that suddenly enlarged map they had situated the motivation behind every possible poetic form. Two issues arose in the relation between person and writing and in the occasional abandonment of literary creation in favour of criticism or translation (the case of Oreste Macrı` is exemplary in this respect, as are those of Sergio Baldi, Leone Traverso,24 and later Ruggero Jacobbi25 and Francesco Tentori,26 themselves poets of some significance). On the one hand, the frenzy of restitution exalted the source text, which remained implicitly

48

Anna Dolfi

unreachable. On the other, in spite of the translators’ intentions, the new text generated from the original ended up achieving a paradoxical autonomy, constituting and orienting, through the new language of its translation, the grammar and syntax of a new poetic language. These translations, more than their source texts, impacted upon, and became entwined with, contemporary poetry, presenting verse, whether historical or recent, in a new language. Ultimately, this resulted in an almost paradoxical, and often misunderstood, semi-vindication of translation.27 Oreste Macrı`’s splendid writings on the subject28 have provided us with a well-defined picture of the translation methods of the third generation. These focused on the sanctity of the text, the identification of ‘differential minima’, the refusal to ‘equate the referent with its verbalisation’,29 and the notion of translation as an autonomous literary genre (taking Port-Royal poetics as their starting point).30 However, supporting evidence is also provided by the various anthologies that from generation to generation have mediated foreign poetry in Italy.31 The selection of authors presented in Luzi and Landolfi’s Anthologie de la poe´sie lyrique franc¸aise, published by Sansoni in 1950, and Bo’s Nuova poesia francese, published by Guanda in 1952, together with Macrı`’s Poesia spagnola del Novecento, may be seen as indicative of the literary models adopted by the third generation. Then there are Bo’s studies on surrealism and his Lirici spagnoli,32 Leone Traverso’s Poesia straniera moderna, Attilio Bertolucci’s 1958 Poesia straniera del Novecento and Luzi’s 1959 Idea simbolista. To this one could add a complete census of the translations produced by these writers, an analysis of their preferred journals and a detailed study of their explicitly stated poetic approaches, perhaps reconstructed through unpublished or rare documents, such as the correspondence which, for some time now, has providentially begun to surface.33 When one undertakes a detailed inspection of these various sources, numerous important names begin to appear, especially when one includes the equally important interventions on prose produced by figures complementary to those of the third generation (nor, given Vittorini’s contact with Florence and Quasimodo, should one forget the earlier experience of Americana and the translations of Vittorini and Pavese). One could, then, cite such figures as Renato Poggioli (and the Russian poets of his Violetta notturna), Bo, Macrı`, Baldi,34 Bodini, Traverso,35 Panarese, Pagano,36 Luzi, Bigongiari, Parronchi, Bertolucci, Caproni,37 Sereni,38 Landolfi, Jacobbi and Tentori. The most important unifying feature of these writers’ work, however, is the realization of the concept the ‘differential minimum’ as a deliberate praxis from within. Thus, Macrı`’s translations of Lorca (although the same could be said of every critic/translator-poet) can be considered equivalent to the creative writings of a figure like Luzi or Bigongiari. With the breaking down of the last frontier between individual and generation, translation and poetry showed themselves, in different individuals, or often, indeed, within the same individual, to be genuinely collaborative forces in delineating the modes and forms of the new poetic communication, which was to take place in a single, ideal location. This

The ‘Third Generation’

49

paralleled the relationship between Florence and Europe (although, it should be said, the emphasis here was on the continent’s ‘little countries’). In other words, there was a reciprocal enhancement of the smallest, regional level, and the largest, supra-national level. Ultimately, to be considered representative of the present, a text would, to a far greater degree than ancient, or foreign, texts, have to be full of potential, capable of eternally re-proposing the language of poetry in the present: this language would need to be diversified and inscribed in new ways, while remaining reproducible. As far as intentionality, and therefore poetic invention, is concerned, original and translation may be considered on an almost equal footing,39 as they both seek to reach a meaning which moves beyond the text towards an undifferentiated origin of language, whilst paradoxically producing a language which locates historically and culturally its audience in the present. Indeed, in their necessary complementariness, poets and critics, authors and translators seem to outline in unison the myth – already characteristic of Leopardi – of a universal language, or rather of a common European language. Such a language should be capable, through the yearned-for unity of signifier and signified (through a metaphysically motivated word), of leading back to a place in which, at all times and, as Traverso would have it, in the present eventuality, ‘being and truth’ can meet.40 In short, such a language would lead to the point where, almost miraculously, form and existence meet once more. Admittedly, from this point onwards differences, sometimes significant, arise.41 For Macrı` translation ‘was the psychological and artistic consequence of our European vocation prompted by the demon of foreign literature’42 and was exemplified by the field of Spanish (beginning with Be´cquer)43 and French literature (above all Nerval’s Orphic Aurelia or Vale´ry’s Cimetie`re marin).44 For Luzi, on the other hand, such a European vocation was to be found in the spectrum of at least four countries (France, Germany, England, Russia) at the origin of the great symbolist tradition refracted through Traverso’s diachronic triads (Goethe, Ho¨lderlin, Kleist; George, Hofmannsthal, Rilke; Trakl, Heym, Benn). Conversely, Bigongiari, in theory ready to bend the avant-garde towards the informale, followed the established tradition of European surrealism, especially Eluard and Breton (in addition to Conrad, with his return to an adventurous Mediterranean).45 For all of them, this European vision of translation was born as a reaction to the war. But whereas Traverso favoured the infernal kingdoms down whose path Rilke’s Die Sonette an Orpheus had sent him,46 Bigongiari’s 1940 translation of Ronsard, produced ‘in the gloom of a war that announced itself as a war of extermination’,47 shone with a brilliance that was almost platonic (according to a distinctly Florentine version of neo-Platonism, at any rate). This was in spite of the desperation that had led both back to the origins, to the primitive many-sidedness of an undifferentiated language, or, rather, to the cultural unity of an intention still not rendered in language, ready to manifest itself in every historical occurrence, in every mortal being. Bigongiari describes this conception of translation as follows:

50

Anna Dolfi

As I have already said on other occasions, for me translation is similar to an act of desperation. The simplest, but perhaps not the most accurate reason could be the following: the times left no hope other than that contained in the most absurd gestures, the most hidden evidence of a self that sought to multiply its own being in the universal brotherhood of poetry, beyond the borders which, for us, contained not an enemy, but a brother. The enemy lay rather in ourselves, in the acceptance of an inadmissible separation imposed by a politics of power and oppression. In short, translation was the search for reasons to explain the schism in the universal language of man, such as the language of poetry. Perhaps it was also the search for the means to compensate for this by going back to a time before the fragmentation of language, in an attempt to touch the original many-sidedness of language in order to find the unalterable cause of its dazzling core. In short, it was a discourse on the transparency of form itself, pursued in the formal multiplicity of its historical manifestations.48

For this reason, Bigongiari could say that, for him, translation was like a ‘primordial act of criticism’,49 even if he then assigned it the task of reconstituting and re-ordering the European tradition, reinvigorating the Italian style of writing through narrative (a narrative within poetry in the manner of Montale’s Bufera and, later, of the Hermetics). Ronsard allowed him to place Petrarchism, in whose ambit critics were wont to inscribe the Hermetic experience, along an axis that ran from Petrarch, by way of the Ple´iade to Della Casa, Tasso, Juan de la Cruz and John Donne, ‘ending up, by way of Leopardi, in the great temptation of surrealism, and thus in the work of Paul Eluard’.50 Through Ronsard, a Petrarchism estranged from the fixity of its emblems became animated by the dynamic, open values of Mannerism, the figures and gestures of the Florentine seventeenth century (of which Bigongiari would become a great student and connoisseur)51 and by the splendour of those great canvases in which representation takes shape through a slowly progressive phrasing. Although part of this generational discovery, Bigongiari’s Ronsard, unlike the Ronsard of Luzi (who nevertheless produced an extraordinary translation, quite deliberately reproduced in the Copia, within the body of the poem itself),52 freed him from the Orphic temptations that symbolism had not succeeded in banishing: It was Hermeticism, in the late 1930s, which renewed interest in Ronsard and du Bellay following Sainte-Beuve’s reappraisal of their work. Hermeticism was intent on renewing, in discursive terms, what poetry had reduced to a poetics of the word; not the original augmentative poetics of the word found in Ungaretti’s Allegria, but rather the reductive second poetics of the word found in Quasimodo. It was the third generation Florentine poets who translated several of Ronsard’s magnificent sonnets into Italian, attacking that lengthy phrasing . . . with youthful daring, [moving] among Eliot’s ‘sacred woods’ where the mature poet, melancholically going lento pede, discovers himself as man.53

In Bigongiari’s vision of the seventeenth century, the sonnets constituted the beginnings of a modernity that Luzi had traced back, in various countries, to

The ‘Third Generation’

51

the pre-symbolist (romantic) impetus of Ho¨lderlin, Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), Nerval, Tjutcev and Be´cquer. For Bigongiari, the point of transition lay in the neoclassicism of Foscolo, as opposed to Carducci, who was favoured by the later ‘Italian academic taste’. His re-reading of Ronsard and Mannerism, the belated solicitation of Marcel Raymond’s anthology of La poe´sie franc¸aise et le Manie´risme published in the 1970s, and the re-reading of the baroque poets by the Geneva school (Jean Rousset in particular), further contributed to this process in his maturity, when he was far from the anxiety of the Elizabethan influences of Shakespearian theatre. For Bigongiari, then, Ronsard’s influence was echoed and multiplied, repeatedly raising questions about the foundations of language and the obscure adventure of existence prior to creation. For Bigongiari, ‘it is true that, as in Heidegger, that which language expresses can only be said in language’; and yet, translating from a ‘translation-tradition’ which had brought new freedom to the Petrarchan style of writing, meant for him obtaining ‘the very poiesis of the poiein’. Translation also reactivated that which had been frozen as a sort of fixed emblem and moved it towards the symbolic value that would lead to Mallarme´. Although born from an act of desperation, ‘at once generative and degenerative’, translation, ‘while intertextualising the new text in a new language, also produces a new textual possibility’. In other words, as in a hall of mirrors, while translation distances itself ever further from the original, it also inevitably leads back to the original, even if only in the pretence of an identity suddenly stretched out, open, like an itinerarium mentis in Deo: Just as there are concomitant ideas . . . , no less important to the ongoing enrichment of being and poiein are specular ideas, which advance the path of invention alongside the directional axis of meaning. Ronsard for me worked within this specular framework: he made me lose sight of my starting point. He also helped me – while I was searching for a virtuality of the self which I wanted to activate – to penetrate the horizon of the ‘mas alla`’ of the ‘beyond’. There, what is virtual, in its eventuality, can puncture one’s horizon of expectations. Translating can also – as well as an act of humility – be an act of desperation; however, at times it can also present itself as an act of hope, helping one find in one’s own tragic and insurmountable difference the reasons (both inclusive and divergent) of one’s inalienable identity. It can also reveal these reasons through an identification with a discourse which sees reality no longer as a symbolic magma, but as something which is both waiting to be uttered, and (through the symbolic dimension of language) to be respected as such. That is to say, it is waiting to be respected as a reality which is becoming language, through a process which is both identificatory and alienating, and which leads language back to its constitutive dynamism, leads it back to being action . . . It is in this border zone that the great human contradiction receives its diction.54

Bigongiari locates his active search for diction within this transgressive potentiality. However impossible, absurd and precarious – yet utterly essential – it might seem, translation, for Bigogniari, should not be thought of in terms

52

Anna Dolfi

of the detachment typical of parody, but rather as participating in a performance.55 Conversely, when writing about poetry and translation, as was customary for the writers of his generation, Leone Traverso emphasized its histrionic component, speaking of a sort of recitative, actorly transposition.56 For Bigongiari, and in some respects Macrı` and Traverso, every discourse remained essentially theoretical, and therefore of particular interest to us in the context of this enquiry. Others (Luzi, Parronchi, Sereni, Fortini),57 however, spoke of the empirical practice of translation (Luzi) and of metre, rhyme and tone (Fortini). In so doing, they raised questions regarding the level of freedom and the modes of interpretation employed by translators and their mutual influences.58 Moreover, their translations were frequently complemented by rich scholarly notes (as in Parronchi’s Quaderno francese).59 It was as if the diminishing supply of untranslated works (Sereni thanks Solmi, Anceschi, Bassani, Scheiwiller and others for having recommended texts to translate)60 and the insistence on the interference of present memory61 had led them to play down the translatorial vocation which had touched everyone, at least in the heady days of the 1940s, when the discovery of Europe and its literature manifested itself in the reflection on and study of translation:62 Translation meant searching for the words to communicate in a painful situation of incommunicability and death . . . Translating is for me always an act of humble hope in a universal poetic koine´ (both translinguistic and endolinguistic), before the poet whose text I want to render in another language; a text which is always ne varietur in relation to itself . . . Reading poetry, and even more translating it, is always a ‘performance’; thus, it always has something unutterably personal about it, much more so than a musical score which admits, God willing, a plurality of interpretations.63

When searching through the works of great European poets for the alterity and the double capable of inventing and discovering bouts d’existence in their own deeply felt identity (as Caproni does), much that was dormant was awoken by experience more than knowledge:64 It may seem like a paradox, but in the act of translation, it is not the translator who makes a discovery but the poet who is being translated, who, investing the translator with his power, awakes in him that which was dormant, nocturnal and thus neglected . . . [A]ll the translator’s pleasure (if one can call it thus), all the attraction that impels him to translate, consists in the sensation of a broadening of the field of his own experience and awareness, of his own existence and being more than his knowledge, thanks to that text.65

Nevertheless, Caproni writes that, ‘For me Le Cimetie`re will always be the most striking example – the most extreme example, if you will – of the almost complete impossibility of translating poetry.’66 Writing on translation in Il verri in 1960, Anceschi reminds us that, in translation, the inevitable emphasizing of certain formal characteristics at the expense of others means that ‘translations give us the tone, the measure and the essence of the way in which a

The ‘Third Generation’

53

century, a literary movement, a personality reads texts’.67 A translation attests to one of many possible approximations, creating an awareness of ‘the impossibility of continuously reliving (in the infinite variation of lived time) the repetition of a state which is the lived possibility of every experience’.68 Regardless of how one tries to define it, translation was, for all these writers, ‘vocationally a cultural act of poetics’, especially when the translator refuses a prose reduction, choosing instead a verse translation.69 It is the modest offering, hidden behind the necessary grammatical and philological rigour, of Ennius’ ‘second heart’ to which Gianfranco Contini referred up until 1940.70 Despite this, all the author-theorists of the third generation would probably have been in agreement on this point, even the rigorous (and anti-idealist) Caproni (remember the ‘tu mio cuore perche´ batti’ of his translation of Apollinaire).71 For even in his declared scepticism of adaptation, and the attenuation of his hypothesis that translation was like a musical ‘interpretation’ that required a ‘virtuoso’ translator,72 Caproni continued to translate throughout his life, and not for reasons of economic necessity but rather because, for him, there was no difference between writing and translation: In truth I have never established hierarchies or distinguished between my own writing and that act which is commonly called translation. As far as I am concerned, in both it is a case of expressing myself in the clearest way possible, of trying to produce something which expresses what lies in my heart. For me, both require the same commitment and the only difference between the two is the impetus, the cause.73

Indeed, it was Caproni who spoke of the impossibility of identifying, amongst the various translations available, the ‘one which is closest to the heart of the poe`me’.74 In the case of Vale´ry, the translations by Valeri and Macrı`75 with, or rather because of, ‘their authority’ and importance seemed to Caproni to confirm ‘the desperate hypothesis of the untranslatability of Le Cimetie`re’,76 making the search for the ‘heart’ of the text extremely difficult and necessarily imperfect. In sending a manuscript of his Lamenti to his ‘great friend Macrı`’77 (with whom he would have detailed discussions about the translation of Lorca and others),78 Caproni himself was extremely grateful for Macrı`’s translations of Machado79 (it is well known that one of Caproni’s favourite and most frequently used stylistic features is the Machadian ‘galerı´as del alma’). As time passed, Caproni continued to remember their recent but nonetheless firm friendship (‘best wishes from your old friend, Giorgio’) and to express his desire to see Macrı`’s translations (‘I would be delighted if you really would send me the Machado’).80 One only has to list the subjects covered in these letters to recognize that these men’s friendship was based on poetry and translation.81 This is confirmed, with that prophetic quality that final messages sometimes have, by a postcard from 22 October 1988 in which a now ailing Caproni asks the sage Hispanist Oreste Macrı` (‘see if today you can finally make me happy’ [‘vedi

54

Anna Dolfi

oggimai se tu mi puoi far lieto!’])82 to identify the author of several verses that he had encountered as an exercise in a Spanish grammar book during his childhood in Livorno and which had haunted him throughout his life (‘they enchanted me and stuck in my memory’).83 The verses can easily be attributed to Be´cquer and, although his reply is not known, it seems most probable that Macrı`, who had studied and translated Be´quer, was able to make his friend ‘happy’ with a positive response. These verses, in the words of Caproni, without author or title, entrusted to a forgetful memory characterized by transformation and approximation, seem to me particularly suggestive of the passion for lyric poetry that, despite everything, for an entire generation had in a single figure unified poet and critic, translator and poet. (Translated by Alex Marlow-Mann)

Chapter 4

Value and Authority in Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English (1956–1992) Daniela Caselli

The argument that transparency has been the dominant standard adopted throughout the twentieth century in translating Italian poetry into English (at the expense of linguistic experimentalism) represents a persuasive ‘symptomatic’ reading of specific and localized translating practices.1 It is also, however, one which at present runs the risk of being turned into an evaluative tool.2 It may be helpful, then, to reflect on the potential risks of replacing what was a governing paradigm of translatability (based on notions of ‘good poetry’ and transparency of meaning) with one of estrangement (based on the reversal of existing critical criteria) by mode of a priori theoretical assertion. An analysis of a number of introductions to anthologies of Italian poetry in English can illustrate how to build on the critical potential of Venuti’s theories and avoid calcifying estrangement and transparency into the opposition between innovation and tradition. Translation studies, a discipline able to quickly absorb new theories but also characterized by a persistent evaluative impetus linked to empiricist and communicative models, would otherwise run the risk of merely reproducing old parameters of acceptability under a new guise, whilst failing to challenge a conception of the critic of translation as a Leavisite arbiter or detached scientific observer. By analysing select passages from introductions to anthologies of Italian poetry in English, I would like to map the changing cultural criteria according to which translations are judged to work, or otherwise, throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This will lead me to show how models of productivity, especially within the context of poetry, are imbricated within narratives of value and desire, and thus to foreground – in line with the other contributors to this volume – the ideological and political consequences of translations. More specifically, I will contend that the introductions to anthologies of Italian poetry in English that appeared in print between 1956 and 1992 complicate the stark opposition between estrangement and transparency in translation because, on the one hand, apparently opposed theorizations of translation belie uncomfortably similar practices and, on the

56

Daniela Caselli

other, widely different translating practices are predicated on similar ideological assumptions. Although these introductions range from boldly defending authorial independence (as in ‘renditions’ or ‘imitations’) to faithfully stating a fidelity to the letter of the text which Octavio Paz would have called ‘servile’, they often end up subscribing to the same philosophical assumptions about value and authority. The often paradoxical scenario produced by an analysis of Italian poetry in English translation also complicates competing models of periodizations in twentieth-century British and American poetry. In his 1961 Imitations (published in New York), Robert Lowell indicates the titles of poems by Saba, Ungaretti and Montale at the end of his renditions, apparently rejecting the ‘translator’s invisibility’ while acknowledging the uneasy presence of an original.3 However, what may appear as a break with translating conventions is based in turn on Lowell’s already established authority, which enables him to provide a guarantee of ‘good poetry’ even when moving away from the notion of fidelity to the original. In England, Robin Fulton tries in 1966 to push this further by claiming: The genre of these pieces lies somewhere in between translations and imitation, i.e. departures from the original are deliberate and in each case what I have aimed at is a version which will stand on its own feet as English verse yet fulfil the same kind of intentions as the original fulfils. My versions will not necessarily help the reader who is new to the originals (in a way a prose crib may): but if he feels I have turned good Italian poems into bad English poems I hope this will not discourage him from examining (and even translating) the originals for himself.4

By reassuring his readers that his acts of infidelity are intentional, and thus providing his own authority as a supplement to that of the originals (who are household names such as Ungaretti), Fulton vindicates his status of author, deflecting the possible objections that might have been lodged against his renditions had they been done by a ‘mere’ translator (an opposition further strengthened by his juxtaposition of art and didacticism). Somehow contradictorily, however, Fulton wants to keep alive the intentions of the original, investing the poem with a form of agency that raises the status of the translator. Fulton’s preface simultaneously discards servile transpositions and subscribes to fidelity as an unquestionable value: the traditions of translation as reproduction of the original and as original interpretation clash, but do not give way to a critique of the assumptions underlying such an opposition, such as the conventional division between letter and spirit of the text, textual intentions, and – ultimately – taste and textual stability.5 In his 1968 Contemporary Italian Verse (published, like Fulton’s, by the London Magazine Edition),6 G. Singh adopts a translating practice which is explicitly opposed to that of Fulton, declaring that ‘intrinsic translatability’ is his guiding parameter in his choice of poets to anthologize.7 Given the up-todate list of poets included in the volume, Singh’s anthology provides the English reader with a relatively accurate idea of the current poetic production

Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English

57

in Italy, but the adopted paradigm of translatability produces a picture in which linguistic experimentalism is necessarily bypassed by good poetry.8 Singh writes: Fidelity to the text necessarily entails, as far as possible, fidelity to the general pattern of the verse in a given poem – especially as to the length and the number of lines involved – this principle too has been fairly consistently observed. A creative translation or imitation may have its charm; but it is of little use to the reader who wants to know not so much what a particular poem meant to the translator himself, and how he can, in his more or less inspired moments, render it in his own personally creative way, but what the poem means and is in itself, as a literary and linguistic document. My translations aim at satisfying this need. Whether they really succeed or not is quite a different matter and in any case it is not for me to judge.9

Singh’s openly polemical position is, however, less distant from that of Fulton than one may be at first inclined to believe. It does object to the legitimacy of devoting space to the translator’s ‘inspired moments’ and to his ‘personally creative’ ways, but leaves untouched, just as Fulton did, authority, fidelity and value: in Fulton the authority of the poet/translator guarantees fidelity to the spirit of the text (and thus its value), in Singh the translator’s humbleness guarantees that the poet’s authority is preserved through the fidelity to the letter of the text (and thus its value is also preserved). Fulton and Singh subscribe to authority and intentionality as desirable goals precisely when their widely differing practices indicate how translation questions such canonical literary concepts. Apparently similar theorizations of translation, conversely, seem to produce very different results, as can be observed in the ongoing commitment to an idea of translation as an act of fidelity towards poetic voice. For instance, while in England George R. Kay in his Penguin Book of Italian Verse (1958) opts for prose translations closer to a crib (and significantly placed at the foot of the page in which the original appears), in her 1971 anthology, published in New York, Victoria Bradshaw estranges the English texts through neologisms and unfamiliar syntax in order to preserve the Italian poets’ individual voices.10 Fidelity to the voice of the poet leads to diametrically opposed translating practices across the ocean. Precisely because acts of fidelity towards the authority of the individual voice translate themselves into widely differing practices, they help us rethink how translation brings to the fore the ideological assumptions governing the realm of the literary, or – more specifically – the poetic. This is not only because translation questions, as it has often been argued in the past two decades, ideas of literary stability, but also because it troubles predetermined ideas of what can work as an innovative or, conversely, as a conventional practice. The politics dominating translations of Italian poetry into English, and – more specifically – anthologies of poetry (necessarily aiming to be ‘representative’) can complicate a history of the twentieth-century split along the

58

Daniela Caselli

lines of a modernist heritage which defends the value of linguistic experimentalism (from T.S. Eliot to Geoffrey Hill or from Giuseppe Ungaretti to Nanni Balestrini) against the values of (alleged) communicability, transparency and translatability (from William Wordsworth to Seamus Heaney, from Pascoli to Orelli).11 This in turn illuminates the politics that mutually constitute British and American poetic traditions. In 1936, Michael Roberts justified his anthological choices of English poetry for Faber and Faber on the basis of the poems’ engagement with language; modernism is read for the first time as influencing mainstream poetry rather than being relegated to the role of experimental eccentricity.12 Most importantly, Roberts theorizes Englishness as a formal characteristic of the poetry rather than an empirical effect of the nationality of the poet. Such Englishness in poetry, however, remains a contentious notion, since throughout the twentieth century it has been identified, on the one hand, with the legacy of modernism (from Michael Roberts to Veronica Forrest-Thomson, from Antony Easthope to Iain Sinclair)13 and, on the other, with a tradition of empiricism which goes from William Wordsworth to Donald Davie, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney, the latter obviously also raising the central issue of the role of Irishness in relation to Englishness.14 If for Robert Conquest the legacy of modernism is one of elitism and obscurity, for Antony Easthope modernism’s challenge to ‘good poetry’ is one of the most productive trends of the century.15 Critical discourses viewing modernism as the main leading tradition in British poetry, from post-romantic ties to recent neo-modernist experimentalism, have coexisted with long-standing defences of an empirical, mainstream British tradition able to withstand postmodern relativism. Above all, the idea that English poetry lacks a post-modernist poetic tradition (variously read as either a blessing or a sign of backwardness) has worked to differentiate it from North American poetry, in turn deemed – not without anxiety – sophisticated and self-reflective.16 The limits of such a dichotomous literary history are evident not only through the uneasy place of Irish poetry within this scenario, but also when we consider Eugenio Montale, the poet who has been the object of the largest amount of studies of Italian poetry in English translation.17 Although the name of Montale has operated as a synonym of modernity for most of the twentieth century, he has been aligned both with a modernity which follows experimental lines and with less revolutionary forms of innovation. Certainly, Britain was rather slow in accepting Montale as part of the canon, and such a delay can be explained though the resistance against modernist experimental practices. Although Montale had been published in The Criterion in 1928, in 1932 he is not yet recognized (with Saba and Ungaretti) by de Bosis as a poet worth including and translating in his Golden Book of Italian Poetry;18 we will have to wait until 1958 to have George R. Kay adding him to his list of anthologized poets in the Penguin Book of Italian Verse.19 In the United States, however, Montale’s ‘La primavera hitleriana’ had already appeared in 1948 in A Little Anthology of Italian Poetry, edited by Renato Poggioli and published by

Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English

59

New Directions in Prose and Poetry.20 Moreover, the current well-known argument (and a sound one at that) about translations of Montale maintains that English translators have often domesticated his linguistic experimentalism, narrativizing his poetry in ways not dissimilar to those employed in early translations of T.S. Eliot into Italian.21 However, critics who, like Arrowsmith, deplore such English narrativization of Montale’s lyric do so at the price of defending the absolute value of the poet’s masterful voice.22 In other words, what at first may appear to be an argument in favour of linguistic experimentalism soon flips over into a rather anti-modern defence of the individual voice, against which T.S. Eliot, among others, was paradoxically already struggling in the early decades of the twentieth century. The complex role of Montale as the sign of Italian modernity within the anglophone literary world does not, however, exhaust the debate around modernity in Italian poetry, especially since Italy lacks a category of modernism which could be compared to its English, Irish or American counterparts.23 Throughout the twentieth century, anthologies of Italian poetry in English have had to come to terms with such ideas of modernity in anglophone poetry, often reading modernity not as deriving from modernist experimental practices, but instead as a ‘newness’ closer to that hailed by Conquest in the 1950s than to that promoted at the end of the century by figures ranging from Iain Sinclair to the Cambridge neo-modernists. While the Movement’s reaction against the obscurities of modernism, the social realism of the 1930s and the lavish metaphors of the new romantics in the 1940s has often heavily influenced the choice and the translations of Italian poetry in Britain,24 the United States seems relatively more receptive towards linguistically experimental poetry. However, anthologies of Italian poetry in English trouble this opposition in three main ways: firstly, Italy and Italianness circulate in the Anglophone world as traditional notions, linked to song and spontaneous expression; secondly, the individual poetic voice or the lyrical ‘I’ has dominated the realm of poetic translations on both sides of the Atlantic; thirdly, the relative scarcity of anthologies of Italian poetry in English distributed exclusively in Britain, Ireland or the United States during the twentieth century caused poetry in translation to cross national boundaries quite easily and to pose similar questions about innovation and modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, and in Australia too. We may also want to bear in mind that the size of the United States market for poetry is much bigger than that in Britain, and that university presses devoted to publishing poetry make a relevant difference in this respect.25 The first examples of anthologies devoting attention to contemporary poetic productions in Italy (however non-experimental such contemporaneity may be) are nevertheless for the most part North American. Although in 1963 The London Magazine publishes a special issue called ‘Italy 1963’ edited by William F. Weaver and Archibald Colquhoum,26 in which Weaver selects and translates Lorenzo Calogero and Sandro Penna, Gavin Ewart translates Luciano Erba, Francesco Leonetti, Mario Luzi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Camillo

60

Daniela Caselli

Pennati, Nelo Risi and Vittorio Sereni, and John Cairncross translates Lucio Piccolo, it is in the United States that a volume devoted to contemporary European poetry (with a whole section on Italy) appears in 1966 under the title of Modern European Poetry.27 Sonia Raiziss and Alfredo de Palchi edit the Italian section and place Ungaretti at the centre of poetic innovation in Italy (along the lines of what Ballerini will do in 1992), reading him as the first twentieth-century poet able to break with ideas of poetic decorum and placing him at the centre of European avant-garde movements.28 The anthology publishes only the English version of poems not only by Saba, Cardarelli, Campana, Ungaretti, Montale, Quasimodo and Pavese, but also by Sinisgalli, Luzi, Sereni, Turoldo, Pasolini, Cattafi, Scotellaro, Erba, Orelli and Piccolo, identifying the translator. Raiziss and Palchi were interested in Ungaretti because they identified him as having carried out a ‘revolution against all Italianate decorums, including crepuscolarism’ and identified him with ‘the European vanguard’. Unlike G. Singh, who – as we have observed above – in his 1968 contemporary picture of Italian poetry uses the criterion of ‘intrinsic translatability’ as a measure to decide which poets to include in his anthology,29 Raiziss and Palchi associate contemporaneity with avant-garde practices. Singh’s volume’s limited distribution places it on a different level not only from Kay’s 1958 or Golino’s 1962 anthologies, but also from that edited by Raleigh Trevelyan in 1967 and published by Penguin.30 Italian Writing Today also aims ‘to provide some idea of the kind of writing that the intelligent Italian is reading today’,31 and is exemplary in its 1960s picture of a sophisticated and well-read Italy, crystallized in the figures of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Italo Calvino as emblematic Italian intellectuals. The basis on which Trevelyan’s anthology operates is that of consensus; his work is a form of cultural mediation between ‘intelligent’ readers across national borders; in order to do so, the editor has to place himself in the position of a reader able to identify that intelligence and reflect it for the readers’ benefit. Trevelyan’s anthology fights a battle common to anthologies of poetry in translation, that of presenting itself as a product of a contemporary scene (while being superseded by poetry magazines), while at the same time being involved in the process of canon formation and periodization. Another relevant attempt at periodization had already taken place in an anthology published by California University Press; Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel Prize in 1959) writes in his preface to the 1962 volume Contemporary Italian Poetry: An Anthology (edited by Carlo Golino)32 that this is the first anthology of Italian poetry explicitly aimed at an English-speaking public. His purpose, Quasimodo writes, is to invite the American reader to acquaint himself with a poetry which, until now, has appeared, without any conscious intention of its own, as an elaboration of the poetics of European symbolism or decadentism. Might it be that the form of this poetry is such that it is not susceptible of analysis, that it has no independent life

Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English

61

apart from the tradition? The patient English-speaking reader will immediately notice that the truth is quite the contrary. Salvatore Quasimodo, Milan, June 1961

Carlo Golino follows by writing that ‘the prolonged dispute between ‘‘hermetics’’ and ‘‘anti-hermetics’’ is the best and clearest evidence of how irrevocably ‘‘hermeticism’’ has gnawed away at the traditional canons of Italian poetry’.33 He then identifies two poetic traditions emerging in Italy after the magazine Leonardo opened up Italy to other European traditions: one, which he calls ‘hermetic’, is a movement; the other, which he calls ‘tradition and experiment’,34 brings together a series of poets not necessarily linked together by a common programme. Ungaretti, Montale, De Libero, Gatto, Luzi, Sereni and Quasimodo belong to the first, Cardarelli, Saba, Bartolini, Betocchi, Bertolucci, Penna and Pavese to the other. Of 1972 is the special issue of the Mediterranean Review, edited by Brian Swann,35 both an important translator and a champion of Italian poetry in English. Prose appears next to the poetry of Guido Ballo, Alfredo de Palchi, Danilo Dolci, Alberto Lattuada, Mario Luzi, Alberto Mario Mariconi, Eugenio Montale, Nelo Risi, Umberto Saba, Roberto Sanesi, Vittorio Sereni and Andrea Zanzotto. The poems appear only in English and are translated by well-known figures such as Sonia Raiziss, I. L. Salomon, R. Singh, and Brian Swann and Ruth Feldman. The couple Swann/Feldman will often publish Italian poetry during the decade: ‘Modern Poetry in Translation’, published in Winter 1975, is fully devoted to Italian poetry.36 Swann and Feldman edit it and claim in their very short introduction that the volume simply wants to introduce the English-speaking public to contemporary poetry in Italian, thus echoing Trevelyan’s claim in 1967. The poems appear in English only, followed by the translators’ names, mostly, again, well-known figures. Between four and six poems by Vittorio Bodini, Bartolo Cattafi, Luciano Erba, Gilberto Finzi, Giovanni Giudici, Alfredo Giuliani, Gina Labriola, Mario Luzi, Dacia Maraini, Elsa Morante, Rossana Ombres, Sandro Penna, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Antonio Porta, Giovanni Raboni, Nelo Risi, Edoardo Sanguineti, Vittorio Sereni, and Andrea Zanzotto are presented. Younger and avant-garde poets are privileged over better-known or more largely available ones. By following alphabetical order, Swann and Feldman place themselves outside the debates aimed at defining schools, trends and movements. Swann and Feldman, who in 1972 translated a volume of Lucio Piccolo’s poetry,37 in 1975 the first English volume of Zanzotto’s poetry,38 and then Primo Levi and Rocco Scotellaro,39 will also edit in 1979 Italian Poetry Today, with a preface by Glauco Cambon.40 The poems appear again only in English; some poets who had been included in ‘Modern Poetry in Translation’ are now excluded (Cattafi, Giudici, Zanzotto and Bodini, together with those whom Cambon calls the ‘founding fathers’ of Italian poetry, namely Campana, Ungaretti, Montale), and the anthology starts with the so-called ‘fourth generation’, thus excluding hermeticism. Although, following the previous

62

Daniela Caselli

volume, this anthology also adopts the alphabetical order, Cambon does attempt a periodization, which includes Erba, Orelli and Spaziani in the fourth generation and opposes them to what he describes as the avant-garde, represented by I Novissimi and Gruppo 63. The opposition between a post-hermetic tradition which links poetry to the tradition of ‘song’ and an avant-garde which seems to ‘deny the very essence of what for centuries has been regarded as poetry’41 is, however, complicated by Cambon, who asserts that most poetry which has appeared in this period can be located somewhere in between these two poles, such as Bigongiari’s Antimateria (with which he moves away from the third generation) or Pasolini’s work, which appeared in Quarta Generazione but was ideologically removed from it. Vivaldi and Bellezza too can be read as interfering with the neat opposition between fourth generation and Gruppo 63. The debate over the opposition between avant-garde and tradition, with its implications for periodization, will continue throughout the twentieth century, as can be observed in Ballerini’s 1992 Shearsman of Sorts: Italian Poetry 1975–1993,42 a special issue of Forum Italicum that collects poetry by Cacciatore, Luzi, Villa, Zanzotto, Volponi, Giuliani, Rosselli, Porta, Cagnone, Ballerini, Spatola, Lumelli, Viviani, Capollaro, Comand and, from the Gruppo 93, essays by Anceschi, Ballerini himself, Thomas Harrison43 and Filippo Bettini, reviews of poetry published in Italy, and Vangelisti’s obituary for Spatola. Ballerini argues – following Anceschi’s line – that Montale’s poetry is far less experimental than Ungaretti’s, to which he traces back linguistic experiments going from Luzi to the Gruppo 93. Ungaretti is viewed by both Anceschi and Ballerini as the only Italian poet able to relate with futurism and hermeticism, to whom a long tradition of experimental Italian poetry can be traced back. Harrison, who links his argument to Ballerini’s thesis that in Ungaretti the lyrical ‘I’ is radically questioned, discusses two traditions of Italian poetry: one which can be traced back to the importance of the lyrical ‘I’ (from Luzi to Bellezza, Magrelli and the transavanguardia of the 1980s) and the other to T.S. Eliot’s poetry of impersonality (from Cacciatore to Cagnone, Ballerini and visual poetry from the 1960s and 1970s). A rather more iconoclastic attempt at dealing with the opposition between avant-garde and lyricism had also appeared in 1970 in the introduction to Modern Italian Poetry, an anthology published in Australia, collecting poets from Palazzeschi (then eighty-three years old) to Adriano Spatola (then twenty-six), chosen by the Milanese publisher Vanni Scheiwiller, introduced and followed by a ‘coda’ by Fredrick May, translated by Walter de Rachelwiltz in collaboration with Scheiwiller himself and Mary de Rachelwiltz.44 In his preface, titled ‘Di grido in grido: Notes on Some Modern Italian Poetry’, May writes: I admire the integrity with which they fought their needed revolution in desolating times, but I’m not completely at ease with the older generation of Italian poets (Montale, Ungaretti, Saba) or those of the middle (Luzi, Sereni – shapers of the

Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English

63

second wave of insurgence: or was it really consolidation of a muffled victory?). Enjoyment comes to me from the edged linguistic poetry of the last few years.45

May justifies his tiredness with the older generations by claiming, in his conversationally authoritative tone, that they ‘harp too much on man in nature’ and nature, for May, is ‘an overwhelming bore’ which ‘makes the poets wallow’. His judgement of value, expressed in a register at times more apt to a senior common room than to a preface, guides his positive judgement of Palazzeschi’s ‘E lasciatemi divertire’ and his appreciation of Scheiwiller’s inclusion of Lucio Piccolo, Penna and Sinisgalli (their poetic limitations notwithstanding). May anticipates in his preface that the reader will find Orelli accessible and Zanzotto demanding, he praises Pasolini’s vitality, subtlety and intellectual passion, identifies traces of Pavese in the poetry of Erba, and thinks that Giuliani and Pagliarani complement I Novissimi. May also devotes a lot of attention to Sanguineti, Porta, Balestrini and Spatola. After such praise, May criticizes Scheiwiller’s choice, asking why he has included only living poets and why there are no women present in the anthology. May would like to see Margherita Guidacci, Elena Bono, Alda Merini and Maria Luisa Spaziani, but also Vivaldi and Pavese, a harsher Sanguineti than that represented by his ‘Erotopaegnia’ and a more biting Pagliarani. When May’s complaints seem to exceed the limits of decorum (something he seems quite keen to do, albeit within an authoritative framework), he admits that his selection would have been different: My outline is personal and misleading, therefore, as Golino’s (or anything by Spagnoletti or Frattini or Anceschi – a most acute critic). I mistrust it because it takes me away from what I want to do: to enjoy the poem itself, for itself, not rejecting the necessary scholarship, but not setting up the model and belabouring the poet for having worked otherwise.46

May’s introduction interacts with previous anthologies of twentieth-century Italian poetry by rejecting previous interpretations, notably refusing to acknowledge hermeticism as a movement and calling it instead ‘a protestant lifestyle’ or establishing continuity between Montale and Luzi. Unlike the anthologies previously analysed (published earlier and later than this one), which opted either for a periodization which saw contemporary poets stemming from the legacy of either Ungaretti or Montale or for an alphabetical order which rejected such genealogical approach, May provides an ‘outline’ but denies it any historical value, openly qualifying it instead as ‘personal and misleading’. We may be tempted to read May’s idiosyncratic and geographically marginal preface as an example of a more radical critique of the ideology of periodization and appropriation of Italian poetry in English. However, what reduces the innovative potential of this quirky introduction to twentieth-century Italian poetry is May’s own unquestioned aesthetic judgement. By not attempting an intepretation aimed at defending the intrinsic

64

Daniela Caselli

aesthetic qualities of the anthologized poems, May seems to question the Leavisite role of the critic as able to guide the masses by identifying genealogical lines of descent. However, he substitutes for this his own ‘discerning appreciation’,47 a supplementary move which accounts for the paradoxical use of his colloquial tone as a source of authority, which implies the assumption of a learned public able to engage in the discussion. May’s introduction clarifies the theoretical implications of constructing and challenging poetic traditions in Italian and English and demonstrates the cross-fertilization and mutual influences that anthologies of Italian poetry exerted on each other across English-speaking countries. A year after Scheiwiller’s anthology, Vittoria Bradshaw edits From Pure Silence to Impure Dialogue: A Survey of Post-War Italian Poetry 1945–1965.48 By choosing Erba, Pagliarani, Scotellaro, Risi, Balestrini, Fortini, Pasolini, together with Margherita Guidacci, Alda Merini, Cristina Campo, Bradshaw fills in many of the gaps identified by May the previous year. We will have to wait until 1987 in New York, however, to see the publication of an anthology devoted to women poets, when Beverly Allen, Muriel Kittel and Keala Jane Jewell will edit The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology.49 Bradshaw’s introduction is one of the few examples of an anthology that views poetry magazines as able to reveal major changes in the twentieth-century canon. The year 1945 is for her both a political and a literary starting point, illustrated by the ‘Politecnico’ debates and by Calvino’s 1954 San Pellegrino speech, in which he supported Pavese and Vittorini’s championing of American literature. By linking the history of poetry with the debates around internationalism, Bradshaw sees Calvino as instrumental in helping Italy cross its suffocating national borders and in provoking the often quoted accusation against Italian prose that it is written in a so-called ‘translation style’. Bradshaw focuses on Anceschi’s Linea Lombarda, magazines such as Terza Generazione (1953) and its antirealist programme, Esperienza Poetica (1954) and its poets (Cattafi, Erba, Volponi, Pasolini, Zanzotto), and Pasolini and Romano`’s debates on Chimera (1954) and defends the innovative role played by Officina (1955) first and by Quartiere (1958) and Protocolli (1961) later. So far these case studies have suggested a history of the reception of Italian poetry as split along the axes of English traditionalism versus American innovation, with, in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States (and Australia) being more attentive to changes in the Italian poetic context. Such a picture, however, must be complicated in turn by providing two additional examples from the United States. In 1981 Lawrence R. Smith opens his introduction to The New Italian Poetry: 1945 to the Present. A Bilingual Anthology by writing:50 The literary landscape of twentieth-century Italy is filled with contrasts. Only a few need to be offered to illustrate the pattern. Because of its glorious heritage, Italy has long had an entrenched cultural traditionalism which, in its extreme manifestation,

Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English

65

is simply a desire to live in the past. At the same time, another segment of the Italian literary and artistic community has been characterized by extreme radicalism. . . . Part of Italy’s literary community has carried on the tradition of internationalism . . . On the other hand, there is also a tradition of fierce xenophobia . . . Because of that elitist academic tradition, there is also a strong anti-academic tradition . . . Italy is a land of paradox as well as a land of violent extremes.51

The sequence of oppositions which for Smith characterize Italy do not so much illustrate a summary of literary and artistic production in twentiethcentury Italy but rather illustrate Italy’s function as ‘a land of violent extremes’, in line with its role in Anglophone literature, from Elizabethan plays to Byron’s carnival, from George Eliot’s Rome to E. M. Forster’s Tuscany. Many of the editors and translators analysed above have variously attempted to characterize Italy as a complex contemporary culture and to engage with the opposition between conservative and avant-garde poetry. Smith embraces instead the very concept of opposition and extends it to epitomize Italy itself, thus repeating the well-entrenched anglophone convention of viewing Italy as the stage for violent passions. Smith also broadens such a literary opposition to all Italian people, claiming, after Ninetta Jucker,52 that Italian people ‘hate empiricism’ and transform everything into an ideological or political issue, since abstraction ‘come[s] naturally to Italians (the language itself can hardly refrain from adding an -ism to every concept)’.53 Jucker and Smith refer to Italians consistently using the pronoun ‘they’, mimicking an unquestioned ethnographic position: Italians’ spontaneity serves an evident ideological purpose since ‘perhaps the American preference for tolerance and peaceful coexistence in literary and cultural matters is the result of political stability and a general freedom from censorship. Italians have had neither.’54 My point here is not merely to demonstrate the untenability of such assertions (which sound even more indefensible today than they did in 1981). I am interested instead in how, after having constructed a picture of Italy which falls into all the theoretical pitfalls denounced by Edward Said and, more specifically to the context of translation, by Tejaswini Niranjana,55 Smith, apparently in an attempt to marry culture and politics, defines a stable national identity, presupposes an internal coherence which leaves no room for differences, and uses ‘they’ in order to glorify ‘we’. All of this in the name of one’s love for Italian poetry. The periodization of the volume is also relevant, due to the pervasive presence of the prefix ‘new’. The volume is divided into two parts, from 1945 to 1956 and from 1956 to 1980. In the first part we find ‘The New Realism’ (Fortini, Pasolini, Scotellaro, Giudici, Volponi, Vivaldi and Pagliarani), ‘The New Hermeticism’ (Luzi, Zanzotto and Erba), ‘The New Experimentalism’ – following Pasolini’s label – (Risi, Cattafi, Roversi and Majorino) and ‘The New Avant-Garde’ (Giuliani, Marmori, Pignotti, Rosselli, Sanguineti, Balestrini, Porta and Spatola). ‘New’ indicates for Smith not only the cyclical nature of Italian history but also the profound impact of the Second World War.56 Such uses of ‘new’ reflect how claims for the ‘new’ throughout the twentieth century

66

Daniela Caselli

performatively produce a change in the canon which, however, does not necessarily indicate linguistic experimentalism or avant-garde practices, but often signals instead a reaction against them.57 Such titles also sound selfdefeating, as newness coincides in Smith’s account with a re-enacting of the early part of the century. Smith’s ‘newness’ gratifies a need for innovation while firmly placing Italy within a circle of historical repetition and genealogy, thus producing a history of Italian poetry which does not threaten its immobile historical function. The second case study which may help us to reconsider how translation, literary history and national identity interact is Poems from Italy, edited in 1985 by William J. Smith and Dana Gioia and published by New Rivers in Minnesota.58 The preface to Poems from Italy presents problems analogous to those encountered in Lawrence R. Smith’s 1981 introduction: ‘The Italians,’ we are informed, ‘realize . . . that there is no need, really, to distinguish or to choose between the smile on the face of a cameriere and Donatello’s San Giorgio’ because both are ‘works of art’.59 Such a quaint equation between art and life, which adopts the language of the tourist board rather than that of the literary critic, underpins the notion of poetry as the ‘natural’ mark of Mediterranean spontaneity; following Luigi Barzini, the editors write: ‘song to the Italians is as natural as breathing’. It is indicative that this anthology, focused as it is on the idea of a ‘natural’ and ‘spontaneous’ Italianness, is characterized by a distinct lack of poetry associated with post-war experimental practices. Following what has been diagnosed as a characteristic slipperiness of national definitions, this Italianness seems to promise an ‘essence, but as soon as we examine it historically, we discover that this essence . . . is . . . an entirely contingent concept, a sort of empty vessel to be filled with the nationalist ideology of any particular moment’.60 This can be observed when analysing another volume edited by Dana Gioia and Michael Palma: New Italian Poets, published in 1992,61 is a collected volume backed by the Poetry Society of America and by the Centro Nazionale Poesia della Metamorfosi in Italy,62 which will include many of the experimental poets left out of Poems from Italy. Nevertheless New Italian Poets is dominated by an anti-experimental drive clearly exposed in the Introduction, which reads: Like parents who dress their younger children in hand-me-down clothes, Italian critics frugally refurbish old theories to describe new poets. No other modern literature displays so many neo movements. New Realism, New Lyricism, New Experimentalism, New Avant-Garde, New Hermeticism, New Twilight Poetry, and the ultimate in novelty – I Novissimi. One sometimes feels that Italy has more poetic schools than soccer teams.63

Gioia and Palma attempt to avoid the problems encountered by Smith above, trying not to ‘label’ (a tendency apparently characterizing Italian critics). They simply want to provide good poems in good translations, without burdening the reader with unnecessary genealogies. That they cannot fully escape such

Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English

67

genealogies is less important than their resorting to the notion of individual genius whilst attempting to do so.64 Such a practice risks eliding one of the main problems which have characterized Italian poetry after the war: if we think of the poetry of I Novissimi or of Pasolini we can see how from both a linguistic and a political point of view the notion of the individual as a free liberal humanist subject is the impetus behind many poems in this anthology. In order to defend individual freedom, in order to unearth the individual voice of the poet, Gioia and Palma resort to an idea of the poetic self which is contrary to much of what the poets represented in their anthology claim. These examples indicate how, although Poems from Italy and New Italian Poems present a very different selection of poems and could be read as representing a more traditional and a more innovative aspect of the reception of Italian poetry in English, they in fact resort to similar essentialist notions in order to defend a stable picture of both Italianness and individuality. The self and the nation, both working as unquestionably stable and yet paradoxically empty notions, reflect each other and underpin these anthologies’ efforts to provide the reader with the essence of Italy, the essence of the ‘bel canto’. It is precisely the notion of the individual which can lead us to break down the apparent opposition between anthologies which attempt to transpose an accurate notion of Italianness (trying to preserve an ahistorical picturepostcard Italy) and those attempting to invest in an idea of contemporaneity based on innovation. George Kay and G. Singh praise Montale’s voice, Victoria Bradshaw attempts to maintain the poets’ individual voices, Swann and Feldman, Spatola and Vangelisti, and even Fulton and Lowell, all subscribe to the notion of ‘voice’ and its connotation of presence and authenticity; Ballerini’s, with Harrison, is the only example of an anthology ready to take issue with the notion of the lyrical ‘I’. The introductions to the anthologies of Italian poetry in English analysed here demonstrate how apparently opposed ideological positions along the axis of tradition and experimentalism do not necessarily result in widely differing translating practices; indeed, trying to capture the experimental voice, many anthologies paradoxically reinstate the authenticity of the lyrical ‘I’. I have also argued that a history of the reception of Italian poetry can complicate a model opposing a British empirical poetic tradition to an American experimental one. If a few anthologies, such as Ballerini’s and May’s, variously question the prominence of the ‘self’, a strong continuity in linking individuality and national identity can be observed in Italian poetry in English translation. Antony Easthope has polemically argued that poetry is too often taken to ‘express experience; experience gives access to personality, and so poetry leads us to personality’;65 throughout the second half of the twentieth century, translations of Italian poetry have both reasserted the importance of the authenticity of the lyrical voice (even when arguing in favour of maintaining the experimental potential attached to it) whilst also bringing to the fore the complex and often paradoxical ways in which personality, identity and nation are ideologically interconnected.

This page intentionally left blank

Section II Reading Communities and the Politics of Translation: Value and Visibility in Three Case Studies

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 5

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno Matthew Reynolds

‘To my knowledge, there is no developed theory about the reading of translations, about what kind of reading experience it is, about where the reader should place himself in relation to the text, about the implicit understandings and the perceptual adaptations with which a translation should be read’ – thus Clive Scott in Translating Baudelaire.1 I do not have a developed theory to advance; but I would like to offer an instance, a commentary, and some reflections which will touch on the areas of uncertainty Scott outlines and, in so doing, contest some of the assumptions current in translation studies. I will (if I may) leave on one side the vexed issue of definition (is Logue’s Homer a translation? Is Joyce’s Ulysses?), and the obvious fact that different translations ask to be read in different ways (a parallel text crib differing from, say, the latest translated Saramago). Instead, let us begin by reading a passage from a single text that is indisputably a translation, Ciaran Carson’s Inferno of Dante Alighieri (2002), and ask ourselves what sort of experience it offers.2 In the style of reading I wish to try out, we will not forget that we are faced with a translation. That is to say, we will not do what Don Paterson asks of readers of his version of Antonio Machado, The Eyes: ‘I . . . plead with the reader to forget the relation in which these poems stand to the originals.’3 It may in any case be impossible to mislead oneself so completely; it may also be that, if one could, one would be doing a wrong to the ‘originals’ and their author. But let me not pursue those arguments here. Instead, let us do the perhaps simpler thing of exploring what it may be like to read while remembering that what we read is a translation; to read in the knowledge of its relation to a source. To do this is not, or not necessarily, to look up the Italian and proceed line by line. Carson’s book prints the English only, which discourages parallel-text comparison; and translations in general are aimed mainly at people with imperfect or no understanding of the source language. The translation’s implied readers are not ‘informed readers’ in the usual sense. They are in a crucial respect uninformed: they are not capable of subordinating the translation to the source in the way a bilingual scholar might be tempted to do. But we should not assume a position of total ignorance. All English readers will

72

Matthew Reynolds

have notions about Italy; most will have some sense of who Dante was and of how the Inferno has figured in English culture. To pre-empt the results of our experiment: to have only this partial knowledge is not wholly a disadvantage. So let us imagine ourselves into the point of view of someone who is well read in English and who knows perhaps a little Italian and something about Dante: enough to have an awareness of the time and distance that the translation must bridge. Always remembering that we are reading a translation, we will ask what Carson’s text appears to be doing with the text by Dante which – we know – must lie beyond it, even though we may not have much knowledge of that text in itself. The passage is from Canto IV of The Inferno, the canto of the virtuous pagans. Dante and Virgil have hooked up with Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan, and the poetical party is moving through prevailing gloom towards a light: A castellated castle then we reached, engirdled seven times with walls around, encircled by a periphrastic creek, o’er which we went as though it were dry ground; with five wise men through seven gates I passed into a meadow with a single bound. Here were folk of grave and solemn cast, ruminating slowly, speaking seldom, only answering in words when asked. A luminous and open stadium afforded us a perfect supervision of that dignified symposium, whose factors I could count with great precision on the verdant lawn, so that I gloried in myself for making this description: I saw Electra, with her many-storied boon companions: Hector and Aeneas; Caesar, falcon-eyed, victorious; Your Camillas and your Penthesileas I saw . . .4

The writing is multifaceted, teasing. Take the unashamed tautology ‘castellated castle’. On its own, this looks like a parody of a weak translator filling up the line. But then it is compounded by a second kind of repetition: ‘engirdled . . . encircled’ and an explanation for the circularity of the phrasing is at once

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno

73

held out: it is being periphrastic like the creek. If this strikes us as rather a contrived effect we find that our thought has been pre-empted: the word ‘creek’ challenges us to judge the writing ‘creaky’. Perhaps we feel that ‘periphrastic creak’ creates an awkward phonetic sticking point? Our unease will be overcome by the smooth stride of the succeeding monosyllabic line. The procession seems dignified, five wise men being grander than the usual three, but there is a comedy about it too: it is Superman who leaps tall buildings ‘in a single bound’. Carson’s own poems are often stylistically restless, but the mode flourishes with especial vigour in the translation. The modern English is trying a multitude of poses in imitation of the medieval Italian so as to suggest uncertainties about how we these days might take the miraculous scene. Are Dante’s companions sacred figures? Or fictional superheroes? In the lines that follow, this searching use of English becomes more focused. What is the meaning of ‘luminous’? Usually it means glowing in the dark like a bicycle safety jacket or a toy skeleton but that is not the sense we mainly need here: we are not being confronted with a dayglo stadium. Luminous here means, straightforwardly, filled with light, a meaning which now feels a little bit old, formal, poetical (though it is current in Italian for ‘luminoso’). What about ‘stadium’? Again there are modern high-tech stadia with retractable roofs whose presence we must register but also push back in favour of the older, low-rise stadia that Dante would have known (for this doubleness in the word, contrast ‘castle’ whose reference is more simply old). And then what of ‘supervision’? Toddlers have to be kept under adult supervision; undergraduates at Cambridge University are given supervision by their tutors. But in the Carson Dante we have to take the word in an extremely archaic, basically Latin sense: a view over. ‘Symposium’ likewise has one sense for modern professional academia and business; and behind it a less formal, more convivial meaning – the meaning it had for Plato. ‘Afforded’ too means, as it appears here, nothing to do with spending power but must be taken in a sense that is ageing: ‘allowed’. ‘Factors’ is even more peculiar than the rest of these odd words since it connects with the interest in numbers earlier in the passage (the five wise men passing through seven gates have a masonic air, the more so since five and seven are factors of thirty-five, the age of being nel mezzo del cammin). But it too asks to be taken in an older sense (‘doer’, ‘participant’). All the words in this second phase of the extract are used in such a way as to activate their earlier meanings. They have historical depth. And since they all (except for ‘afforded’) have Latin or Greek roots, they also imply geographical direction: they are the sort of words that the moderately informed reader would expect to have close relatives in the romance languages, including Italian. This expectation is nurtured by the fact that the text is a translation. Imagine these words appearing together, as they perfectly well might, in an English poem. They would register primarily as formality, as a stiffening of style. But when you know they are shadowing another language, you are prompted to think about their relationship to what may well be that other

74

Matthew Reynolds

language’s words. In this case, you are prompted to see that translation has gone into reverse gear; here it is English that moves back and indeed sideways towards Dante’s Italian so as to create a moment of what George Steiner has called ‘interlingua’: translation as a merging of languages rather than a hop from one to another.5 ‘Luminous’ is almost luminoso, ‘stadium’ is almost stadio, ‘supervision’ is almost supervisione, ‘symposium’ is almost simposio. Were Dante, by a feat of time travel, to be given these lines of Carson’s to read, he would most likely be able to understand them. Next, as Dante gets clear sight of foreign, ancient figures, Carson’s words become more clearly English and, in the end, modern. The language too is glorying in itself, or at least taking on a feel of self-sufficiency. ‘Many-storied’ has a flicker of temporal ambiguity (stories or storeys?) which connects it to the earlier multi-storeyed words; but it feels less driven than them, less directed towards medieval Italy. ‘Boon companions’ seems faux-medieval in a Robin Hood sort of way; the phrase is an English cliche´ even though its constituent words have etymological roots in the romance languages. Finally, the tone of ‘your Camillas, and your Penthesileas’ is thoroughly at home in the United Kingdom. It is the idiom of the pub raconteur, if not the Self-Righteous Brothers. So this passage from this translation offers a reading experience of shifting levels and varying focus. Phrases like ‘boon companions’ and ‘in a single bound’ open up a sense of distance having been crossed because they seem temporally and tonally inappropriate to the material that (we know) has come from Dante. Electra can’t have had ‘boon companions’, quite, not like the comrades who fill no glass for me in the nineteenth-century song; and the ‘single bound’ can’t quite have been of the superhero variety. The phrases ask to be relished in the way Susan Sontag relished camp: ‘it is the love of the exaggerated, the ‘‘off’’, of things-being-what-they-are-not’.6 In realizing that they are ‘off’, we get a sense of what separates us from Electra as (again, our moderately informed reader infers) she must have been seen by Dante. The tone of these ‘off’ phrases might be wistful (‘how times have changed’) or embarrassed (‘I’m sorry but boon companions is the best I can do’) or conceivably sarcastic (‘Electra, etc., may have thought they were heroes but in fact they were just boon companions’). However you end up judging their connotations, what matters is that a distance has been recognized and thought about. In the central lines of this passage, the concentration of layered words, together with the pressure they put on our understanding, creates a different impression: not of a here and now separated from a there and then, but of an attempt to merge the two. The attempt feels effortful. It is likely to be a relief when this strained language is abandoned in favour of the familiar cadences of ‘I saw . . . / your Camillas’. But then on the other hand the earlier struggle leaves us with a suspicion that the relaxed English-language totting up of classical celebrities is too easy, neglectful of their otherness. Do we really and wholly see Camilla the Volscian warrior maid who dies in Aeneid XI? Is there no interference from our own Mrs Parker Bowles (as was)?

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno

75

Now that the English has had its way with us, let us turn to Dante’s Italian and compare: Venimmo al pie` d’un nobile castello, A castellated castle then we reached, sette volte cerchiato d’alte mura, engirdled seven times with walls around, difeso intorno d’un bel fiumicello. encircled by a periphrastic creek, Questo passammo come terra dura; O’er which we went as though it were dry ground; per sette porte intrai con questi savi: with five wise men through seven gates I passed giugnemmo in prato di fresca verdura. into a meadow with a single bound. Genti v’eran con occhi tardi e gravi, Here were folk of grave and solemn cast, di grande autorita` ne’ lor sembianti: ruminating slowly, speaking seldom, parlavan rado, con voci soavi. only answering in words when asked. Traemmoci cosı´ da l’un de’ canti, A luminous and open stadium in loco aperto, luminoso e alto, afforded us a perfect supervision sı´ che veder si potien tutti quanti. of that dignified symposium, Cola` diritto, sovra’l verde smalto, whose factors I could count with great precision mi fuor mostrati li spiriti magni, on the verdant lawn, so that I gloried che del vedere in me stesso m’essalto. in myself for making this description. I’vidi Eletra con molti compagni, I saw Electra, with her many-storied Tra’ quai conobbi Etto`r ed Enea, boon companions: Hector and Aeneas; Cesare armato con li occhi grifagni. Caesar, falcon-eyed, victorious; Vidi Cammilla e la Pantasilea; Your Camillas and your Penthesileas I saw . . .7

By doing which we make a startling discovery. As regards form and narrative, the Carson keeps very close to the Dante: the same events occur and characters appear, and the verse is as near to line-by-line as one might hope for, given the requirements of the softened terza rima to which the text is also committed. At times, the English has the closeness of a literal crib: ‘Questo passammo come

76

Matthew Reynolds

terra dura’ / ‘o’er which we went as though it were dry ground’. But in general, the formal and narrative obedience is offset by great liberty in tone and lexis. Of all the interesting words I dwelt on above, only two (‘verdant’ and ‘luminous’) have cognates in the Italian (‘verde’, ‘luminoso’). Occasionally, the pressure of the half-rhyming form may have contributed to this lexical and tonal freedom: ‘symposium’, ‘single bound’, ‘supervision’, ‘stadium’ and ‘creek’ are all in rhyme. But ‘your Camillas’ is not, nor ‘boon companions’, nor ‘factors’, nor ‘afforded’, nor ‘periphrastic’, nor ‘castellated’. When we were reading the English alone, these words looked like moves towards Dante of (I hope I have persuaded you) a nuanced and thought-provoking kind. But now, when we check with the Italian, we are being tempted to mark them down as infidelities. Their expressiveness is beginning to disappear. This is why it is important, as I said at the outset, to give our attention to the English first. We must allow it room to mean. With some linguistically adventurous translations, oddities in the English imitate the lexis or syntax of the source. Browning’s Agamemnon of Aeschylus is like this: when Klutaimnestra is said to have a ‘man’s-way-planning hoping heart’, the English is being stretched to match the Greek compound o´ oo.8 Carson’s verbal peculiarities are less closely focused. Rather, they move us in Dante’s direction, taking us into and then out of a linguistic region where we are surrounded by words that would not have struck him as incomprehensibly strange. This looseness allows Carson’s language to be expressive in ways that Browning’s, in his translation, is not. There is a forgotten piece of translation criticism by William Empson (the nineteenth-century lawyer and litte´rateur, not the twentieth-century poet and critic) printed anonymously in the Edinburgh Review in 1833, which gives a suggestive description of the effects of estranging tactics such as Browning later adopted: The moment a reader is arrested in his onward course, – obliged to draw up, and to think out the meaning of an expression – there may be the commencement of a new philological enjoyment for him, but – the poetical enchantment is dissolved.9

‘Poetical enchantment’ may not be much favoured these days as a critical term. But Empson’s warning remains crucial for our understanding of translation effects. There is a kind of estrangement which does no more than confront you with the otherness of the foreign language. You can find it in translated technical manuals or create it for yourself on the internet. Browning’s ‘man’s-way-planning’ is an instance. But there are more alternatives to this than the fluent standard English that Empson mostly has in mind. It is possible for a phrase to make you draw up and think out the meaning of an expression, and for this activity to carry an aesthetic as well as an intellectual charge. Carson writes in the Introduction to his Dante: ‘some of us expect translations to sound like translations, and to produce an English which is sometimes strangely interesting. Especially translations of poetry.’10 The interesting

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno

77

estrangements we have investigated not only confront us with otherness but imply ways of thinking and feeling about it. We might be tempted here to say that these estrangements ‘work as English poetry’ – but that is not right, for we noticed and gauged them by remembering that we were reading a translation. Evidently the distinction between ‘reading as poetry’ and ‘reading as a translation’ is not as fixed as the nineteenth-century William Empson, and indeed Don Paterson our contemporary, have taken it to be. For of course poems too can include linguistic layerings of the sort we have discovered in the Carson Dante. When Browning in The Ring and the Book represents one of his Italian characters as saying ‘somebody explained us that mistake’,11 the syntactical mistake in the line itself moves the language and our attention away from standard English (‘explained to us’) towards the Italian (‘ci spiego`’). This poetic effect is a translation effect too: you cannot make sense of the line as poetry if you do not see that it is an imagined translation. In a translation of Dante, the strangeness of Carson’s writing, its variety and its manifest translatedness are especially striking because Dante has long been thought of in Britain and America as the most consistent and also the clearest of writers. T.S. Eliot gave trenchant expression to this view in ‘Dante’, the 1929 monograph reprinted in Selected Essays: Dante is ‘the most universal of poets’, distinguished above all by his ‘lucidity’.12 The same emphases recur two decades later, in ‘What Dante Means to Me’: he is the ‘classical poet’ with the ‘very bare and austere style’ in which every word is ‘functional’, both the most ‘local’ and the most ‘European’ of poets, so that ‘the Italian of Dante is somehow our language from the moment we begin to try to read it’.13 In an essay of 1985, Seamus Heaney demurred at this account, and at the imitation of Dante in ‘Little Gidding’ with which it is in harmony. Eliot has recreated ‘Dante in his own image’, Heaney protests; the language of the imitation puts it ‘at a third remove from the local historical moment’ and ‘gives the illusion of an authority and a purity beyond dialect and tribe’.14 In contrast, Heaney recommends Osip Mandelstam’s sense of Dante as an intensely local, vocal writer: ‘Dante is by his very nature one who shakes up meaning and destroys the integrity of the image.’15 Elsewhere in the essay to which Heaney refers, Mandelstam stresses the fracturedness and variety of Dante’s work: His lapidary quality is no more than a product of the enormous inner imbalance which expressed itself in dream executions, in imagined encounters, in elegant retorts prepared in advance and fostered on bile . . . [A]t a time when . . . the leading instrument for voice accompaniment was still the zither, Alighieri constructed in verbal space an infinitely powerful organ and already delighted in all its conceivable stops, inflated its bellows, and roared and cooed through all its pipes.16

Carson’s Dante is in this vein, blowing a multitude of coos and roars throughout. There is the alarm bell of contemporary relevance. ‘ ‘‘What holds the future for the citizens / of my divided city?’’ ’ – Ciacco asks (notice how the

78

Matthew Reynolds

doubling of ‘city’ in ‘citizens’ introduces a feeling of division into the verse); the choice of a modern localized word then makes the link to Carson’s city, Belfast: ‘ ‘‘Is there one just man / in it? Or are they all sectarians?’’ ’17 There is the sneer of national prejudice, as when the bolge are renamed ‘arrondissements’, and the devils honoured as ‘seigneurs’.18 And there are more mobile effects, as when, in Canto III, Dante first hears the pain of the damned: resounding through the starless firmament, such a commotion of groans and wails of woe, I wept myself from sheer bewilderment; outlandish tongues and accents doloroso, howls, shrieks, grunts, gasps, bawls, a never-ending, terrible crescendo, rising to vast compulsory applause . . .19

There is a good, edgy joke in the first terzina: ‘I wet myself’, one hears for a moment instead of ‘I wept, myself’, a wobble which implies something similar on the part of the protagonist: ‘Oh no I’ve, . . . no I haven’t, phew!’ But it is the succeeding lines that make the most of the distance between Carson and Dante. ‘Rising to vast compulsory applause’ feels twentieth-century: it suggests concerts on Radio 3 and black-and-white footage of totalitarian rallies. Finding this apt way of adding to Dante, Carson makes the crescendo seem to grow, nudging us to see that, in the world of the poem, the damned are still wailing as we read, all the louder since there must now be all the more of them. Carson’s text is not put beyond dialects and the tribe by its connection to Dante; they are thrown into sharper relief. In his introduction, he writes of Belfast: Situated on a rise . . . is the Westland housing estate, a Loyalist enclave which, by a squint of the imagination, you can see as an Italian hill-town.20

Estate and hill-town neither merge in imagination (what a wish-fulfilment that would be!) nor are transcended, but are layered for a moment in a way that abolishes neither’s distinctiveness. The comparison with Dante leaves Carson with a new sense, not only of the particularity of his own place and tongue, but of their internal divisions. Being ‘almost completely unfamiliar with the Italian language’, he worked among many English voices as well as Dante’s Italian one, using the Temple classics parallel text and drawing on other translations, ‘including those of Dorothy L. Sayers, Tom Phillips, Mark Musa, Warwick Chipman, Robert M. Durling, and Robert and Jean Hollander’.21 In consequence:

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno

79

Translating ostensibly from the Italian, Tuscan or Florentine, I found myself translating as much from English, or various Englishes. Translation became . . . an exercise in comprehension: ‘Now tell the story in your own words.’ What are my own words? I found myself wondering how one says what one means in any language, or how one knows what one means. I found myself pondering the curious and delightful grammar of English, and was reminded that I spoke Irish (with its different curious and delightful grammar) before I spoke English.22

Together with our reading of the passage from Canto IV, these contextual ramifications begin to make evident the challenge offered by Carson’s Inferno to the binary of ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’ which has recurred in discussions of translation (though in different forms) since Schleiermacher if not before. Lawrence Venuti is the most recent advocate of this explanatory frame, and he gives it a distinctive twist. ‘Foreignization’, as he sees it, is to be understood not as forming a connection with the foreign text (whose ‘otherness’, he says, ‘can never be manifested in its own terms, only in those of the target language’) but as ‘a strategic construction whose value is contingent on the current target-language situation. Foreignizing translation signifies the difference of the foreign text, yet only by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language.’ Furthermore, ‘foreignization’ of this sort is ‘an act of resistance against ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism’, all of which tendencies are taken to be encouraged by ‘the values that prevail in contemporary Anglo-American culture’ which, in their turn, are taken to be ‘the canon of fluency in translation, the dominance of transparent discourse, the individualistic effect of authorial presence’.23 These are Venuti’s key assertions,24 and they have underwritten an impressively vigorous campaign to raise the profile of translators. Yet as signposts towards answering the questions of Clive Scott’s that I quoted at my opening – i.e. as helps towards understanding the reading experiences that can be offered by literary translation – Venuti’s claims are problematic. In order to create the theoretical space for a more nuanced understanding of Carson’s Inferno of Dante Alighieri, and of other texts like it, it is necessary to spell out what those problems are. The claim that the ‘foreignness’ of the foreign text is ‘in its own terms’ wholly ungraspable in translation assumes a very high degree of separation between ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ cultures. Clearly such chasms do occur in some global contexts, though even there it must on occasion be possible for the ‘own terms’ of the source text to be apprehended, at least to some extent, by its target-language interpreters: if it were not, there would never be any grounds for making any distinction between mutual understanding and appropriation (W. H. I. Bleek and L. C. Lloyd’s collection Specimens of Bushman Folklore, 1911, is one instance where such distinctions ask to be made).25 Venuti’s unbridgeable opposition of ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ seems all the more implausible as a model for the relation between Western languages and cultures, especially those of countries like Italy and Britain and Ireland which

80

Matthew Reynolds

have many common linguistic and literary roots (for instance, in the Latin language and literature on which Dante draws) and which have for so long been linked by the circulation of people, goods and writings. Indeed, one might well struggle to decide whether it makes more sense to say that Italy and Britain and Ireland have separate cultures or share one culture in common. In the literary realm, it has always been important to readers of Chaucer or Byron or Pound to notice how their language and imaginations were inflected by Boccaccio and Pulci and Cavalcanti; no less than for readers of Manzoni or Montale to notice the linguistic and imaginative pressure on them of Sir Walter Scott and T.S. Eliot. In ‘Des tours de Babel’, Derrida pointed to proper names as showing the impossibility of deciding ‘rigoureusement l’unite´ et l’identite´ d’une langue, la forme de´cidable de ses limites’ (‘rigorously the unity and identity of a language, the decidable form of its limits’): which language does ‘Babel’ belong to, he asks;26 and we have asked the same of Carson’s, or is it Dante’s, ‘Camilla’. The developmental links that connect languages also put the boundaries between them in question; inventive writing such as Carson’s can press the question hard. His ‘luminous’ is syntactically and morphologically more English than Italian; semantically it is more Italian than English. To which language shall we say that it belongs? Venuti’s exaggeration of the divisions between cultures brings with it – as a necessary correlative – an overstatement of the homogeneity of the cultures which are thought to be so separate. Talk of ‘the values that prevail in contemporary Anglo-American culture’ as being ‘the canon of fluency in translation, the dominance of transparent discourse, the individualistic effect of authorial presence’ may draw some support from Eliot’s characterization of Dante; and of course it is easy to find other people expressing the sort of view to which Venuti refers. But to claim that they are ‘hegemonic’ is to neglect, not only post-modern and post-colonial modes of creativity and theory, but the obviously canonical (and not remotely transparent) figures of Joyce and Pound, not to mention their many precursors such as Browning or Sterne or even Nashe, nor their many, many inheritors in this matter of non-transparency, from Daljit Nagra to Geoffrey Hill or from the novels of Ali Smith to the Molesworth books of Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. Equally, it is to scant the work of the many contemporary and past translators who have stretched and sometimes breached the limits of English ‘fluency’: Pound again, of course, and Browning, but also Rossetti or Shelley or Golding or Dryden (Dryden is labelled a domesticator by Venuti, and therefore a perpetrator of ethnocentric violence; but Paul Hammond, in a learned discussion, shows how, on the contrary, Dryden ‘could activate the half-hidden Latin roots of the language, relying on readers who had shared his kind of education to pursue the traces and recognize the Roman lexical values in these words’).27 Among our contemporaries, one might point to Denis Jackson, in his translations of Theodor Storm, or Margaret Jull Costa, in hers of Javier Marias – both of whom stretch English syntax towards that of their sources – or Michael Hofmann, in his versions of Durs Gru¨nbein, or David Ferry in his versions of Virgil,

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno

81

or Peter Robinson and Marcus Perryman in their versions of Vittorio Sereni, all of whom, in their differently subtle ways, alter English as a result of their encounters with their respective particular foreign texts. All these writers, and of course many more, and many readers too, are aware that no utterance is wholly ‘transparent’; that ‘English’ is made up – as Carson says – of ‘various Englishes’ which are variably familiar to the person writing and some of which are only controversially ‘Englishes’ at all, e.g. Scots; and aware therefore that to write is to enter into a medium which is partially foreign and not wholly under your control. As Carson wonders, and as his Dante makes readers ask of themselves, ‘what are my own words?’ Venuti’s notion of ‘foreignization’, therefore, relies on implausibly simplified accounts of linguistic difference and of cultural hegemony. Its usefulness as a heuristic tool is correspondingly limited: the aim of ‘foreignization’, the argument goes, is simply to ‘signal the foreignness of the foreign text’; and the aim of doing that is simply to contest ‘domestic norms’. The theory allows no space for the subtle measurings of here against there and now against then which we have traced in the Carson Dante. In an essay entitled ‘Translating Humour: Equivalence, Compensation, Discourse’, for instance, Venuti presents a translation of his own from the Argentinian-Italian writer Juan Rodolfo Wilcock as posing a challenge to what he takes to be the hegemony of transparency. Its ‘heterogeneous language’, he says, will ‘play havoc with the linguistic and cultural expectations that today are usually brought to literary translations’; indeed, ‘for some readers, the language may seem so heterogeneous as to compel them to glance back at the authors’ names, incredulously wondering about the cultural identity of the writer who produced the text’. While it is heartening to see a translator so confident in the value of his own work, it is, I think, hard to square this fantasy of response with the text in question, a representative sample of which is as follows: ‘when I arrived at my fiance´e’s house, she greeted me warmly and immediately started to undress, donning a devil’s costume, all red leather and feathers. Then and there, I must confess, it seemed rather impertinent. Her father entered, and just imagine what happened: he too was dressed like a devil, sporting a crimson silk smoking jacket and a black cravat bedight with tiny crimson pitchforks.’ For Venuti, the archaic ‘bedight’ and ‘donning’ are the most ‘foreignizing’ elements here even though they have no savour of Italian (the roots of both words are mainly in Anglo-Saxon): the idea is that the words’ ‘foreignness’ (in the metaphorical sense of being unusual) will disrupt ‘cultural codes’ so as to ‘signif[y] the foreignness’ (in the literal sense) of the text that is being translated.28 What is lost in this conflation of metaphorical and literal ‘foreignness’ is any recognition that there are different kinds of foreignnesses whose particularity could do with being respected; the reason this loss occurs is that what is taken to be important about any particular kind of foreignness – whether literal or metaphorical – is simply its difference from the supposed hegemony of ‘transparent discourse’. Even if one were persuaded by this line of argument, a further difficulty remains. The dictional variety in Venuti’s

82

Matthew Reynolds

supposedly havoc-wreaking translation is no greater than that which is to be found in many canonical (and rather more comical) locations of Englishspeaking culture, from Private Eye to Flann O’Brien. Here, for instance, is a more-or-less random sample of Willans and Searle’s Molesworth: ‘It is a pity really that you can’t cob masters cribbing and get them 6 of the best but there it is. Festina lente as we say to each other lightly at brake. Festina lente or I’ll bash you up.’29 Delightful though Molesworth is, one would hesitate to put it forward as a leader of the cultural resistance. As we have seen, the dictional variety in Carson’s translation of Dante is far greater than that in Venuti’s version of Wilcock; and greater even than Molesworth’s. And, as I have suggested, its signifiying effects are much more varied than the mere underlining of ‘foreignness’. Take the by now familiar (I hope not over-familiar) lines, A luminous and open stadium afforded us a perfect supervision of that dignified symposium.

As we have discovered, the choice of words here opens up paths through time and across space in ways that are ‘foreignizing’ in the literal sense of exploring connections between modern English and Dante’s Italian. But that is not the only facet to these lines. If one neglects the semantic meanings of the words, and pays attention to their tone, a different drift emerges. They seem terribly English gentlemanly: they are the sort of words you would expect to hear spoken by someone with a stiff upper lip and a plum in his mouth and probably a silver spoon in there as well. This creates a feeling of constraint: after all, Dante and his companions are entering something like an u ¨ berAthenaeum. Venuti, of course, would still call these lines ‘foreignizing’ since they are not ‘transparent’. But to say that is to say very little about them since, as I have proposed, a great deal of writing, and among that a great deal of translation, is not ‘transparent’ in his sense. If one tries for a more precise description, the issue becomes more complicated. Carson’s lines seem to move towards Italian, but also to be in what might be thought to be the most English kind of English. Their upper-class timbre puts paid to the assumption that ‘foreignizing’ (whether in literal or metaphorical senses) is necessarily progressive. Certainly, they are in part a parody of posh speech; but the snooty language, and the feeling of power that goes along with it, is being enjoyed for its own sake too. Likewise, of the cultural politics of the translation as a whole, one can say that it challenges the English tradition of understanding Dante associated with T.S. Eliot, that it is vigorously demotic and anti-authoritarian. But on the other hand it remains a rather highbrow culturally central sort of text, published by Granta of London and New York, and winner of the Oxford– Weidenfeld Translation Prize. As Derrida has pointed out, claims for the radicalism of literary writing are always troubled by the fact that they are being

Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno

83

made about literature: ‘the critico-political function of literature, in the West, remains very ambiguous. The freedom to say everything is a very powerful political weapon, but one which might immediately let itself be neutralized as a fiction. This revolutionary power can become very conservative’.30 For ‘the freedom to say everything’, read, ‘the freedom to be stylistically adventurous’; and for ‘neutralized as a fiction’, read ‘neutralized as a game’. The relation between the ‘politics’ of literary style and the politics of social struggle is rarely straightforward; to attempt to pin the one to the other is often to foreclose the play of suggestion which it is the role of literary writing to pursue. A more subtle stimulus towards taking the measure of the translation effects we have been exploring is offered by Philip Lewis’s essay ‘The Measure of Translation Effects’. Lewis’s argument is credited by Venuti as a precursor of his notion of foreignization, but in fact it is considerably more fluid and circumspect. Derrideanly (he is struggling to translate Derrida), Lewis values writing for its ‘abusive’ quality, that is to say, its ‘energy’, its thought-provoking peculiarities. He advocates a style of translation ‘that values experimentation, tampers with usage, seeks to match the polyvalences or plurivocities or expressive stresses of the original by producing its own’.31 What is most valuable in his account is his recognition – and enjoyment – of the difficulty of knowing when a translation is being like its source and when it is making something of its own translatedness: ‘does not the demand for reproduction of the original abuse, on the one hand, and for adaptive and reactive transformation of the abuse, on the other, simply constitute an untenable contradiction?’ Yes, it does, so we should accept the contradiction and attempt ‘to make something of it’.32 Sadly, quite what we should make of it is not explained. In the case of the Carson Dante, the contradiction lies in our not being able to tell whether the stylistic effects I have described constitute a view of what the Inferno is like (in line with Mandelstam’s understanding and in contrast with Eliot’s) or an exploration of the act of translating, that is to say, an exploration of how Carson’s text differs from Dante’s. Should we take ‘luminous’, ‘supervision’, etc., as suggesting how Dante felt about the classics, or how Carson feels about the corresponding lines of Dante? Lewis proposes that ‘the abusive work of the translation will be oriented by specific nubs in the original, by points or passages that . . . stand out as clusters of textual energy’.33 In the passage I have dwelt on, Carson responds rather to the absence of a kind of energy that might well have been present but in fact is not – energy that Dante creates the space for, leaves room for. Elsewhere, Dante does to his Italian something like what Carson does here to his English. For instance, when Dante the character first sees Virgil (not yet knowing that it is Virgil) he cries out ‘miserere di me’:34 he uses a Latin form, though one still current in medieval Italian usage. He blurs the boundaries between Italian and Latin. But here in Canto IV he does not. For all that he is describing classical figures in a green field that derives from Aeneid VI, and for all that he values them in ways that derive from Aristotle, he does so in a quite reserved Italian,

84

Matthew Reynolds

an Italian kind of Italian. The feeling this gives the Italian verse is of comparative distance between it and the figures it describes: a reverent distance. Like Dante the character and his companions, the Italian language has drawn itself linguistically back into ‘un de’ canti’ – and that is perhaps the reason for the glimmer of a pun between ‘canto’ meaning ‘corner’ and ‘canto’ meaning ‘canto’ which flickers across the verse. What Dante offers to Carson in Canto IV is indeed a ‘nub’, but not in Lewis’s sense of a nugget or cluster of textual energy: rather, in its other sense of something cut off or thwarted like a tree-stump or a cathedral not fully built. A site of potential energy which the translator can release. This observation provides a resolution, though perhaps only a partial one, to Lewis’s ‘untenable contradiction’: the translation conveys an energy which is implied by the source but not expressed by it. Of course Carson’s Dante is linguistically restless and exploratory throughout; but in my judgement his translation of Canto IV is especially searching (other such moments are the encounter with Francesca in Canto V, and with Nimrod, the builder of Babel, in Canto XXXI). The reason is that the scene in Canto IV (like those in Cantos V and XXXI) is about, or has the potential to be about, translation. Looking at Dante looking at his antecedents, Carson is brought to reflect with special intensity on his position as a translator; and the result is what we have explored. Christopher Ricks has pointed out that literary texts in general tend to allude to other texts when they are describing something like allusion such as inheritance: ‘it is characteristic of art to find energy and delight in an enacting of that which it is saying’.35 A translation does not have the same liberty to allude as other texts since it is by definition a sustained allusion to an evident source. But at moments – like Inferno IV – that have to do with translation, a translation’s translatedness can suddenly become salient; be more than usually available to be reflected on and re-imagined. Often, as in the case we have explored, the result has distinctive linguistic elan. It is characteristic of translation to find energy and delight in a saying of that which it is enacting.

Chapter 6

Acts of Literary Impertinence: Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets Carol O’Sullivan

The reception of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli in English is a fine illustration of the range of factors affecting a writer’s status in translation. Belli also wrote in Italian, but is best known for the 2,279 sonnets in romanesco (Roman vernacular) written between 1828 and 1849 which combine technical virtuosity and a striking use of the resources of romanesco at the service of strongly antiestablishment views. Belli’s ‘all-but-untranslatable combination of scatology and lyricism’, as Kevin Jackson has called it,1 has attracted the attention of many translators, most of them writers in their own right, and yet the sonnets remain almost unknown in English-speaking countries: a state of affairs which may be attributed to a complex combination of factors including language politics, the subject matter of Belli’s poetry and the status of his translators. The history of Anglophone engagement with Belli’s sonnets has historically been remarkably fragmented, constituting, as Damiano Abeni puts it, ‘an unfinished mosaic which remains insubstantial and ephemeral, unable to recommend itself to the attention of other authors’.2 This may explain how it was possible for the American poet Harold Norse to suggest that his translations, carried out in the mid-1950s, were the first into any language, such was the ‘ ‘‘obscenity’’ and difficulty’ of Belli’s writing – a statement which is immediately contradicted by even the most cursory look into the 1983 volume Belli oltre frontiera. ‘Into this vacuum I stepped undaunted,’ declares Norse, ‘the only one, I believed, who possessed the key to the tone and the language.’ He speaks of ‘derisive comments from Italian scholars and cognoscenti: ‘‘It can’t be done! Impossible! It has never been achieved!’’ ’3 In fact, as Abeni has shown, a small selection of Belli’s sonnets had been translated into English by Hans Sotheby as early as 1874, to be followed by some versions by Frances Eleanor Trollope in 1880. A substantial essay by Eleanor Clark, accompanied by prose translations, appeared in the Kenyon Review in 1952, to which Norse refers in his autobiography Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, without mentioning Clark’s translations. Norse’s forty-six sonnets from Belli,4 produced between 1954 and 1955 while the poet was living in Rome, are the first substantial translation of the sonnets

86

Carol O’Sullivan

ostensibly to employ dialect. They were followed by translations into Scots by the Edinburgh poet Robert Garioch, who began to translate Belli in the late 1950s and had translated 120 sonnets by the time of his death in 1981. Since Garioch’s death, the Ayrshire-born poet William Neill has continued to produce translations of Belli in Scots.5 Anthony Burgess, also living in Rome, translated some seventy sonnets into ‘Lancashire dialect’ which were incorporated into his 1977 novella Abba Abba. All four writers are conspicuous by their choice of regional language or dialect to translate romanesco.6 The other well-known English translation of Belli is by Miller Williams, whose translations of some seventy-five sonnets were published in a bilingual edition by the Louisiana State University Press in 1981. Williams renders Belli into standard US English on the grounds that if we are to come to [the sonnets] as the people of Trastevere did, then we have to hear them as they did, in the plain language of their own conversation. The simple fact is that, to those who live in Trastevere, the language spoken in Trastevere is the way people talk.7

This argument ignores the shock value of hearing lofty subjects such as politics, the Church and the Bible discussed in the language of the street, and the impact of seeing irreverence expressed in a rarefied poetic format belonging to high culture. John DuVal sees it as simplifying the question of dialect translation that every ‘dialect’ is simply the way to talk for those who speak it, but this simplistic viewpoint fails to take account of the diglossic context and the resulting bilingual audience of much dialect writing.8 Belli himself, as an Italian speaker imitating the dir romanesco, is very conscious of this difference of language. In his introduction to the sonnets, written in Italian, he defines romanesco against Italian as a ‘favella tutta guasta e corrotta, . . . una lingua infine non italiana e neppur romana, ma romanesca’ (a wholly tainted and corrupt tongue . . . a language which is ultimately neither Italian nor Roman, but romanesca).9 In contrast with other regional ‘speeches which do not belong exclusively to such or such populace or portion of the people’, romanesco is spoken by only part of the Roman population.10 We may consider the translation of such literature, as Luigi Bonaffini does, an attempt to ‘capture the eccentricity of vernacular speech, its function as an alternative, a nonnormative deviation from the norm’.11 This chapter will concentrate on those translators who choose to emphasize such a ‘deviation from the norm’ by translating into non-standard language.12

‘High on the original’ What drew these writers to Belli? In the case of Norse and Burgess, it is clear that as expatriates in Rome they associated him closely with something essentially Roman, a kind of genius loci: ‘Belli stands for the earthy, coarse,

Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets

87

unregenerable,’ says Burgess and speaks of the statue of Belli in Trastevere beside the Ponte Garibaldi.13 Burgess fictionalizes his own encounter with Belli in the second part of Abba Abba, where he tells of one J. J. Wilson, who discovered the three-volume edition of Belli’s Sonetti (Mondadori 1952) in Brentano’s bookshop, casually opened the first volume, and was at once both horrified and fascinated by the strange appearance of Belli’s language.14

It is a combination of language and place, specifically the city, which also forms the basis of Belli’s attraction for the New Yorker Harold Norse; in Memoirs, Norse explains that seeing a strong similarity between the colloquial speech I grew up with and what Belli heard and recorded in the streets and taverns 120 years earlier, the coarse, vulgar language seemed as familiar as Brooklynese. Both shared racy diction, cynical wit, and irreverent humor.15

There must have been a strong element of one-upmanship involved; certainly Norse would not be the only writer on whom the word ‘untranslatable’ has acted like a red rag on a bull. Equally important to Norse, however, was the emotional link; on the back cover of the Roman Sonnets he is quoted as saying ‘forget scholarship and get absolutely high on the original . . . A good adaptation, if you are a poet, is inevitable. Given, i.e., some kind of temperamental affinity with your model.’ Translating Belli is represented as a very personal, at times even sexual encounter for Norse, who knew no Italian before arriving in Italy and claims to have carried out his translation with ‘a dictionary in one hand and a Roman in the other’.16 Robert Garioch’s long labour of translation of Belli reflects how close he felt to this poet, a closeness which is emphasized by his collaborator Antonia Stott and by Robin Fulton in the posthumous Collected Poems.17 Garioch too is a satirist, and a speaker of a language with strong urban associations which stands in a subordinate relationship to a related, more widely spoken language. He was first introduced to Belli by Donald Carne-Ross, who suggested that he might render Belli’s romanesco in Scots, and, having limited Italian, was assisted in the translations by Carne-Ross, Signorina Spadavecchia and Stott.18 For Garioch, the social dimension of the sonnets seems to have been the principal point of contact with Belli; in an interview in 1980 he speaks of the ‘great fun’ he has had with Belli, but also of the serious side of Belli’s poetry, the social realism that lies behind the more widely recognized humour and ribaldry of the work.19 It was Garioch’s work on Belli which inspired William Neill to translate further sonnets into Scots.

88

Carol O’Sullivan

Rendering Romanesco The common link between the translations of Norse, Garioch, Burgess and Neill is the seizing of the opportunity offered by the source text for playing with preconceived notions of appropriate literary language. Norse’s collection very explicitly defines his use of English in opposition to established literary idioms, emphasizing the spoken dimension of Norse’s language. The text certainly contains instances of American English lexis (‘phoney’, ‘swell’, ‘gee whiz’ and ‘critter’) and verb forms (‘gotta’, ‘doncha’), but Norse is being much more ambitious than that, claiming to be using what he calls ‘Brooklynese’. William Carlos Williams, in his enthusiastic introduction to the Roman Sonnets, declares that The idiom into which Harold Norse has translated these sonnets was inaccessible to anyone before the present time. American scholars don’t know anything as far as the resources of this idiom are concerned, for they have only the ‘English’ of their upbringing dinned into their ears until they have grown insensitive to everything else about them. It is not only the words which should be noted but the way in which they are spoken that characterises this idiom. Harold Norse knows this medium, knows moreover its dignity and has a deep love for it, for it is his own.20

Here Williams is characterizing Norse as the translator translating into his mother tongue, which is accorded the status of an autonomous, if hitherto unrecognized, language. Williams’ argument for the existence of an alternative English which has developed orally alongside the written form might be compared to Raymond Queneau’s treatment of a similar phenomenon with regard to French, on the model of the Greek kathareousa and demotiki.21 In the case of French it is clear that Queneau has more to work with than Williams, who nevertheless seeks to establish the relative status of the two language varieties: these translations are made not into English but into the American idiom in which they appear in the same relationship facing English as the original Roman dialect does to classic Italian. The idiom spoken in America is not taught in our schools, but is the property of men and women who, though they do not know it, use one of the greatest of modern languages, waiting only for a genius of its intrinsic poetry to appear.22

Despite this extraordinarily grandiloquent claim for Norse as the Dante of Brooklyn English, Williams has some trouble identifying the features which make Norse’s English a distinct language. Having mentioned lexis, he speaks vaguely of rhythm: ‘The difference between it and the language taught to us in our schools is essentially a prosodic one which we have only as yet recognized by ear . . . It is in the measure of our speech, in its prosody, that our idiom is distinctive.’23 Even a superficial reading of the poems suffices to cast doubt on Williams’s judgement in this case. Morphological differences between English

Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets

89

and Brooklynese seem to extend only as far as fairly common phonetic spellings. Norse’s inconsistency and mixed registers appear clearly from his translation of Sonnet 1746 ‘Marta e Mmadalena’: ‘Ma Ggesucristo mio,’ disceva Marta, ‘Chi cce po` arregge ppiu´ cco Mmadalena? Lei rosario, lei messa, lei novena, Lei viacru´sce . . . Eppoi, disce, una sce scarta! . . .’

Norse’s translation offers ‘was sayin’’ for ‘disceva’ and pads the second line with a ‘Have ya seen ’er’ to make up the rhyme. ‘Eppoi’, etc. is rendered ‘An’ then she sez I’m complainin!’24 At fifty years and an ocean’s remove it is difficult for this critic to tune her ear to Norse’s language. Nevertheless there seems to be an inconsistency in Norse’s use of phonetic spellings which makes it difficult to hear a specific voice. Instead Norse seems to have fallen prey to the writer’s bugbear of the ‘generic’ markers of non-standard language, and not enough even of those. Damiano Abeni says severely of Norse’s Brooklynese that ‘even if it did exist, it is not used’, and brings to our attention similarities between Norse’s translations and those by Eleanor Clark.25 It is perhaps too easy to be critical of Norse’s achievement; it is useful to remember that at the time of publication the mere translation of Belli was a courageously culturally transgressive act, as witness the flat refusal of the printer of the Hudson Review to print the poems, on the grounds of their obscenity and anti-papal stance.26 The problems facing Anthony Burgess in his choice of dialect may seem mitigated by the fact that he is working with an (at least regionally) recognized dialect with an existing literary tradition.27 He declares firmly that his choice of regional dialect is Lancashire,28 though in Abba Abba he also refers to it simply as ‘English with a Manchester accent’.29 In Abba Abba, Burgess takes some care to establish his credentials, or rather those of his alter ego, as a dialect writer. We are told that one ought to note the attempt on the part of J. J. Wilson to use dialectal elements. A Catholic provincial, aware of his foreign blood, he never felt wholly at home in the patrician language of the British Establishment and would, especially in exalted company, deliberately use mystifying dialect words or adopt an exaggerated and near-unintelligible Lancashire accent.30

As with Norse, the dialectal, ‘Lancashire’ elements of Burgess’s translations take some finding. There are a few lexical items such as ‘jakes’ and ‘thrutch’, some of which are obscure rather than of dialectal origin: ‘sordor’, for instance. In places, Burgess uses a ‘phonetic’ spelling, again for instance in ‘Martha and Mary’, in which Martha declares herself to be ‘full up reet to t’scupper / Wi’ Mary there.’31 On the whole, however, ‘mystifying dialect words’ and some few markers of accent turn out to be the extent of Burgess’s

90

Carol O’Sullivan

use of dialect. ‘Martha and Mary’ is Burgess’s most extended essay in nonstandard spelling, probably due to the fact that the sonnet is largely conversational rather than narrative, and in so being it points up a major problem with Burgess’s translations, which is that the narrating voice speaks from outside rather than inside. The narrator is differentiated from the speakers in a way which is entirely alien to Belli, who aims to speak with the many voices of the people of Rome: Ogni quartiere di Roma, ogni individuo fra’ suoi cittadini dal ceto medio in giu` mi ha somministrato episodii pel mio dramma: dove comparira` sı` il bottegaio che il servo, e il nudo pitocco fara` di se´ mostra fra la credula femminetta e il fiero guidatore di carra. (Every single area in Rome, every single individual among its citizens, from the middle class to the underclass, has furnished episodes for my drama: in it both the shop-keeper and the servant will have a part, and the naked good-for-nothing will cut an impression between a credulous woman and a proud carriage driver.)32

Looking down from above may be appropriate to the biblical themes of Burgess’s chosen sonnets, and is certainly in character for Burgess, but his use of standard English for the narrative portions of the sonnets traduces Belli’s ironic detachment and transmutes it into an externality which weakens the rhetorical force of the poems and makes them seem arch, for instance in his translation of the line from sonnet 188, ‘Tramezzo a ddu’ donnacce cannarone’, by ‘Hearing one wench scream at the other wench / In language that would make a bargee blench.’33 A related problem is Burgess’s conflation of vulgarity and obscenity with dialect. Burgess seems to have fallen prey to the confusion which sometimes obtains in readers of British English between what is colloquial or vulgar and what is regional or dialectal; this confusion has been remarked on by Steve Ellis in an essay on his translation of Inferno.34 There are twenty uses of the word ‘fuck’ or ‘fucking’ in the seventy Burgess translations, of which nine are in the final line of the sonnet and seven in the position of penultimate word behind a monosyllable. The frequency of this effect gives Burgess’s sonnets at times a ‘one-note’ effect, very different from the linguistic excess and plurality of the source text. Undoubtedly, as Bill Findlay notes, there is a socioeconomic dimension to dialect and regional language, but to confuse dialect and register is to overlook the lexical and expressive richness of regional language varieties and, in Burgess’s case, to devalue Belli’s writing.35 In the case of Garioch and Neill, the decision to translate into Scots must be seen in the context of the development of Scots as a literary language over the course of the preceding decades. The development of Scots as a target language has been discussed in detail in recent years, and the discussion needs no detailed reiteration here.36 It is worth mentioning, however, that Scots, a language in a phase of revitalization, lent itself to the kind of expansion and stretching that translation can confer on the target language in the attempt to convey a foreign language/text and foreign cultural values.37 Garioch’s, and

Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets

91

later Neill’s, translations can be seen as an organic part of this development of the resources of Scots. These translators have at their disposal a linguistic tool which has much greater density and flexibility than either Norse’s Brooklynese or Burgess’s Lancashire. This is not to say that one should go to the lengths to which the editors of the Scottish journal Chapman, which published several of Neill’s Belli versions in 1992, go in saying that Belli’s romanesco is ‘about as far from Italian as Scots is from English’;38 nevertheless the lexical, syntactical and morphological resources of Scots allow the translator to mark the text much more strongly as different, without denying access entirely to the English-language reader. Garioch believed strongly in the alternative that Scots offered to English as a translating language, in which belief he was not alone.39 His poem ‘Sisyphus’ grew out of a literary exercise, translating the untranslatable line of Homer. I’d been reading . . . many examples of attempts to translate that line about the stone bumping down the hill. All failures – but, of course, they were all in English.40

Belli’s output is so prodigious that his translators are of necessity highly selective. There is little overlap, for instance, between the biblically themed poems chosen by Anthony Burgess and those by Norse, most of which deal with either anti-papal sentiment or everyday life. Robert Garioch chooses still another cohort of poems, what Duranti calls the ‘social sonnets’.41 The one poem which exists in translations by Burgess, Garioch and Norse, sonnet 273, ‘Er giorno der Giuddizzio’, is therefore a useful one with which to begin a comparison of the different poets’ different strategies. Er giorno der Giuddizzio Cuattro angioloni co le tromme in bocca Se metteranno uno pe ccantone A ssona`: poi co ttanto de voscione Cominceranno a ddı`: ‘Ffora a cchi ttocca’. Allora viera` ssu` una filastrocca De schertri da la terra a ppecorone, Pe rripijja` ffigura de perzone, Come purcini attorno de la bbiocca. E sta bbiocca sara` Ddio bbenedetto, Che ne fara` du’ parte, bianca, e nera: Una pe anna` in cantina, una sur tetto. All’urtimo usscira` ‘na sonajjera D’angioli, e, ccome si ss’annassi a lletto, Smorzeranno li lumi, e bbona sera.

92

Carol O’Sullivan

Since Garioch’s and Burgess’s versions have been frequently reprinted, and are available in parallel in Damiano Abeni’s essay,42 it is unnecessary to reproduce them in their entirety here, but it may be useful to include Norse’s version, which is less well known: Judgment Day (Harold Norse) Four archangels with trumpets at their lips Will take their places, each in his corner, and blow: Then, in a terrible voice, they’ll all begin To say: ‘step up, everyone! Let’s go!’ Then will ooze up out of the earth a slime Of skeletons, crawling on all fours, To put on the shapes of human beings again – A helpless brood around a mother hen. This mother hen will be the blesse`d God Who’ll separate them into black and white: One part for the cellar, one for the roof. At the end, a bell-collar of angels Will appear, and, as if everyone Were off to bed, they’ll turn out the lights. Good night!43

Nichols and Abeni have discussed the translations of this poem in some detail, comparing strategies and approaches to form, imagery and sound. Abeni sees Burgess’s translation strategy as deviating notably from that adopted by the poem’s other translators, substituting global for local fidelity, most striking perhaps in his omission of the image of the hen, ‘’sta bbiocca’, substituting it with the ‘All-High, maternal, systematic’,44 whose shock value, without the cushioning image of the broody bird, is considerable. Garioch’s work is recognized by both Nichols and Abeni to stay closer to the shape of the source text, within an identical rhyme scheme, varied only by the outstanding halfrhymes, stalkin, wauken, cleckin, clockan, for bocca, ttocca, filastrocca and bbiocca. Within that frame it is never less than elegant, as in the fine chiasmus of ‘tane doun the cellar, to the ruiff the tither’. Norse’s rhymes, abcb deff, ghi jkl, are as irregular as his metre. Burgess’s sonnet is metrically more traditional but offers an unconventional rhyme scheme of aabb ccdd efe gfg. Burgess’s poetic persona, insufficiently concealed behind the alter ego of J. J. Wilson, bubbles over with the ludic intertextuality of the opening lines, with their invocation of John Donne: ‘At the round earth’s imagined corners let Angels regale us with a brass quartet’

Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets

93

and the long-drawn-out final line, typographically extended, proceeding from the blowing out of the candles (‘Er-phwhoo’) to bed (the sort one lies in when one has made it) which, in the case of those destined for the cellar rather than the attic, is a painful place ‘(Owwwwwww) – Bona sera.’ Abeni is concerned that ‘even though his was the best choice, we cannot know how many readers beyond the Channel, reading a non-annotated translation, would be able to appreciate the nuances of meaning that go beyond the simple goodnight’,45 but his concerns seem exaggerated; the estrangement of the source language phrase works with, rather than against, the reader’s approximate recognition of the meaning of the phrase in a poem which already requires a certain effort on the part of the reader in processing intertext. We may further contrast the success of our three target ‘dialects’ by comparing Norse’s, Burgess’s and Neill’s translations of sonnet 757, ‘Er zagrifizzio d’Abbramo’, the first of a cycle of three sonnets telling the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: Er zagrifizzio d’Abbramo La Bbibbia, ch’e` una spesce d’un’istoria, Disce che ttra la prima e saiconn’arca Abbramo vorze fa` dda bbon Patriarca, N’ojjocaustico a Ddio sur Montemoria. Pijjo` ddunque un zomaro de la Marca, Che ssenza comprimenti e ssenza bboria Stava a ppassce er trifojjo e la scicoria Davanti a ccasa sua come un monarca. Poi chiamo` Isacco, e ddisse: ‘Fa’ un fasscetto, Pijja er marraccio, carca er zomarello, Chiama er garzone, infilete er corpetto, Saluta mamma, scercheme er cappello; E annamo via, perche´ Dio bbenedetto Vo` un zagrifizzio che nnun po`i sapello.

Here, as Neill’s version is not currently available, it may be useful to include it:46 The Haulie Bible has a byous storie that says atween the first and saicont Ark{ Abraham ettilt as an honest patriarch ti mak a sacrifice abuin Ben Morie Got the haud o a cuddie, for God’s greater glorie that wes crinchin aits and chowin a daud o hey –

94

Carol O’Sullivan

lik a dunkey duine-uasal keepin oot the wey, as if he had the rin o the royal coorie. Abe yellt ti Isaac: ‘Awa an get a battle o firewuid, bring a gullie an the beast an tell the orraman ti bring the gear. Say faurweill ti yir maw, for we maun ettle ti forder on for twintie mile at least, we’s mak a sacrifice whan we win thare. {

i.e. Noah’s and the Covenant

Again, Burgess begins with a joke, punning on the idea of the Bible as a daily paper, ‘sometimes called the Jewish Chronicle’, and continues in this jocular vein, referring to the ‘donkey-park’ as the logical place to look for a donkey.47 Burgess’s is a traditional Petrarchan sonnet rhyming abba abba cde cde, as is Neill’s, while Norse’s octave uses approximate rhyme, the sonnet dispensing with rhyme in the last six lines. The most striking feature of this sonnet is the range of translations of ‘davanti a ccasa sua come un monarca’. Norse, for whom Rome is key to Belli’s attraction, makes his donkey ‘just like a Roman prince’, disregarding the disjuncture with the Old Testament setting.48 Further cultural dissonance occurs with clothes: ‘slip on your jersey,’ says Norse, ‘look for my hat’. Burgess fearlessly confronts a similar dissonance by making his monarch into an English lord, at least partly for the sake of the rhyme-word ‘monocle’. Neill introduces a further regional language in the form of the Gaelic term ‘duine uasal’, or gentleman. As a speaker and writer of all three of Scotland’s languages, Neill may be making a sly point about the relative status of Scots and Gaelic; he is certainly making a clever pun on the Gaelic word for donkey, ‘asal’, and proving himself a worthy heir to Garioch. To date, critical opinion has preferred Garioch’s renderings of Belli out of all the existing English translations. Though some of the satisfaction of reading Garioch’s Belli relates to the choice of target language, Garioch’s humanism and humour also play an important role. Without doubt, Burgess’s translations contain at times much Burgess (sometimes literally, as in his version of sonnet 861, ‘The Ark 2’, a bestiary which includes in Burgess’s version ‘minced heart for owls and honey for the bears’ – the second item a reference to Burgess’s novel of the same name) and little Belli.49 Burgess’s translations remain probably the best-known translations of Belli, however, and may merit a second look. What Burgess has prioritized, over imagery, tone and language, is form. As Riccardo Duranti observes, ‘the only principle that [Burgess] feels he must adhere to in order to be faithful to Belli is the sonnet form’.50 For Burgess, Belli was ‘the great master of the dialect and a scholarly recorder of the filth and blasphemy’, and the blasphemous subject matter of the biblical poems clearly attracts him, but Belli was above all a sonneteer, and

Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets

95

Burgess loved sonnets. ‘He left great verse unto a little clan,’ he says, iambically and indeed pentametrically, of Belli.51 It is not surprising that the sonnet, the ultimate constrained form and as such the greatest challenge to the poet’s skill, appealed to the virtuoso in Burgess. On the occasion of J. J. Wilson’s fictitious first encounter with Belli in Brentano’s bookshop, ‘it was the demented devotion to the sonnet-form that . . . drew him to Belli’.52 Such devotion is mirrored in Burgess’s dedication to rhyme, whether rich, mosaic, enjambed or other. Think of the ‘a’ rhymes in ‘At the Pillar 2’: pillory/maxillary/distillery/artillery,53 or the ‘a’ rhymes to ‘Doubt’: timid gentry/elementary/fucking sentry/for his entry.54 Enjambed rhyme is used brilliantly in ‘Judith’: The Holy Bible tells how the seducTive Judith feasted Holofernes . . .55

‘The Battle of Gideon’ offers an excellent example of mosaic rhyme: 300 Jews knitted their warlike brows and, Armed with trombones and torches hid in skillets, Marched in good order on their foemen’s billets, Quiet as a moving munching herd of cows. And As dancers on the stage taking their bows and Boos in an endless belt endlessly fill it, sO this small troop marched in a circle till its 300 men looked damned near like 3000.56

The sheer joy in the word for Burgess is one of the most seductive aspects of his translations. Another source of their effectiveness is their metrical tightness; Burgess has recognized, with Miller Williams, that ‘the force in Belli’s often raucous, almost always irreverent, sometimes erotic and darkly funny lines is increased greatly by the setting of those lines in patterns of the sonnet. Energy makes nothing happen outside a structure.’57 Unlike Williams, Burgess has chosen to compromise as little as possible on form, and in doing so has effectively rendered the ‘punchline’ quality of many of the biblical sonnets, whose final lines tend to offer an iconoclastic view of scripture from the perspective of the profanum vulgus.

A Comet’s Tail Long in the Making Belli is not unusual in having been translated predominantly by practising poets. However, it is surprising that with all of this translation activity, Belli’s profile in English is not higher. The reasons for this have to do more with the literary systems of arrival than that of departure. An initial search for translations of Belli and critical writing in English on the translations yields little,

96

Carol O’Sullivan

and much of it concentrated on Scots, in which language Belli has been better known up till now than he is in English. A key moment for Belli’s reputation in English is the inclusion by Charles Tomlinson of three sonnets in Garioch’s translation in his 1980 Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation. In Peter France’s Guide to Literature in English Translation Belli is only mentioned in passing in relation to the role his poetry has played in the history of translation into Scots. The lack of a separate entry for Belli in Olive Classe’s Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English58 is indicative of the failure of Belli’s poetry to achieve a degree of critical mass within anglophone literary culture, what Pekka Kujama¨ki has called the ‘comet’s tail’ (2001). How may we explain this lack of visibility? Some of it must be put down to Belli’s subject matter. The very strong tradition of poetry translation and of translation by poets in Britain is almost exclusively associated with high culture; where satire and scatology are translated, the sources tend to be classical and thus at a comfortable cultural and temporal remove. The subject matter, used as a vehicle for committed social commentary and political and religious satire, which attracted Belli’s translators to him, is also part of what keeps the poetry at the periphery of Anglophone poetic circles. Another factor is the position of Belli’s translators in the literary polysystem. If we take Ian Hamilton’s 1994 Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry as representative of the conservative poetry establishment, it becomes apparent to what extent Belli’s translators exist on the periphery. Neither Norse nor Anthony Burgess features in the Companion, one of the criteria for which is that poets included must have published at least one full-length collection. Although Burgess is a major figure, he is much better known as a novelist than as a poet or translator, to the extent that Kevin Jackson suggests that publishing the Belli translations as part of the novel Abba Abba was the most effective way of getting them published at all.59 The reputation for overcleverness which Burgess enjoys comes across strongly from the Times review of Abba Abba.60 Burgess’s range is also against him; the breadth of genres, styles and indeed media with which he worked compromised him as a great writer in the eyes of many critics. Harold Norse portrays himself throughout his writings as exterior to established literary coteries and groupings, although he is sometimes associated with the Beat poets. His portrait, apparently naked, on the back cover of his translation of Belli, and the accompanying declaration that ‘I am liable to write any kind of poem in any idiom at any moment. This keeps me free from schools (beat or square), rules, fixed or crystallized procedures’61 contribute to his status as maverick outsider and locate the translations firmly in the counter-culture. Garioch and Williams are both included in Hamilton’s anthology, but their entries make it clear that Williams is a minor poet. In the case of Garioch, the entry by Douglas Dunn opines that ‘the humorous nature of much of his poetry may have resulted in the undervaluing of some of his more serious work’; the possibility of humorous or satirical poetry also having value doesn’t

Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets

97

seem to have crossed Dunn’s mind. Hamilton’s volume is particularly judgemental in tone, but it can act here as an index of, particularly the British, poetic establishment with its insistence on single-volume publication as a barometer of worth. Another feature of the target culture is its attitude to regional languages. As Bill Findlay points out, ‘dialect writing stands outside the English literary mainstream, in both historic and contemporary terms. A serious literary work employing dialect in a sustained manner is therefore viewed as an oddity in England.’62 One might even say that the use of dialect precludes the categorization of a literary work as serious. A striking example of establishment attitudes to regional language varieties can be seen in a recent review by Barbara Reynolds of Ciaran Carson’s translation of Inferno, the last part of which frames its criticism in terms of the perceived ‘Irishness’ of Carson’s language: ‘sure now, do they talk in Oirish?’ says Reynolds, and goes on to suggest what the final lines of Paradiso might look like in a cod-Synge style.63 This review reveals the startling hostility to dialect which still exists among conservative British readers; to this extent, the thinness of the dialect in Burgess’s translations will have helped rather than hindered their progress. In Italy, regional languages and dialects are much more a part of life than in Britain or the United States, having survived even into the homogenizing era of television. They are also much more part of mainstream literature. Regional linguistic variation is much greater than in Britain, whose contrasting situation is bitterly described by James Kelman, responding to the controversy provoked by the award of the 1994 Booker Prize to his novel How Late It Was, How Late, which some critics professed to find incomprehensible: The gist of the argument amounts to the following, that vernaculars, patois, slangs, dialects, gutter-languages, etc., etc., might well have a place in the realm of comedy (and the frequent references to Billy Connolly or Rab C Nesbitt substantiate this) but they are inferior linguistic forms and have no place in literature. And a priori any writer who engages in the use of such so-called language is not really engaged in literature at all.64

Kelman may be overstating the case a little, but his remarks are borne out by reviews of works written and translated in dialect and, even more pointedly, by the lack of them.65 The final factor which must be considered is form. The sonnet has been a marginal form in English poetry for nearly a century, and it is significant that so many of the translators choose to render the sonnets strictly. If we consider, with Walter Benjamin, that translation is a form, then the point is doubly made; Christopher Whyte attributes ‘Garioch’s failure to attain the kind of recognition he so amply deserves’ to the ‘chronic’ devaluing of translation in our culture in relation to original composition.66 Satirical sonnets in non-standard language: not an easy proposition to sell in today’s poetry market. Subject matter, form and language have hitherto

98

Carol O’Sullivan

worked together to keep Belli incidental to twentieth-century poetic translation. The price of the ludic experience of translating Belli has been paid in lack of impact in the target culture. This, however, may be beginning to cohere, with the passing of the torch from Garioch to William Neill, and with a substantial translation by Mike Stocks published in 2007 by Oneworld Classics. There are other hopeful signs; one of the prize-winners in the 2004 Times/ Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation was Paul Howard, with a translation of sonnet 287, ‘La bbona famijja’, into Yorkshire dialect. (Interestingly, Howard says in his brief commentary that ‘Belli, except through Burgess, is practically unknown to English speakers’.)67 All in all there seem to be grounds for believing that Belli’s status among English readers is improving. In the future we may look forward to what Roberto Vighi optimistically referred to more than twenty years ago as the ‘further studies which will certainly serve to cement Belli’s reputation’.68

Chapter 7

Trilussa: A Case Study in the Translation of Dialect Poetry Laurence Hooper

My aim in this essay will be to use my own work as a translator to discuss wider issues in the translation of dialectal poetry, especially the issue of how to represent the original’s dialect in the target language. I seek to accomplish this aim firstly by comparing examples from my translations of the romanesco poet Trilussa with previously published translations of his work.1 My translations of Trilussa differ from those of my predecessors, in that I have chosen to use an English dialect, London English or Cockney, in response to Trilussa’s romanesco, whereas the other three translators all used their standard language (in all three cases this was American English). I shall justify my decision by positing that Trilussa very deliberately uses romanesco’s demotic associations to situate his work socially and culturally; I will contend that any translation that does not take this into account risks obscuring one of the defining features of Trilussa’s poetry. I shall then consider my decision to translate Trilussa into an English dialect in the light of important currents in contemporary translation theory, in order to suggest how the project of translating Trilussa into an English dialect may be supported on a theoretical as well as a philological level. Given the complexity of the relationship between dialect and standard language, and especially given the differences in linguistic status between Italian and English dialects discussed below, I shall not claim that my conclusions will be applicable to all English translations of literature in Italian dialects. I hope, however, that by expounding one possible path through the dark wood of dialect translation, I may suggest the value of rendering Trilussa’s work in Cockney both in literary-critical terms and in terms of its importance to the field of translation studies.

Issues of Dialect Before dealing with the literary and cultural aspects of translating Trilussa, I should answer the objections that could be raised on purely linguistic grounds to this substitution of Cockney for romanesco, as English and Italian dialects are

100

Laurence Hooper

often said to differ starkly in nature. The received position on Italian dialects is summed up by Alberto Va`rvaro’s contention that ‘the widespread conviction that Italian dialects are corrupted forms of a national language is totally wrong: on the contrary, dialects derive directly from the Latin, exactly like other Romance languages’.2 Posner takes a similar view, asserting that standard Italian ‘overlays a host of different still lively dialects, with sometimes comparatively little in common’.3 In England, dialects have a somewhat different status. David Crystal summarizes it thus: ‘The picture which emerges from [dialect surveys of rural England] relates historically to the dialect divisions recognized in Old and Middle English’, but ‘relatively few people in England now speak a dialect of [this] kind’. Unlike the Italians, who have kept to their traditional dialects, the English have begun to speak ‘a range of comparatively new dialect forms, chiefly associated with the urban areas of the country’.4 The principal influence on these new dialects is standard English; as Peter Trudgill puts it, ‘standard English is, as it were, imposed from above over the range of regional dialects’.5 These differing linguistic statuses of Italian and English dialects could potentially be used to call into question the validity of a translation from one into the other. Romanesco, however, is a case apart among Italian dialects and bears much more similarity to an English dialect. This is confirmed not only by what O’Sullivan argues in this volume about Belli, another poet writing in romanesco, but also by Vignuzzi, who states that romanesco ‘has been gradually shedding its originally central-southern characteristics . . . at the same time it has undergone increasing marked Tuscanization/Italianization’.6 It seems therefore that romanesco has more in common with an urban English dialect such as Cockney than do most other Italian dialects; both have shifted away from their linguistic roots under the influence of their respective national standards. I therefore contend that, linguistically at least, the decision to represent romanesco with Cockney can be justified.

The Poet Carlo Alberto Salustri (1871–1950) wrote satirical poetry in the Roman dialect under the pseudonym Trilussa (an anagram of his surname), from the age of fifteen until his death. His mature work falls broadly into two types, sonnets and fables. As his career progressed the fables began to outnumber the sonnets, until in the late 1920s he discarded the sonnet entirely. His sonnets belong to the tradition begun by Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli in the 1830s; they take an ironic look at day-to-day life in Rome through the eyes of society’s poorest members. However, it was at the poetic fable that Trilussa truly excelled, developing a distinctly cynical Roman version of the genre of Aesop and La Fontaine in which anthropomorphized animals and personified abstract concepts, such as freedom,7 exhibit flaws that are uncomfortably relevant to contemporary society.

Trilussa

101

Neither of Trilussa’s parents was a native of Rome – his father was from neighbouring Albano and his mother from Bologna – and so the poet almost certainly did not speak romanesco as his first language. His use of dialect should therefore be seen as an overt adoption of a position of solidarity with romanesco speakers. Moreover, Trilussa’s work is rigorously monolingual: his poems’ narrative and all of the dialogue, whether the speaker be king or beggar, lion or rabbit, is in romanesco; standard Italian is excluded entirely.8 This sets Trilussa’s work apart from Belli’s; in a sonnet such as ‘Er confessore’, Belli deliberately brings out the difference between a popolano’s romanesco and the Standard Italian of a clergyman.9 At first, in the sonnets, Trilussa accomplishes this exclusion of the standard language by giving voice only to characters of the lower social classes, witness a series of sonnets such as ‘Parla Maria, la serva . . .’ whose very title announces that it will be written in dialect.10 But in the fables Trilussa goes further and turns romanesco into a language universal to all social strata. This overturning of the sociolinguistic order is highly transgressive and becomes a powerful tool for satire, especially when members of the upper classes are made to speak in dialect; take the heavy irony of ‘Le decisioni der Re’, where the king instructs his minister ‘Qua bisogna / ch’aprimo l’occhi ar popolo’ (‘We must open the people’s eyes’) in the speech of the popolani themselves.11 Trilussa’s desire to satirize the contemporary bourgeoisie and aristocracy does not prevent him from highlighting his proletarian characters’ shortcomings as well, but his use of romanesco means their faults are pointed out in a language that is the characters’ own and not the voice of a detached, moralizing Other. The reader is therefore encouraged to view the characters’ failings as communal, not personal. Thus Trilussa’s use of dialect is vital in maintaining sympathy between character and reader, despite his perpetually cynical view of human nature.

Grant Showerman ‘No!’ answered Tab, the hardened, heartless sinner. ‘I share with nobody – it’s mine, this meat. I’m Socialist only when I have no dinner; I’m strictly a Conservative when I eat!’

This is the final stanza of Showerman’s translation of the fable ‘Er Compagno Scompagno’ (originally published by Mondadori in the collection Le Favole in 1922).12 Showerman’s translations maintain a fairly affected diction, using archaisms such as ‘’twas’ and ‘naught’; the overall effect is thus arguably at odds with the informality of the originals.13 Take, for example, the lines ‘it’s mine, this meat, / I’m Socialist only when I have no dinner’ (‘io nun divido gnente co’ nessuno: / fo er socialista quanno sto a diggiuno’); where the original maintains a consistent diction, in Showerman’s version there is a

102

Laurence Hooper

tension between the informal chiasmus of the first line and the more formal positioning of the adverb ‘only’ after and not before ‘Socialist’. More importantly, Showerman’s failure to maintain the equality in linguistic status between Trilussa’s narrator and his characters has important implications for the moral stance of his translations, turning them from ironic but sympathetic allegories of human nature into simple morality tales. Whereas in the original fable the narrator is linguistically akin to the characters and thus points out their faults as an equal, here he looks down upon them from a position of moral superiority. Take the description of the cat: the original calls him ‘er Gatto senza core’, which is rendered ‘Tab, the hardened, heartless sinner’. The latter puts the narrator on a higher moral plane than his character, something the former does not do. Indeed, Showerman’s very choice of words demonstrates his failure adequately to appreciate the moral system of Trilussa’s poetry. To describe the cat as a ‘sinner’ sets the narrator over the cat in the guise of a moral arbiter backed by divine judgement; the original’s ‘senza core’ meanwhile is the purely humanistic reproof of one romanesco speaker to another. With these considerations in mind, I have attempted to ensure that my translation’s ethical standpoint was as close to the original’s as possible.14 From the first line ‘A leftie cat, what sometimes changed ’is chune’, my translation’s narratorial voice is a demotic one, unlike Showerman’s ‘A Socialist Cat, whose purpose in the Party’, and that voice is consistent with the cats’ voices when they speak, preserving Trilussa’s monolingualism. This ensures that the ethical economy of the poem is preserved: the reader’s sympathy towards this uncomradely cat is maintained, even though his faults are being exposed. Showerman is open about his choice of diction, stating in his introduction that Trilussa’s romanesco ‘may be called the dialect of the Borghese home and the drawing room’. He therefore asserts that Trilussa’s work ‘is best rendered in English, not in dialect, but in the language of middle class conversation’, adding that ‘[a] content which is addressed to and best appreciated by the cultivated classes is not likely to be in unmodified dialect’.15 It is clear that the romanesco speakers of Trilussa’s verse are much less downtrodden than those depicted by Belli nearly a century before. Social mobility was far greater in early twentieth-century Italy than it had been in the nineteenth century. Christopher Duggan remarks that ‘[t]he surge in the Italian economy between 1896 and 1914 . . . was remarkable’ and was accompanied by significant rises in income levels for all citizens, allowing ‘many Italians . . . their first experience of what it was to live above the level of subsistence’.16 Rome was particularly strongly affected by this upturn: Martin Clark talks of ‘surprising social flexibility’. The historian cites figures from 1908 that show that 22 per cent of the sons of manual workers in Rome went on to take up white-collar jobs.17 It would seem therefore that Showerman’s description of romanesco speakers as borghesi is justified. Nevertheless, Showerman glosses over the fact that increased socio-

Trilussa

103

economic mobility does not necessarily eradicate the sociolinguistic associations of dialects overnight. As the sonnet ‘Li complimenti’ from the 1901 series entitled Dialetto borghese demonstrates, some romanesco speakers may have joined the middle classes, but their dialect retained its social stigma among the bourgeoisie.18 ‘Li complimenti’ depicts a nervous romanesco speaker trying, and largely failing, to standardize her dialectal speech in order to make a good impression on a house guest. Once the caller has gone, she reverts to her normal idiolect to call her daughters – who have been avoiding the unwelcome visitor – out of hiding. ‘Li complimenti’ thus plainly contradicts Showerman’s assertion that romanesco was the normal language of bourgeois discourse, as it highlights the incongruity of the speaker’s dialectal speech in this social situation. In conclusion, there are practical and theoretical grounds for dispute with Showerman’s translations. Practically, they contain inconsistencies of diction which do not appear in the original poems; and theoretically, not only does Showerman develop a questionable reading of the social status of romanesco, he also changes the sympathetic relationship between narrator and character.

Blossom Kirschenbaum In the introduction to her volume of translations Fables from Trastevere, Blossom Kirschenbaum argues, like Showerman, that Trilussa’s dialect is ‘middle-class, colloquial but not vulgar’.19 Showing more awareness than Showerman of the problems of defining a dialect as ‘middle-class’, Kirschenbaum argues that Trilussa adapted romanesco to his own ends and that he was the one to turn it into a middle-class dialect. However, given the aforementioned economic transformation and consequent increase in social mobility in early twentiethcentury Italy, it seems questionable to attribute the credit for romanesco’s bourgeoisification to Trilussa himself. Kirschenbaum, like Showerman before her, elides the difference between socio-economic and sociolinguistic mobility. Kirschenbaum’s view of Trilussa’s romanesco is that he ‘use[d] provincialisms to counteract provincialism’,20 an assertion that underestimates the profoundly transgressive manner in which Trilussa uses his dialect. He uses romanesco to overturn the established social order by making kings speak the same language as proletarians, not to mention the snook he cocks at the literary canon by writing lyric poetry for a national audience in dialect, not standard Italian. Moreover, whilst Kirschenbaum recognizes Trilussa’s melancholic cynicism, dubbing it the ‘wisdom of the oppressed’,21 she omits to mention the role that romanesco plays in counterbalancing his melancholy with solidarity. Trilussa certainly has a very pessimistic Weltanschauung, but he nonetheless maintains the sympathy of his readers with his characters at all times by using romanesco to create a linguistic utopia in which all speakers are equal. In practice, Kirschenbaum’s translations tend towards wordiness. Consider

104

Laurence Hooper

the final two lines of ‘La guerra’: the original reads, ‘se vo ˆ i la guerra vacce in automobbile, / n’ammazzerai de piu`!’, which is idiomatic and snappy. Kirschenbaum’s ‘get an armored tank or a plane instead, / kill efficiently’ occludes the original’s directness and lacks its credibility as a spoken retort.22 At certain points it seems that Kirschenbaum introduces colloquialisms into her translations in the hope of representing Trilussa’s romanesco, but, given the lack of rigour with which she does so, the effort comes across as largely cosmetic, devoid of the more sophisticated hermeneutic implications of Trilussa’s use of dialect. Take the second stanza of ‘Teaching’ (‘L’educazzione’): The Fly replied:– You’re absolutely right, but blame is somewhat yours, for from the start in teaching me you weren’t all that bright. Okay, it’s fair you chase me and I flit if I alight on what you like; but please, I can’t explain your leaving me at ease when I’m at rest on shit.23

Here colloquial and sometimes vulgar language, such as ‘You’re absolutely right’, ‘all that bright’, ‘Okay it’s fair’ and ‘shit’, is juxtaposed with more refined locutions such as ‘somewhat’, ‘for’ in place of ‘because’, ‘your leaving’ instead of ‘you leaving’, ‘alight on’, ‘at ease’ and ‘at rest’. The colloquialisms thus seem out of place. This contrasts with the original poem, which is effective precisely because of its immediacy and its economy of expression: La Mosca me rispose: – Avrai raggione, ma la corpa e` un po’ tua che da principio nun m’hai saputo da` l’educazzione. Io trovo giusto che me cacci via se vado su la robba che te piace, ma nun me spiego che me lasci in pace quanno me poso su la porcheria!24

In sum, like Showerman’s, Kirschenbaum’s translations fail to take into account Showerman’s the sophisticated and transgressive manner in which Trilussa uses his dialect. Moreover, and again in common with Showerman, Kirschenbaum’s translations display inconsistencies of diction not present in the originals.

John Du Val John Du Val takes a very different approach to romanesco verse from Grant Showerman and Blossom Kirschenbaum. Du Val’s methodology is modelled on that of Miller Williams in his 1981 translations of Belli’s sonnets. In translating Belli’s hendecasyllables, Williams opts for a purely accentual metre

Trilussa

105

(akin to that used in Old English poetry) with five stresses per line and a variable number of unstressed syllables as opposed to the accentual syllabic metres divided into recurring feet that have been the norm in English verse since Chaucer.25 In a review of Williams’ translations, Du Val casts Williams’ metrical experimentation as ‘violating within the framework of the formal sonnet, certain expectations of formal rhymed poetry in English’ and as ‘recreat[ing] that sense of disturbing impertinence which the romanesco created in the originals’.26 Williams himself in fact makes no such claims; in the introduction to his translations he calls his choice a ‘compromise’ rather than a violation, suggesting that he found it easier to compose accentual lines than accentual-syllabic ones; he also omits to mention any intent to subvert the sonnet form.27 But irrespective of whether Du Val’s account of Williams’ translations is completely justified, it is clear that Du Val considers the romanesco poets’ use of their dialect as intentionally transgressive, a position with which I would strongly concur. However, Du Val follows Williams’ prosody only when translating Trilussa’s sonnets; when it comes to the fables, he takes a different position. He outlines his reasoning in the same Translation Review article: Most of [Trilussa’s] sonnets are still spoken by poor citizens of Trastevere and for these I felt the need to skew the meter, the way Williams does for Belli. His fables, however, are more in the tradition of LaFontaine than Belli. The poet’s voice is outside and above the action, judging it in the manner that LaFontaine judges his animals, with just a smack of Romanesco impudence. In translating, I felt that I had to aim for a modified elegance and a slightly smoother rhythm than would be appropriate in the sonnets.28

Du Val’s approach leads to two very different types of translation. His sonnets are a raucous affair – take the sestet from his version of the early sonnet ‘Er teppista a la dimostrazzione’, ‘The Hoodlum at the Demonstration’: That’s why I was down there making a racket and throwing stones at policemen. I took aim and beaned one. ‘Spy!’ I yelled. ‘Pig! Stoogie! Bully!’ Tool of the bourgeoisie!’ (This was the same cop that had nabbed me when I was on the trolley lifting a wallet from a tourist’s pocket.)29

The metre is irregular, only a rough approximation of iambic pentameter, although five out of the six lines do have the five stresses prescribed by Miller Williams (line 11, the third reproduced in this extract, has six stressed syllables). The erratic scansion certainly lends Du Val’s verse a sense of transgression that gives the dramatic effect he is looking for. What is missing, however, is a sense that this transgression is a shared one: there is no community to whom a ruptured iambic pentameter belongs in the way that the

106

Laurence Hooper

teppista’s insults in line 11 of the original are definably Roman.30 Because of this, the narrator appears as a simple outlaw rather than a loveable rogue. Du Val’s fables are a different matter entirely. This is the second stanza of ‘All’ombra’ from the 1932 collection Giove e le bestie: No way of telling if they’ve understood. Whether they have or not, it does me good to call things what they are without the dread of having to go to jail for what I’ve said.31

With the exception of two feet (a trochee at the beginning of the second line reproduced here and an anapaest at the second foot of the last line), this stanza is in strict iambic pentameter and also rhymes perfectly, a far cry from the last excerpt. But whereas the combination of romanesco with orthodox Italian prosody enhanced the subversive content of the original poem, this translation’s combination of English orthodox prosody with Standard English language has the opposite effect. Without a clear indication that the narrator is a member of a dialect-speaking community, the conspiratorial air of the poem is lost. Here is the original stanza: Forse ’ste bestie nun me capiranno, ma provo armeno la soddisfazzione de pote´ di’ le cose come stanno senza paura de finı` in priggione.

Just as standard Italian’s ‘prigione’ is a place where criminals (that is, other people) are sent, whereas Trilussa’s ‘priggione’ is where romanesco speakers (that is, our people) end up, so my translation seeks to transfer the original’s sense of community by using the dialectal ‘doin’ porridge’ rather than the standard ‘go to jail’: So what if they don’t get my meanin’? I’m ’appy in the simple knowledge I’m telling fings the way I seen ’em wivout no fear of doing porridge!32

Massimo Grillandi disagrees with Du Val’s assertion that Trilussa’s fables are ‘in the tradition of La Fontaine’. In his study ‘Trilussa, la favola e La Fontaine’, Grillandi argues that Trilussa’s fables are unmistakably Roman and rooted in the events of his own time, in a way that La Fontaine’s are not, and dubs Trilussa’s work as ‘fables defined by their context’.33 To see the validity of Grillandi’s point one need only compare the lion of ‘Le Lion’, the first poem of the eleventh book of La Fontaine’s fables, with the lion in Trilussa’s ‘Un conijo coraggioso’, published in 1932.34 Trilussa’s Lion is clearly meant to be a parody of Mussolini,35 but La Fontaine’s is not reminiscent of Louis XIV, or indeed of any particular ruler, but rather stands as a general comment on the

Trilussa

107

actions of the powerful.36 A poem such as ‘Un conijo coraggioso’ appears to contradict Du Val’s assertion that, in Trilussa’s fables, ‘the poet’s voice is outside and above the action, judging it in the manner that La Fontaine judges his animals’:37 the poetic voice in this poem most certainly judges both rabbit and lion and finds both wanting. Importantly, however, it maintains sympathy with the former and not with the latter and so would not appear to be as estranged from the action as Du Val claims. In the light of Grillandi’s study and this analysis, Du Val’s distinction between Trilussa’s sonnets, which he sees as strongly linked to Rome, and his fables, which Du Val casts as universal, appears far from convincing. Overall, Du Val’s approach is certainly more nuanced than Showerman’s or Kirschenbaum’s: he alone appreciates the transgressive aspect of Trilussa’s romanesco. However, Du Val too fails fully to apprehend Trilussa’s use of dialect. In the sonnets, he casts it as a subversion of the Petrarchan tradition, which it undoubtedly is, and so chooses to represent Trilussa’s unorthodox language with Williams’ unorthodox prosody. However, I argue that the romanesco of Trilussa’s represents a deliberate challenge to the cultural hegemony of standard Italian in all fields and not just in the narrow sphere of sonnet writing. Such a challenge cannot be adequately represented through unorthodox prosody, but requires a linguistic solution. In the fables, meanwhile, Du Val marginalizes the question of language when in fact it can be seen to be as central here as it is in the sonnets. And so I cannot concur with Du Val’s assertion that the language of the original poems differs strongly between the sonnets and the fables; in my view, the link to Rome is vital in both cases to inspire sympathy in the reader, without which neither sonnet nor fable can function.

Questions of Authenticity Trilussa’s romanesco is a clear symbol of belonging, of being part of a social group, and it is this that most distinguishes his poetry from its counterparts in the standard language. Dialectologists call this ‘covert prestige’: ‘prestige in the sense of being favourably regarded by one’s peers, and of signalling one’s identity as a member of a group’.38 The most obvious criticism of my approach is that my evocation of a mythical Cockney community of Rome is doomed to failure, that the community whose speech my translations purport to evoke simply does not exist and that the reader cannot therefore feel any true solidarity with their characters. Ironically, very similar criticisms were levelled at Trilussa’s romanesco by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his essay ‘La poesia dialettale del Novecento’. Pasolini attacks Trilussa as a fraud: ‘he never wrote about the people or for the people. It is his mass middle-class readership which has granted him his relevance and his fame,’ thunders Pasolini, dismissing Trilussa’s dialect as ‘maccheronico italo-romanesco’, and stressing that Trilussa is an Italian, not a Roman writer.39

108

Laurence Hooper

Pasolini’s ideological disagreements with Trilussa run deep: Pasolini’s own use of dialect in his writings was predicated upon the heightened spatial and social authenticity that he saw dialect as lending a work of literature, something that Trilussa effectively ignores. However, behind the vituperative rhetoric, Pasolini is in fact making a very similar argument to mine, namely that Trilussa’s use of romanesco is not spontaneous but rather carefully calculated to inspire sympathy in his target audience. With typical incisiveness, Pasolini recognizes that this audience was not the Roman proletariat whose speech the poems invoke, but the Italian middle classes at large, and it is this that so enrages him. Trilussa’s national, rather than local, audience means that the poems arguably appeal more to the untrained eye of the bourgeois, standard-Italian-speaking reading public than to fellow speakers of romanesco. His works thus gain a sort of generic ‘covert prestige’ generated by the implication that the poems’ language is authentic merely because it differs from the standard language, a situation which Pasolini deplores.40 A case in point is the 1940 poem ‘L’affare de la razza’, which I have translated as follows: I ’ad a tomcat an’ I called him Jonah:41 But since that name was gen’r’ly for a Jew I went to see a copper what I knew, to ask ’im if this was my right as owner. I wanted to be sure as, truth be tole, I could just as well ’ave called ’im Joel.42 ‘We’ll ’ave to look at this one,’ said the bobby, ‘Where’s ’is parents come from if you please?’ ‘Angora mum, ’is dad was Siamese,’ I said, ‘but walked the ghetto as an ’obby. Though free monfs on, ’is mum, when she gave birf, Was livin’ wiv a priest, on Christian turf.’ ‘Well if you’ve got this proof an’ you says you’re sure Then we can close this matter straightaway, It’s clear,’ ’e said, ‘there’s nuffink more to say.’ An’ ’e confirmed my moggy’s blood was pure. ‘But to be safe,’ ’e tole me, ‘even so, P’raps it’s better if you call ’im Joe.’

This poem satirizes the iniquitous leggi razziali (racial laws) introduced in 1938, clearly an Italian and not specifically a Roman matter. Rather than confronting the leggi razziali head-on and condemning them as an offence against all principles of equality, ‘L’affare de la razza’ uses its romanesco narratorial voice to undermine the laws more subtly. The poem’s narrator is a demotic, even parochial figure who is worried about the possible ramifications of the antiSemitic legislation for his choice of names for his pet cat. The climate of

Trilussa

109

suspicion and repression suffered by Italian Jews at this time might seem belittled by its appropriation and attribution to feline nomenclature. But I would argue that far from demeaning their experiences, ‘L’affare de la razza’ is a call to its reader to consider the Jews’ plight, raising the question, if an average Roman cannot even name his cat as he wishes because its sire used to frequent the Ghetto, what must the humans who inhabit that part of the city be experiencing? The position of the narrator as an average Roman is thus vital to ‘L’affare de la razza’, and this status is granted by his dialectal speech; we receive no other information about him during the course of the poem.43 In sum, the dialect is central to the poem, but, provided its readers find it convincing, whether or not the language of Trilussa’s poem is a true representation of the language spoken on the streets of Rome is surprisingly unimportant. I do not intend to argue here that the language of Trilussa’s poems is in no way authentic romanesco. However, I would point out, as does Arnoldo Mondadori in his preface to the second edition of Trilussa’s complete poems, that ‘Trilussa’s romanesco is a language so close to the common tongue as to be easily understood by Italians from all regions,’44 whilst still retaining enough romanesco features to appear recognizably non-standard. Given the Tuscanization/Italianization of the romanesco dialect discussed above, Trilussa can effectively be seen to be taking advantage of a pre-existing linguistic development for literary purposes, yoking together the universal accessibility of Tuscanized romanesco with the ‘covert prestige’ of dialectal language. To the purely linguistic issue of ‘covert prestige’ must be added the literary aspect of the poems’ prosody. As has been noted, Trilussa’s prosody is essentially conservative; the interest of his works lies in the juxtaposition of his canonical versification and this subversive use of dialect. My use of Cockney in my translations seeks to replicate Trilussa’s twinning of romanesco’s ‘covert prestige’ with the orthodox forms of lyrical poetry that are traditionally associated with Standard Italian. Cockney is a dialect with a long-standing literary tradition dating back over 400 years to the Elizabethan dramatists, as a language of cultural difference and anti-e´lite expression. The Cockney canon includes plebeian characters in works by such canonical literary figures as Dickens and Bernard Shaw, but also popular works of mass culture – the Trotter brothers in the situation comedy Only Fools and Horses or the actor Michael Caine in his many film appearances. This canon’s breadth and variety make clear that the London dialect has strong ‘covert prestige’ which many writers and artists have made use of in order to place themselves or their creations outside e´lite Anglophone culture. The use of Cockney in lyric poetry, generally a bastion of standard-English culture, is of course a more transgressive step than its use in prose or elsewhere and, as such, mirrors Trilussa’s use of romanesco.

110

Laurence Hooper

Visibility and Value: Why Translate Trilussa? Lawrence Venuti has argued passionately that translators must ‘develop sophisticated translation practices in which their work becomes visible to readers’. In detail, he advocates careful selection of texts to be translated and ‘a particular combination of dialects and discourses from the history of British and American literature’, in order to ‘question current concepts of authorship by suggesting that no writing can be mere self-expression because it is derived from a cultural tradition at a specific historical moment’.45 Venuti identifies a tide of experimentalism in Italian poetry of the twentieth century, which he sees as potential material for translators inclined to answer his ‘call to action’. Despite the subversive implications of his use of dialect, Trilussa certainly could not be placed amongst this tide: his poems’ unproblematic view of their characters’ selfhood means they do not ‘acknowledge the contradiction between self-expression and communication with some other, forcing an awareness of the limits as well as the possibilities of its language’, as do experimental poems, in Venuti’s view.46 However, I would argue that this does not necessarily deprive his work of value – its use of dialect and its depiction of life in early twentieth-century Italy both deserve to be appreciated – and thus Trilussa’s poems remain worthy of translation. We have already seen how Trilussa’s combination of orthodox prosody with romanesco highlights the issue of poetry’s use of language and linguistic reference to the Italian-speaking reader in a way that a comparably conservative, standard-language poet’s work would not. As Verina Jones argues in her entry on ‘Dialect Writing’ in The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature, ‘the one unifying element behind all dialect literature is an allusion, explicit or implicit, to the national literature’.47 This foregrounding of issues of language potentially places Trilussa’s work outside what Venuti describes as ‘the dominant poetics in Anglo-American culture’, should it enter that culture. This poetics, Venuti argues, holds ‘that the poem should . . . be centred on the poetic I, evoking a unique voice, communicating the poet’s self in transparent language’,48 whereas Trilussa’s use of romanesco makes clear the contingency of the standard literary language upon convention. Translations of Trilussa into English which maintain this feature of his work – as mine do by using Cockney – will necessarily stand in opposition to the ‘dominant poetics’ identified by Venuti and, as such, will constitute a small revision of the canon. Such a translation cannot but make its translator ‘visible’, in that the reader is made aware of the process of composing the translation because of the conspicuousness of the decision to write in dialect. It is therefore in their renegade use of language that my translations could be identified, in Venuti’s terms, as ‘resistant’ and ‘foreignizing’, that is to say as challenging the precepts of the dominant literary culture in Britain and America. However, to apply these tags to them as of right would be misleading, since neither Trilussa’s poems nor my translations attempt the abolition of the view that subjectivity is ‘at once self-determining and determined by human

Trilussa

111

nature, individualistic yet generic, transcending cultural difference, social conflict and historical change’49 and its replacement with an estimation of human identity as contingent upon its sociopolitical context. There are hints of such a move, to be sure, in dialect writing’s foregrounding of the social aspects of language discussed above, and especially in Trilussa’s radical overturning of the sociolinguistic order, which is replicated in my translations, but, on the other hand, Trilussa remains at all times a firm individualist: his deepseated pessimism precluding any possibility of attributing a more socially cohesive ideology to his use of dialect. My translations do not seek to alter this. Translations of dialect literature can therefore go some way towards advancing one of Venuti’s aims, that of ‘develop[ing] a more sophisticated literary practice, wherein the ‘‘literary’’ encompasses the various traditions of British and American literature and the various dialects of English’.50 Anthony Pym adjudges in his review of Venuti’s book that this is one of the most important points the scholar makes: Venuti is looking for a mode of English translation able to incorporate a wide diversity of English usages, mixing and conflicting registers, giving value to the marginal. . . . [This] could blossom into a critique of the role played by translations in the centring or standardising of languages, since there is indeed the peculiar convention that our target language should be as neutral as possible . . . More could be made of this point.51

In fact, as this case study has sought to demonstrate, it is possible to accept the strong argument in favour of greater linguistic diversity amongst English-language translations without subscribing to Venuti’s wider aim that translation should be used as a weapon against the system of liberal humanism in toto. As Pym points out, Venuti’s desire to open the field of literary translation to marginalized voices is founded upon the principles of equality and acceptance of cultural differences that are the cornerstone of that liberal humanist tradition (albeit, as Venuti might respond, principles honoured more in the breach than in the observance).52 Trilussa is ultimately a satirist and, as such, resists his political context negatively rather than positively, criticizing injustice where he sees it, but failing to sketch out a utopian project for reform to prevent such injustice from taking place. This lack of idealism means his political commitment does not match up to the aspirations of a critic such as Venuti. It is undeniable nonetheless that his work is closely concerned with the political issues current in his time, as the various assessments of his poems offered above will have shown. The value of a translation of his work lies, at least in part, in its transmission to the English-speaking reader of the sense contained within the poems of how life was lived in early twentieth-century Rome. Given that this period in Italy’s history includes two world wars and the rise of Fascism, the importance of its full appreciation in our own culture is beyond doubt. The appreciation gleaned will inevitably be imperfect and partial, as are the

112

Laurence Hooper

translations themselves. Nonetheless, the existence of these translations, imperfect or otherwise, at least allows the English-speaking readers to make an attempt at reading Trilussa and understanding his depiction of Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, whereas the absence of these works in English would deny them that possibility entirely. My hope is that the combination of this sense of an unfamiliar cultural milieu of early twentieth-century Italy with the estranging effect of introducing dialect into the domain of lyric poetry will provide the English-speaking readers with a more thorough impression of Trilussa’s original poems than has been available to him hitherto.

Conclusion I hope this case study has shown that there is much more to dialect literature than a simple association with a place on a map.53 The strong sense of belonging that dialects evoke can be used deliberately by an author to evoke sympathy in the reader even though he or she may not be a native speaker of that dialect. I maintain that this is precisely the case in Trilussa, whose use of romanesco is sophisticated and carefully calculated. Romanesco lends Trilussa’s rigorously monolingual work a sense of community, or ‘covert prestige’, which some argue is fictitious but which nonetheless evokes strong sympathy in the reader for the flawed characters whom the poet describes. Where a work of dialect literature, and especially poetry, deliberately exploits its ‘covert prestige’ in this manner, and assuming a suitable dialect can be found in the target language, I argue that translators should use dialect over the standard language. Where the translator does so, it can be seen as resisting the dominant trends in literary translation and may go some way to altering the canon in favour of non-standard voices. However, this is not to go so far as to say that dialect literature is innately tied to ideas of translation as ‘resistance’ to established practices in the literary field. Instead the value of a translation of Trilussa’s poetry should be sought in its potential for evoking for the Englishspeaking reader both the era which Trilussa describes, analyses and satirizes, as well as the linguistic and literary strategies which he adopted in order to do so.

Section III Translation, Identity and Authority

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 8

Arsenio’s Alchemy: Notes on Eugenio Montale’s 1933 Translations of T.S. Eliot and Le´onie Adams Marco Sonzogni

Montale and Translation as (Re)Writing: The Author’s ‘Debts’ and ‘Gifts’1 The term ‘notes’ is used in the subtitle of this chapter for two reasons. Firstly, it is an acknowledgement of the vast bibliography on poetic translation in general, and in particular with regard to studies of Montale’s work. Secondly, the term ‘notes’ reflects the nature of this examination of Montale as a translator of poetry, which reaches only provisional conclusions: Montale himself would no doubt have approved of this cautious use of terminology. An argument made up of notes may, precisely through its refusal of fixed conclusions, be a fruitful means to avoid the quicksands of cliche´d commonplace.2 This is particularly true when the authors discussed are – apart from the less well-known American poet Le´onie Adams (1899–1988) – figures of the calibre of T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) and Eugenio Montale (1896–1981). An equal, if not greater, risk is also implicit when engaging in any argument about ‘the theoretical development regarding the translatability of the poetic text’,3 particularly given that, apart from his (largely overlooked) papers, and the articles written ‘in the margin of his own or of other people’s translations’,4 Montale left no ‘essays specifically relating to the topics of translation and aesthetics’.5 The eternal conflict between the abstraction of theory and the reality of practice is intrinsic to translation and translation studies, and is often seen as irresolvable. Under the more open and flexible label of translation studies, however, theoretical reflections on the process of translation have generally moved from a normative, linguistic and therefore source-oriented perspective to a more descriptive, functional and therefore target-oriented approach.6 One recent, and quite controversial, trend in the theory and practice of

116

Marco Sonzogni

literary translation has nevertheless strongly emphasized a new interpretive dichotomy, which on closer analysis is intrinsic to the contradictory nature of translation. According to this model, there are two fundamentally opposed methods of translation. In the first case, every foreign (and in any way alienating) element of the original is eliminated. The translated text becomes an integral part of the target language and culture. In the second case, these characteristics are marked openly so as to indicate clearly that the text is a translation. The verbs used to describe these processes are, respectively, ‘to domesticize’ and ‘to foreignize’.7 This new way of approaching opposed translation practices thus shifts the emphasis onto the translation itself, and consequently confers greater visibility upon the translator, whose auctoritas was traditionally often limited, if not completely obliterated.8 Yet in the case of Montale’s poetic translations, regardless of their formal character, this visibility is evident a priori, insofar as it is programmatic, that is to say, it should be understood as an integral part of the poet’s cultural and authorial identity. Translation is thus a fundamental constitutive element of Montale’s writing, which can be considered, in all of its forms, as a continuum of originality. Defined in this way, the dynamic of Montale’s writing – hybrid yet homogeneous, polyphonic yet monodic – is impelled by and instilled with his ever-alert poetic memory: it goes beyond the mere question of the specific linguistic choices made in a given rendering. The ‘notes’ that follow should therefore be understood primarily as exercises in reading Montale’s poetics rather than as exercises in translation theory. Translation was, without any doubt, a creative and inevitably targetoriented process for Montale, as George Talbot’s study, Montale’s mestiere vile: The Elective Translations from English of the 1930s and 1940s, proves most convincingly. Montale considered translation ‘elective’ when practised as a platform for poiesis,9 and ‘contemptible’ (‘mestiere vile’) when carried out as a ‘forced, unwelcome activity’ (‘forzata e sgradita attivita`’).10 For Montale, then, the creative and cultural aspect of translation is intrinsic, and at times, as his correspondence with Nino Frank demonstrates, even more important than its artistic-aesthetic value.11 It is also unconnected to any specific theoretical frameworks or formulations that were not part of, or touched upon by, Montale’s activity as a writer.12 For, in the scheme of Montale’s variatio, every single word is constantly attuned to the poet’s intentions and in harmony with itself. Each word belongs at once to prose and poetry, and is equally epistolary and journalistic, independent and intertextual: each word is, therefore, always virgin, or original, always varied, or translated. The poetic translations examined in this essay are from the period of Montale’s writing that covers the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s (1928–33).13 They therefore precede ‘his frenetic activity as a translator’14 from 1938 to 1943, the years of what scholars, adopting the words used by Montale himself, have termed his ‘major translations’. The first edition of the Quaderno di traduzioni – published in 1948 in a limited print run by

Arsenio’s Alchemy

117

Edizioni della Meridiana in Milan – contains a translator’s note in which Montale clarifies the chronology and typology of these renderings: From the modest banquet of my major translations (which were, between 1938 and 1943, the only pot boilers I was allowed), a few crumbs had fallen under the table which, until now, I had not thought to pick up. The brotherly invitation of my friend Vittorio Sereni has helped me to collect them, and to him I dedicate this ‘Notebook’. Some of those experiments – Guille´n’s poems and two texts by Eliot – date back to 1928–29. The re-workings of three Shakespearean sonnets are also from before ’38. The passages from Midsummer were translated in ’33. Some of these were supposed to fit musical scores which already existed, and so it would be useless to expect faithfulness to the text. In any case, for all the translations it was decided to print the original texts facing my versions, for reasons of uniformity.15

From this brief explanatory note, and especially from the choice of terms like ‘experiments’ and ‘re-workings’, as well as, obviously, the choice of authors to be translated, it is evident that Montale understood and approached translation as an exercise in ‘conversion’, as Gilberto Lonardi has made clear.16 If translation is not a pre-text (a term often used in a negative sense by some critics) for writing, then, it should nonetheless be viewed as a writing exercise.17 It is therefore logical that Montale, as a poet-translator, should have preferred translation strategies that avoided the impositions and limits of the literal.18 The licence that Montale exercises is nevertheless, in the words of another great poet-translator, Franco Fortini, ‘contained within the boundaries of the model’.19 This is not because of any theoretical precepts, as has already been indicated, but rather as a sign of recognition of ‘certain conditions of affinity’.20 It is a question of the harmony of thought that guides one poet ‘in the creative mechanism of another’,21 a condition described by the German term Einfu ¨ hlung.22 In this liminal space – a space typical of Montale’s writing – the transposition between the originalities in play takes place. It is therefore natural that Montale should have carried out his poetic translations during years of poetic metamorphosis, and that these translations should themselves be metamorphic: that is, simultaneous mutations of his own intonation through that of others. This process may, perhaps, seem irreconcilably contradictory. However, as Donatella Bisutti has shown, the essential condition of creative writing, ‘a condition entailing at once distance and involvement’, is also that of translation.23 The osmotic and mimetic24 presence of the poet in the translator is therefore, for the majority of translators and translation scholars, the necessary condition for the complete success of a poetic translation.25 Indeed, Montale translated poetry in his most disponible period, to use the adjective preferred by Andre´ Gide and taken up by Renato Poggioli, defined by Lanfranco Caretti as the ‘laborious metamorphic transit’ from the last ossi lunghi included in the second edition of Ossi di seppia to the canzoniere of incisive motets for Clizia

118

Marco Sonzogni

forming the heart of Le occasioni.26 His intention, instinctive and at the same time rational, was to ‘carve out another dimension’ in the ‘heavy polysyllabic language’ of Italian (a language that, on occasions, through the merciless looking glass of translation, the poet even went so far as to curse), by bringing it into contact with the structure, words and poetics of foreign texts.27 From this confrontation, Montale obtained a remarkable ‘rhythmic dynamism’, without doubt one of the most difficult things to achieve in a translation, above all when the rhythm of the languages involved is very different, as in the case of English and Italian (‘Lullaby’ is a telling example of this).28 All of these elements, then, contribute to what Gilberto Lonardi calls Montale’s ‘high reactivity’ as a translator.29 This disposition towards translation was also one of the distinctive traits of literary Modernism. Stan Smith, with more conviction than other critics, has written that during the years of the Modernist movement, translation was not so much ‘one of several activities’ for writers as ‘a key to all their activities’.30 In Montale’s case, taking this approach is not only legitimate, but also highly rewarding. The analytical scheme proposed here is intended to raise certain questions and to open up an interpretative path that has been neglected by Montale critics. The strategy behind this chapter is one of deliberate marginality: the following considerations are inserted in margine into the events, some well known, others less so, that, through translation, linked the names of T.S. Eliot and Le´onie Adams with that of Eugenio Montale. In terms of form, these notes can be read either independently or as part of a broader vision of Montale’s conception of poetic translation as an opportunity for cultural and creative contact within the microcosm of a text and the macrocosm of a work. In terms of content, I consider not only literary and linguistic intersections but also extra-textual biographical and bibliographical factors. In the first instance, I examine Montale’s authorial debts in relation to (possible) mediations, such as his reading of existing translations in other languages or contributions from Anglophone friends. I also examine authorial gifts: the characteristic figures of Montale’s writing, which the author-in-thetranslator not only refuses to renounce but constantly applies and perfects. In the second instance, I present and evaluate the evidence provided by information connected to the poet’s life: his books, his correspondence and other documents directly or indirectly linked to him. The common thread is therefore the short circuit between dependence and independence, debt and gift. This dynamic, present in every translation process, is particularly visible in the translation of poetry, and even more so in the case of the profound ‘esercizio spirituale’ that Montale’s poetic translations represent.31 My work, then, hopes to add to the process of assessing ‘that most secret consistency of the dialogue between the poet in his own right and his role as translator, even when the latter cannot hope to explain the former directly’.32

Arsenio’s Alchemy

119

‘La figlia che piange’ and ‘Lullaby’: Re-assessing Two ‘Clizian’ Translations The appearance of Irma and the birth of Clizia (1933) Out of all the poems by T.S. Eliot that Montale translated, ‘La figlia che piange’ is the only one that does not also have a contemporary French translation.33 The publication date – the end of 1933 – is crucial to understanding Montale’s choice of this text and the meaning of his translation.34 In the same edition of the Genoese literary journal Circoli in which ‘La figlia che piange’ was published, another of Montale’s translations from English, ‘Ninna nanna’, also appeared. The poet explained in a footnote to his version that it was an ‘adattamento’ of ‘Lullaby’, a poem by the young American poet Le´onie Adams. For this poem, too, there is no contemporary French translation. Adams is represented in the Anthologie de la nouvelle poe´sie ame´ricaine, edited in 1928 by Euge`ne Jolas for the Parisian publisher Kra, although the only poem of hers to appear in it is a text bearing the rather Eliotesque title of Mortalite´ d’avril.35 In this case, too, the year of publication is decisive to fully understand Montale’s translation. In the spring of 1933, Montale, who had by then been director of the prestigious Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence for some time, was visited by Irma Brandeis, a young Jewish-American Italianist. After reading Ossi di seppia, she was determined to meet the author in person, and succeeded in doing so.36 From their first ‘disastrously stupid’ meeting, a relationship developed that would prove to be as intense as it was unfulfilled. In poetic terms, this was the period of Clizia, of the mottetti and the other occasioni.37 However, it was also the gestational period of the edition of Circoli dedicated to North American poetry to which Montale contributed with his translations of two poems by T.S. Eliot, ‘Canto di Simeone’, reprinted from Solaria, and the previously unpublished ‘La figlia che piange’, as well as ‘Ninna nanna’, his adaptation of Le´onie Adams’ ‘Lullaby’. Is it possible, therefore, to establish a connection between the appearance of Irma, the birth of ‘Clizia’ and Montale’s 1933 translations?

Hypotheses prior to the publication of the Montale–Brandeis correspondence Before proceeding to a serious evaluation of any hypothesis of a link between these translations and Irma Brandeis, a chronological issue had to be overcome. To see them as a coded literary homage to the woman who inspired Le occasioni and to whom the work was dedicated, it is essential to establish that Irma and Eugenio had met prior to the publication of the edition of Circoli in which these translations were published, that is, before the end of 1933. Leaving aside the precise date and circumstances of their meeting, the summer of 1933 was certainly a particularly significant period in the early part

120

Marco Sonzogni

of their relationship.38 The second issue to be resolved, turning to the poems under examination, is that of identifying with certainty the sources Montale used for the translations. Among the numerous volumes that Montale left to the Biblioteca Comunale ‘Sormani’ in Milan is Le´onie Adams’ second collection, High Falcon and Other Poems, in which ‘Lullaby’ appears.39 This copy has three distinctive features: (1) a note reading ‘ex-libris Irma Brandeis’; (2) a letter written by Irma Brandeis; and (3) a copy of a review of Le´onie Adams’ poetry by the American poet and critic Louis Untermeyer. The letter, about 21.5cm long and 13.5cm wide, is undated and typed on the back of a piece of letterhead, with a handwritten note below. Important information can be gleaned from this letter, in which Irma asks Eugenio to return the book to her at the first opportunity, namely when a common friend identified as ‘Mammina’ – Alma Landini,40 the mother of Giovanna Calastri, ‘Clizia’s friend’ and the protagonist of the altri versi of Interno/Esterno – returns to New York.41 First, Irma considers this book of Adams’ poetry a favourite and explains very clearly that she cannot do without it. Second, she lists the titles of the poems she wants Montale to read, warning him about the difficulty of certain of her fellow-American’s texts. The fact that there is no mention of ‘Lullaby’ might be taken to suggest that the document dates from after Montale’s translation. Such an assumption, however, does not stand up to examination. From the content of the letter, which, along with the volume, survived the flood that struck Florence in 1966, we can assume that the note was almost certainly written by Irma in New York – most likely from her office at Sarah Lawrence College – and posted to Montale in Florence, who possibly put it inside the book as a reminder to send it back. The size and colour of the paper (‘translucent yellow’) and the setting of the letterhead would appear to identify this memorandum with one of two message-pads used at Sarah Lawrence College, New York, between 13 April 1931 and 25 July 1935 and between 17 July and 16 December 1933 respectively (the differences are almost invisible).42 The document, therefore, could be ‘contemporary’ with the translation of the poem and could be taken as evidence of Irma’s involvement in Montale’s approach to his translation, if not with the choice of the original author and text. Turning to textual evidence, ‘Lullaby’, according to George Talbot, ‘appears to present no thematic affinity with Montale’s work’.43 The choice of this text could therefore legitimately be ascribed to another source. That said, the translation of a brief text such as ‘Lullaby’ would have been a useful writing exercise in view of the ‘need for an objective expression’ and for a ‘tighter structure of rhymes and assonances’ that the poet was seeking in the poems of Le occasioni in general and in the mottetti in particular. Talbot’s careful analysis has in fact shown how Montale responded effectively to the many monosyllables of the original by making abundant use of words with the emphasis on the third to last syllable. Indeed, his version could be argued to be more

Arsenio’s Alchemy

121

effective and convincing than the original: although uncommon, such ‘improvement’ is possible, particularly in the translation of poetry. Furthermore, not only was Le´onie Adams one of Irma’s favourite poets, she was also a friend of hers from her university days at Barnard College and Columbia University. She was also, from the year before this translation, 1932, a colleague of Irma’s at Sarah Lawrence College, source of the letterhead of the note to Montale. If one takes Brandeis to be the motivation behind this translation, the other, previously unpublished, translation of Eliot’s ‘La figlia che piange’ could also be seen in this light. It seems likely that Montale translated ‘La figlia che piange’ in 1933, since why else, if it was produced at more or less the same time as ‘Canto di Simeone’ and ‘Perch’io non spero’, that is, almost five years earlier, would it have remained unpublished until 1933? This translation – like the adaptation of ‘Lullaby’ – contains neither anagrammatical play on the letters of the name Irma (a strategy noted by Luciano Rebay in other contemporary Clizia compositions) nor more or less explicit invocations of the name Clizia (as occurs in some later texts). Nevertheless, both translations contain markedly Clizian echoes. This is perhaps not so much in relation to her theological characterization as Christ-bearer (the line ‘Ella si volse, ma col tempo di autunno / sforzo` per molti giorni la mia mente, / per molti giorni e molte ore’ nonetheless hints at this), but rather in terms of her stilnovistic aspect as a ‘visiting angel’ and her mythological comparison with the metamorphic sunflower (in, for example, the line ‘tessi, tessi la luce del sole nei tuoi capelli’). The true significance of these echoes has yet to be demonstrated, however: at times they seem clear and persuasive, at others evanescent and marginal. From an exclusively textual point of view, the translation of this poem, which both critics and Montale himself described as ‘less noteworthy’ (‘meno notevole’)44 than those printed in Faber and Gwyer’s Ariel Poems series, is decidedly closer to the original English than Montale’s previous or subsequent translations of Eliot. As George Talbot puts it, ‘Montale’s translation of ‘‘La figlia che piange’’ is a very faithful version both syntactically and semantically.’45 Can this ‘double faithfulness’ be taken as evidence of Clizia’s involvement? Can her presence be detected between the lines of the ‘rifacimenti’, as Montale called them, of the three Shakespearean sonnets, which were produced before 1938, according to the poet-translator, but only published between 1944 and 1947?46 Finally, what of Mario Praz? It is known, and documented, that he was instrumental in Montale’s reading of T.S. Eliot’s poetry and the translations that ensued. In Casa della vita, the well-known scholar of English literature notes with great accuracy the chronology of his stays in Florence and his almost daily encounters with Montale: There was a time, between 1927 and 1934, when during my sojourns in Florence I would meet with Eugenio Montale almost every day; we would meet at a cafe´ or at a

122

Marco Sonzogni

restaurant and, judging from letters of his that I still have, we had many things to talk about.47 .

In Cronache letterarie anglosassoni, there is a specific reference to Praz’s role in Montale’s reading and translations of T.S. Eliot’s poetry: and when around the same period [1927] I lent Montale A Song for Simeon and La figlia che piange in the little pamphlet editions of the Ariel Poems, the Italian poet became so intrigued by them that he felt the desire to make both poems his own by translating them.48

This was also confirmed by Montale himself: Mario Praz lent me those poems in the Ariel Poems edition, which I believe was the first they appeared in, a series of flimsy volumes of only four pages, containing a short poem and a sort of post-cubist illustration. Before this I had only read a few of his juvenile poems . . .49

These excerpts are sufficient to suggest at least a degree of involvement on Praz’s part in Montale’s translation of T.S. Eliot’s ‘La figlia che piange’.50 This is less clear, however, in the case of ‘Lullaby’, whose author was not widely known in Europe, even though, besides the French translation mentioned earlier, another of her poems, ‘Caryatid’, had been published in Paris in the Anglo-French journal This Quarter in 1930.51 In turn, was Irma Brandeis also involved in Montale’s choice of translating another of T.S. Eliot’s poems for the American issue of Circoli? Jean Cook, a faithful friend and assistant, has confirmed that along with Dante, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Le´onie Adams and the English metaphysical poets, T.S. Eliot was among Irma’s preferred readings of poetry and poetry criticism. In addition, the second half of Eliot’s ‘Ash Wednesday’ was published in the American journal The Saturday Review of Literature, to which she contributed.52 In the first part of Journey to Irma, his study of the ‘ispiratrice americana di Montale’, Paolo De Caro provides us with a helpful interpretation: A more externalized element connecting them to one another was their reading, particularly of poetry. More than Praz, more than Cecchi, Irma incarnated a lyric experimentalism that in the Twenties and Thirties linked Imagism, Pound and above all T. S. Eliot with the metaphysical poets, with Dickinson and with Dante; to a poetry full of concrete references, realistically present, a poetry full of indications, but at the same time of concealments, of rhetorical and meta-linguistic strategies which could only be read as an undefined ‘aura’, as allusion and estrangement from historical and existential content.53

It thus seemed quite reasonable to consider both ‘La figlia che piange’ and ‘Ninna nanna’ as ‘Clizian translations’, whether or not Irma Brandeis was directly and actively involved in their production.

Arsenio’s Alchemy

123

Revised positions following the publication of the Montale–Brandeis correspondence What has emerged from the recent publication of Eugenio Montale’s letters to Irma Brandeis is a perhaps less interesting scenario, albeit one that is not contradictory with respect to the hypothesis outlined above. Neither Irma Brandeis nor Mario Praz inspired Eugenio Montale’s 1933 translations of Le´onie Adams and T.S. Eliot. The choice of both authors, and very likely both poems, was in fact ‘suggested’ by Giacomo Prampolini, the guest-editor of the special American issue of Circoli.54 In addition, Montale was not satisfied with his adaptation of Le´onie Adams, blaming this on the ‘literary standard’ of the original text. The same is true, to an extent, of his second T.S. Eliot rendition. The translation of ‘Lullaby’ in particular – no doubt because of the personal and professional relationship between Irma and Le´onie – comes up several times in the early epistolary exchanges between Montale and Brandeis. The first reference is in the letter dated 31 October 1933. ‘Arsenio’ tells ‘Clizia’ that I am trying to translate Lonia [sic] Adams’ Lullaby as a commission for the American issue of Circoli; but it is proving impossible to get near the text, which is wholly composed of short words.55

In the second reference, in the letter of 24 February 1934, we read that Montale’s translation has been published and that Irma has replied and ‘talked’ to him about Le´onie: I will send you the horrid American issue of Circoli. My translation of Le´onie Adams’ Lullaby is very dull; but the poem is not first rate also. Why Le´onie doesn’t like you?56

Less then a fortnight later, in the letter dated 6 March 1934, Montale is still anxious both to clarify the reasons behind his translation of ‘Lullaby’ and to justify the result. The name of Praz is mentioned by Montale as a scholar of Anglo-American literature who can competently confirm his own judgement of the poem. In addition, the more ‘personal’ aspect of the situation is brought up again (in the same letter, Eugenio asks Irma to send him photos of herself as well as of Le´onie): I am not jealous of Le´onie and I am unlikely to fall in love with Alice (?). Tomorrow I will send the Circoli issue with my translation of Leonia’s [sic] Lullaby. I wasn’t the one who chose the poem, but I had asked that if L. A. was to be included in the series the poem or poems chosen by the editor should be given to me. And this is what happened. I have made a mediocre adaptation of Lullaby; as far as the original is concerned, Mr Praz says that it is just a replica of Christina Rossetti’s work, with no special character of its own, I don’t know . . .57

124

Marco Sonzogni

In the same letter, Eugenio asks Irma to ask Le´onie to send him ‘some books of hers’.58 As will be seen shortly, this detail is significant. In the letter of 7 April 1934, the focus is again on Montale’s adaptation of ‘Lullaby’: Arsenio asks Clizia whether the ‘dismissed Le´onie’ has seen Circoli.59 A week later, having possibly been told by Irma of her reservations, or those of Le´onie, both about his translation and the editor’s decision to include the original English on the facing page, Montale once again explains how his adaptation came about, also referring – for the first and only time – to his translation of T.S. Eliot’s ‘La figlia che piange’: I am not responsible for the choice of Leonie’s Lullaby; it was the only poem chosen by Prampolini; moreover, the decision to publish the parallel text was made in order to emphasize the fact that in the original there was much more. Many in Italy have a smattering of English, enough to check the original text. The only translation from Eliot I consider accomplished is Song for Simeon; the other one is just a literal rendering, and I think I could not have done any better.60

There is no further reference to, or discussion of, these two 1933 translations in the rest of their correspondence. Eugenio and Irma – and likely, through her, Le´onie too – said all that they felt they wanted to say and left it at that. There is, however, a curious twist. In the letter dated 17 July 1935, Montale informs Brandeis that ‘Mammina has brought the book and the lighter’ and that he will ‘send back the book in Autumn’.61 From previous pieces of correspondence it emerges that Eugenio and Irma were referring to Alma Landini’s trips to and from New York where her daughter Giovanna Calastri was living. The book is mentioned again, in more specific terms, in the letters of 23 October 1935 and 10 April 1936. In the former, Montale writes: Mammina is starting for N.Y. She didn’t call here; she rang up asking for my desiderii (Perhaps to be put in her hand bag? Possibly . . .). I told her I couldn’t give her Le´onie’s book which I’ll send you by registered parcel . . .62

In the latter, Montale tells Brandeis that he is (finally) about to send her back the book: ‘My poem will be included in Le´onie’s book. I’ll send the book nextly.’63 There is no further mention of ‘Le´onie’s book’ in their correspondence. One could interpret this ‘silence’ as a confirmation that Montale had sent it back (their epistolary exchanges, however, become progressively sparse as they both realize that there is no future in their relationship). If Montale did send it back, the book in question cannot possibly be the copy of High Falcon and Other Poems, the only Le´onie Adams book among the thousands of volumes that once crowded Montale’s apartment and that are now kept in the ‘Fondo Montale’ of Milan’s Sormani Library. Yet Irma’s note inside it, asking Eugenio to send the book back, constitutes rather strong evidence that this was the book in question. Even so, as documented by the correspondence, the book was in Montale’s possession in the

Arsenio’s Alchemy

125

summer of 1935: almost a year and a half after the publication in Circoli of his adaptation of ‘Lullaby’. And the first time that he mentions sending it back is in the autumn of the same year. The chronology, as well as the content, of the note provides a conclusive confirmation that Irma Brandeis was not involved with the choice and adaptation either of ‘Lullaby’ or of ‘La figlia che piange’. If the book was indeed High Falcon and Other Poems, then we can positively date the note to 1935 and more precisely, on the basis of the date of Montale’s letter, to the first half of July 1935. The mystery remains as to why Montale did not return the book.

Conclusions: The Alchemy of the Poet Translator This brief journey behind some of Montale’s texts comes to its logical conclusion in an invitation once again to place oneself in front of them in order to re-read these two ‘crumbs’64 of poetic translation. It is only right, particularly in a discussion of the processes of translation, that the last word should go to the original and translated texts. The instinct of a writer, and in this case a poet, is fulfilled in the realization of his own creative individuality (and therefore, ultimately, in his own creative independence), both within and outside the tradition of his own language and culture. As I have tried to show, while eschewing any single theoretical credo, the same can be said for the translator, particularly when these two authorial identities and their respective dynamics are superimposed on one another, as in the case of Montale. In the light of these considerations, Irma Brandeis and Mario Praz – along with Montale’s other English scholars and English-speaking friends (from Roberto Bazlen to Emilio Cecchi, from Carlo Linati to Lucia Rodocanachi, from Henry Furst to Ele´mire Zolla) – must be viewed as playing an important role in bringing Montale closer both to the intonation of the language of the texts he translated and to refining the intonation of his own texts. Montale’s formative readings, as noted throughout the invaluable pages of Quaderno Genovese, and in particular in the poet’s correspondence with Vale´ry Larbaud, demonstrate that French was a decisive influence on Montale’s critical and poetic development from the very beginning.65 English, however, seemed to him a language ‘that one never masters’.66 But, as the Irish poet Nuala Nı´ Dho´mhnaill has written, ‘[i]t doesn’t matter if the words mean different things, the most important thing is the voltage that is behind the words’.67 The Italian-Hungarian translator, poet and academic Tomaso Kemeny expresses himself with equal conviction: a ‘successful’ translation is one that, even if it exhibits an inevitable series of differences from the original, retains the energy of the imagery, bringing it to life in a specific historical context, conquering time and ideological, epistemic and cultural

126

Marco Sonzogni

distance, and producing that excitement which comes from a dialogue made possible between different individuals, languages, cultures, eras, and peoples.68

The poet-in-the-translator is able to absorb the voltage of another language, charging and liberating his own language with its poetic energy, and marking it with the unmistakable sign of the author. This is the miracle that transforms the translation into a new original, and the debt into a gift. All Montale’s translations bear inspired and convincing witness to this miracle. For he was, as Rosanna Bettarini put it, ‘an alchemist able to transform poison into medicine, arsenic into ambrosia, tears into crystal’.69

Chapter 9

Going after ‘La Bufera’: Geoffrey Hill Translates Eugenio Montale Sara H. D’Orazio

Geoffrey Hill’s most recent book of poems, Without Title (2006), opens with two quotations from F. H. Bradley and R. W. Emerson, familiar names in the poet’s artistic universe. However, just before them, on the very first page of the book, we are greeted by the dedication ‘in omaggio a Eugenio Montale’. Far from being a fleeting reference, the homage is fully carried out by a remarkable translation of Montale’s ‘La Bufera’1 – literally entitled ‘The Storm’ – which Hill includes towards the end of the volume. With this gesture the English poet seals a relationship that has been developing, more or less latently, for almost a decade. Reaching ‘The Storm’, we immediately note that Hill does not refer to it as a translation but uses the more generic sentence ‘after Eugenio Montale, La Bufera’ 2 to guide the reader. This does not surprise, as he has never claimed the title of translator for any of his previous attempts. The closest he has come to actually using the term was probably in the notes to Tenebrae (1978), where he claims to be writing ‘a free translation’ or combining ‘a few phrases of free translation with phrases of my own invention’.3 This being the case, what does surprise, when reading this poem, is its closeness to the original: The storm that batters the magnolia’s impermeable leaves, the long-drawn drum roll of Martian thunder with its hail (crystal acoustics trembling in your night’s lair disturb you while the gold transfumed from the mahoganies, the pages’ rims of the de luxe books, still burns, a sugar grain under your eyelid’s shell) lighting that makes stark-white the trees, the walls, suspending them – interminable instant – marbled manna and cataclysm – deep in you sculptured,

128

Sara H. D’Orazio

borne now as condemnation: this binds you closer to me, strange sister, than any love. So, the harsh buskins, bashings of castanets and tambourines around the spoilers’ ditch, fandango’s foot-rap and over all some gesture still to be defined . . . As when you turned away and casting with a hand that cloudy mass of hair from off your forehead gave me a sign and stepped into the dark.

Though slightly changing the structure of the Italian,4 the English poem mirrors exactly its distinctive rhythms and sounds. This closeness encourages us to explore the poem carefully and use it as a guide to Montale’s presence in Hill’s work. Although the dedication and ‘The Storm’ bring the association to the fore and give the Italian poet particular relevance within Without Title, Montale made his first explicit appearance as far back as The Triumph of Love (1998), where section CXXXIV is almost entirely dedicated to him. Here the man and his poetry are briefly but poignantly introduced and Hill openly declares his admiration: ‘I admire you and have trained my ear / to your muted discords.’ 5 His poetry is fittingly described as ‘muted discords’ or ‘anarchy coming to irregular order / with laurels: now with wreaths’. But in this portrait the reader may also catch a glimpse of Montale the man, ‘a civic conscience / attested by comedy: twenty-five years / with the Nuovo Corriere della Sera’, and his politics, ‘private, marginal, uncommitted writing – this is to be in code’ or the ‘decorum aloof from conformity; not a mask / of power’s harsh suavities’. This being the case, the section provides intriguing insights into those aspects in the Italian’s work which have particularly engaged the English poet.6 Going back to ‘La Bufera’ with this portrait in mind, we find that the poem encapsulates all those aspects that might help to explain the particular pull that induced Hill to embark on the rare attempt at a full translation. Even if not able to read the original, we are made aware in Hill’s version of those ‘muted discords’ to which he declares he has ‘trained his ear’.7 We are greeted with the harsh sounds of ‘storm that batters the magnolia’, ‘the long-drawn drum roll’ or ‘crystal acoustics’, which later are amplified by ‘stark-white trees’ and ‘the harsh buskins, bashings of castanets / and tambourines around the spoilers’ ditch, / fandango’s foot-rap’. Those ‘t’s, ‘k’s, ‘r’s, ‘d’s and ‘g’s grate on our senses but constitute at the same time an acoustic embodiment of the storm. They are in themselves a good example of Montale’s ‘anarchy coming to irregular order’.8 A similar discordance is achieved in the unsettling central image. In Montale’s poem, the disruption created by the harsh sounds is increased by the constant interruption of the syntax, which contributes to the embodiment of the storm with its flashes of light and darkness and to a sense

Geoffrey Hill translates Eugenio Montale

129

of precariousness and anxiety. This discordance and disruption is mirrored carefully in the English poem, even though the two stanzas are fused in one. That Hill’s ear would need much training for these ‘muted discords’ is hard to believe if we consider the body and muscularity of his own poetry – as we find in earlier verse such as ‘Genesis’ or ‘Mercian Hymns’9 – or the increasingly fragmentary and broken rhythms developed in his later work. Already the two poets seem to share a similar feeling for the textures of language. Montale’s ‘La Bufera’ was initially published in Switzerland (Lugano) in 1943 while the war was still raging. It was the opening poem of a small pamphlet with the ominous title Finisterre,10 geographically the name of the most western promontories of Galicia (Spain) and Brittany (France) but gaining poignancy in light of the date of publication: ‘finis terrae’, the end of the earth, of the world. The opening of ‘La Bufera’ is not just a compelling representation of a raging storm, but also a metaphor catalysing all the violence, anxiety and displacement experienced by the poet and the whole of Europe. This identification is strengthened by the epigraph to that poem ` Dieu’ by Agrippa D’Aubigne´, is which, taken from the French composition ‘A a coded attack on sanguinary rulers and thus a specific reference to the political situation of the time.11 Strengthened by these associations, the Italian poem acquires a political dimension that is expressed not through rhetoric or immediate, didactic images but on a deeper level, embodied by atmosphere, representations of states of mind and carefully suggestive, if ambiguous, images. After the war Montale was heavily criticized for his – to use Hill’s words – ‘private, marginal, uncommitted writing’,12 even as he was hailed as a living classic of Italian poetry. However, although truly critical of openly campaigning and militant poetry, his verse was not uncommitted.13 If often private, he was close to the world around him. His involvement, though, was never ‘shouted’ or seeking proselytes but meditative and, as Hill poignantly writes, ‘in code’. Banned in Italy during the Fascist era, his entire poetry of the 1920s and 1930s shows this; ‘La Bufera’, with its apocalyptic war setting, is a perfect example. One recognizes similarities in the political stance of the two poets. If more energetic and pressing, Hill’s political urgency has also shied away from militancy and propaganda, giving rise to the criticism of being sententiously removed from the world, real life. When we consider early poems, such as ‘Ovid in the third Reich’, ‘Funeral Music’ or ‘An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England’,14 we see how – here too – the vehement political message is embodied through carefully suggestive and ambiguous images, representations of states of mind or atmosphere, more than expressed by immediately identifiable narrative or rhetoric. Even later when the involvement with worldly politics becomes more direct – in Canaan (1996) or Speech! Speech! (2000) – elements of private coding remain. In the case of ‘La Bufera’ the general question of politics leads to the more specific one of World War II politics, racial laws and deportation. Although

130

Sara H. D’Orazio

never militant, Montale did oppose the Fascist regime; his refusal to join the party led in the late 1930s to his losing his job as curator of the Gabinetto Vieusseux, one of the most prestigious libraries in Florence. Moreover, key names in Montale’s poetical universe, such as Irma Brandeis and Gerti, come from a Jewish background. This detail did not escape Hill, who draws attention to this particular aspect in section LIII of The Orchards of Syon (2002) – not without a degree of sarcasm perhaps: ‘the plump Italian; he / loved young Jewish women – Irma Brandeis, / Dora Markus’.15 While Montale never actually met Dora Markus, Gerti and Irma both appear directly in his verse;16 the latter is the model for the mythical muse Clizia, who is the inspiring interlocutor throughout most of his poetry.17 An American Dante scholar and translator, of Jewish descent, she was one of the great loves of the poet’s life. In the late 1930s their friendship was interrupted by her having to return to the United States to avoid the consequences of the racial laws introduced in Italy by the Fascist regime.18 Montale would never see her again, and her presence/ absence, though subsumed in Clizia, became one of the haunting drives of his poetry. Hill himself refers to this characteristic of Montale’s work in section XLVI of The Orchards where we read: Montale, in Finisterre, focused something, his eros, though I can’t quote him or even recall clearly what he said of desire and absence of the desired.19

These biographical details are not mere anecdotes but contribute to shaping ‘La Bufera’ whilst deepening its political urgency. Here the key, central image of the poem is the ‘strana sorella’ – which Hill literally translates ‘strange sister’ in ‘The Storm’, who can be identified (through the dating and position of the poem within Montale’s oeuvre) with Clizia, the muse based on the lost Irma Brandeis. The poem ends on the enigmatic but poignant image of her ‘step[ping] into the dark’. Given the setting and the foregrounding of ‘dark’ that comes to close it, the action assumes an ominous character. It can be taken to symbolize the loss of the ‘sister’, her stepping beyond reach. But if the ‘strange sister’ is none other than Clizia, the symbolic loss turns into a real, concrete one – the beloved Irma Brandeis having to leave. In the same way the reasons for that departure acquire a more painful reality, they take shape and identify with the dramatic historical events of those years. Through that symbolic act, the shadow of the possibility of racial discrimination and death (and, for a later generation of readers, deportation) enters the poem, bringing it close to Hill’s own poetic universe. Intensified as it is by suggestions of violence and obliteration, the sense of loss and anxiety in ‘La Bufera’ echoes what we have witnessed time and again in Hill’s poetry – from ‘September Song’ onwards.20 The Jewish trauma has always been a fundamental issue in his poetry, intrinsically woven with his memories and reflections on World War II.

Geoffrey Hill translates Eugenio Montale

131

No wonder, therefore, that it develops into one of the points of contact between the two poets. On various levels we have seen how the two poets are strongly connected, sharing sensibilities and preoccupations. Just as ‘The Storm’ was able to lead us to the discovery of these similarities, I believe it might also suggest a way in which the Italian poet has entered deeper into the fabric of the other’s work. In ‘La Bufera’ the soon-to-be-lost ‘strana sorella’ is characteristic of much of Montale’s poetry, which as a whole can be seen as a continual exchange between the ‘I’ of the poem and a female ‘you’. Throughout his career these interlocutors have changed names and qualities but their function remains constant, that of a catalyst for the poet’s consciousness and a link or guide to what is beyond his experience. They are his constant companions but never within his reach, absent either because physically far away (such as Clizia, alias Irma Brandeis) or because taken by death (as Mosca, alias the poet’s wife Drusilla Tanzi). In their remoteness and superiority they point to their Dantean and Petrarchan origin, especially Clizia;21 as the critic Enrico Testa explains, this angelic woman is ‘a defence against the barbarity of the times’, she is the ‘intermediary between man and divinity and brings universal salvation and also moral and civil values’, an ‘abstract ethical principle of the must-be incompatible with the too human existence of the lyrical ‘‘I’’ ’.22 In the ‘strana sorella’ in ‘La Bufera’ we can easily recognize the suggestive ‘woman or cloud, angel or petrel’23 to whom Montale entrusts himself. In Hill’s translation this ‘strange sister’ no longer has the privileged end-line position she enjoys in the Italian, but she is still the core of the composition – one could argue, in fact, that in the English version she is placed even more at the heart of it, as she occupies the exact centre of her line that in turn is roughly in the middle of the central stanza. What is intriguing about the ‘sister’, however, is not that she should find her place in a close translation of ‘La Bufera’ but that references to ‘my sister’ – an unusual one in Hill’s universe – should appear more than once in The Orchards. In section XXVI which, significantly, has Dante as one of the leading presences, we read, ‘yet still I mourn / you´, my sister, as for a dead twin’. This reference is preceded by another as early as section VII, ‘oh, my sole / sister, you, little sister-my-soul’, and followed later in section L where there is a reference to a ‘soul-sister’.24 If we bear in mind that the volume (together with The Triumph of Love) is the one in which Hill specifically refers to Montale’s Finisterre, his ‘Jewish women’25 and his writing about the ‘absence of the desired’,26 the possibility arises that Montale’s ‘sister’ might have entered Hill’s poetry well before she was directly mentioned in ‘The Storm’. In The Orchards the Petrarchan ‘Vergine bella’27 of The Triumph has developed into a female character with marked Montalian traits, who becomes one of the main interlocutors and principal ‘you’ of the poem. Quite early in The Orchards we unexpectedly come across a particular qualification, the ‘you’ becomes a ‘my love’:

132

Sara H. D’Orazio

What a find, a self-awarded donne´e if ever I knew one. If that was ever you, wrestle, wrestle wı´th me, my love, my dirty fighter.28

From this moment on the ‘you’ and the ‘love’ are often identified, as happens for instance in section LXVI, ‘you´ being my last but one / love’, in section XVI, ‘our absurd love / put here to confront us – you can describe it / or I shall – ’ or towards the end in section LXVIII where we read ‘Was Orphe´e’s Princess | Camus’ lover and might / you be my´ lover.’29 Although usually anonymous, towards the centre of the book this ‘you . . . my lover’ acquires a name and a pseudo-identity: Ingeborg, often ‘dead Ingeborg’. Clues left in the poems themselves identify her as Ingeborg Bachman, the Austrian poet who died prematurely in Rome when her apartment caught fire in 1973. She is named for the first time in section XXXVIII as ‘dead / Ingeborg’,30 and, by name, only appears a total of three times. Nonetheless, she acquires particular relevance as she is the only recurrent ‘you’ who is given a specific identity. While the above quoted section stands apart, the other two instances of her appearance are close together. One is in section LIII, which refers to a ‘sensual intellectualism’ which is ‘the rage / no longer’ and mentions Ingeborg near ‘nella Bocca di Leone’31 – where ‘Via Bocca di Leone’ (Lion’s mouth road) was actually one of the addresses inhabited by the Austrian poet in Rome.32 The other is in section LVI, which reads: ‘Did I disturb / in Klagenfurt or Rome, dead Ingeborg, / when ruins hooked and shelved the broken / cloud-breaking moon?’33 These sections are to be found within a larger sequence, LIII–LVII, which stands out from the rest of the book as it revolves almost exclusively around love and a ‘lady figure’, thus establishing an identity between this ‘lady’ and Ingeborg, Hill’s female ‘you’ who, I contend, acquires Montalean connotations. Section LIII opens the sequence with an invocation to Ingeborg, and, significantly, Montale also appears again in the same section. Here the ‘I’, the Italian poet and Ingeborg are all brought together, with the opera and Montale’s volume La Bufera e Altro as their meeting point.34 In the subsequent sections, LIV and LV, Ingeborg is not directly mentioned but remains a latent presence as she appears again immediately after in section LVI. In these middle sections the interlocutor, though not named, is clearly identified with a female figure. The ‘you’ becomes ‘O my lady’35 and, most significantly, she is repeatedly called a ‘muse’: ‘I think you are a muse or something, / though too early rejected’36 and, again, ‘empower the muse; I am tired’.37 In these sections, then, we encounter a lady, an ‘earthly-ethereal’38 muse whom the poet needs for support, who is able to step into his place to do what he cannot but who is not always benign and who ultimately fails in her role. In the final section of the sequence, the muse and Ingeborg finally seem to merge as she is accused of failing, of leaving him stranded: ‘You leave me with a ghosted speech to finish / saying we never met.’39

Geoffrey Hill translates Eugenio Montale

133

By the time we leave this point in the poem we cannot help feeling that Ingeborg, the muse and the loved interlocutor who, unnamed, continues to appear later on in the book are the same character. Similarly, one is inclined to retroactively make the same identification for the you/loved one who appears before Ingeborg is actually named. The Orchards are dotted with female characters – Cocteau’s Maria Casare`s, Orphe´e’s Eurydice, Ronsard’s Cassandra – but none of them engage directly with the ‘I’ of the poems as Ingeborg does. In the absence of any other woman with the privileged status reserved to her, Ingeborg comes to occupy the place of the female ‘you’ throughout the poem and, at the same time, assumes the muse-like character of Montale’s interlocutors. That it is Montale’s muse that pervades Hill’s poem and not Dante’s Beatrice is suggested by the nature of the love so consistently evoked and by the role she appears to fulfil, or, better, fails to fulfil. Dante’s Beatrice is a salvific figure who, by the time she appears in Paradise to guide the poet, is stripped of all her humanity; she partakes of divinity and has changed from lover to guide and teacher. In this new form she is not lost to him but comes back to impart her deeper knowledge. Although she has changed she is not beyond contact, an exchange takes place and is successful: Dante learns, is saved and meets God. Montale’s muses, on the other hand, may be angelic (as Clizia often is) and potential saviours but they are far removed from the poet, beyond all reach; any encounter that would save him is ultimately denied. Then, in his later work they lose their angelic quality altogether and become more human, earthly and imperfect almost (such as Mosca). Similarly, the sense of loss becomes less metaphysical and more real. Hill’s muse like Montale’s is worldly, imperfect, human and ultimately ineffective: ‘my love, my dirty / fighter’, ‘our absurd love’, ‘misprised, misplaced love’ or the already quoted ‘dead Ingeborg . . . You leave me with a ghosted speech to finish / saying we never met.’40 At this point it will not surprise that at the very end of The Orchards the ‘she’ is given another name ‘Aphasia / (for it is she)’,41 the inability to produce speech.42 Hill’s verse is deeply couched in an English literary and cultural tradition. However, from Chaucer to Shelley, such a tradition has largely developed through continuous interaction with foreign cultures and literatures. This interaction, usually carried out through the medium of translation, calls into question nation-bound views of such traditions. Despite, or precisely because of, his English inheritance, Geoffrey Hill is a powerful reminder of the hybrid nature of national traditions. Hill’s translation of Montale’s ‘La Bufera’ has proven how the connection between the two poets extends well beyond the act of translation itself. From The Triumph of Love to Without Title, it ranges from admiration for his sense of language and politics (which are parallel to Hill’s own) to a deeper shaping influence over one of Hill’s latest volumes. ‘The Storm’ becomes a testimony to the ways in which an Italian poet may enter the poetical universe of an English one. Even more significantly, it enables us to reflect on how foreign cultures and languages may contribute to inform the English canon.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 10

Translating Larkin Enrico Testa

This essay will deal with my own experience of producing a translation of Philip Larkin’s High Windows (1974), published by Einaudi in 2002 as part of its ‘Collezione di poesia’. On the basis of a few examples, I will address the most important problems which arose from the translation process, and some of my attempts at solving them, as well as some aspects which I consider still unresolved and from which I do not intend to shy away. What follows can be inscribed in the expository genre of self-commentary which, when it focuses on the act of translating, articulates itself as a questioning of one’s own work: a sort of experiment in corpore vili from which modalities well known to specialists, as well as solutions dictated by the translator’s individual taste, can emerge, even if only through counter-examples. In the absence of a welldefined theory of translation (which I do not possess and about which I have some reservations), my reflections, which of course belong to the realm of hindsight, aim to clarify what was involved in the concrete process of the transposition and, rather than describing schemes or principles, seek to narrate a procedure in the making. I shall begin by sketching a brief overview of the most significant Italian translations from Philip Larkin. The poet’s Italian fortuna began quite early. In 1969, Einaudi published a generous anthology of his poetic works, edited by Renato Oliva and Camillo Pennati and bearing the title Le nozze di Pentecoste, containing a selection of texts from the three collections published at the time (The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955) and The Whitsun Weddings (1966)). In his introduction, Oliva offered a tentative evaluation of Larkin’s poetry, which the critic and translator saw as afflicted by introspection, and which he considered to mark ‘the zenith of an increasingly exhausted tradition’.1 Oliva’s evaluation did not affect the quality of the translation, which sought carefully to render the difficult argumentative texture of the poems and, above all, safeguard Larkin’s specific style from Italian translational stereotypes: repetitions, for instance, were retained but not multiplied, colloquial modalities were respected, and the poems’ intentional dryness was made the object of a mise en relief rather than being weakened by an excess of rhetorical artifices. In the following years, other notable published translations of Larkin

136

Enrico Testa

included those produced by Vanni Gentili in Parnaso Europeo: L’eta` contemporanea2 and, in particular, the translation of High Windows by L. Pontrandolfo and J. Wing, published in 1990.3 I came across this volume only after I had already completed my own translation of the same collection. It deals thoroughly and sensitively with the whole range of these poems’ metrical, semantic and compositional aspects, but is aimed at a specialized audience. However, interest in Larkin’s poetry has grown enormously in recent years. A few translations from Larkin are available in literary reviews: Nicola Gardini published translations of a selection of thirteen poems spanning Larkin’s entire poetic corpus in Poesia,4 while Roberto Deidier translated three poems in Il Gallo Silvestre.5 One should also mention the translation of the title poem ‘High Windows’ by V. Andreoni published in the second volume of the anthology Poesia del Novecento in Italia e in Europa,6 and, more importantly, the large and significant collection of poems, Fading, that was edited and translated by Marco Fazzini and distributed by a small specialist publisher in 1994.7 The translation of these eighteen poems adheres scrupulously to the original texts, among which are such important compositions of Larkin’s late production as ‘Aubade’ and ‘The Mower’. I shall now proceed to enumerate what one might call the ‘macroscopic’ difficulties one encounters when translating Larkin. The first and most evident of these lies in the fact that Larkin, unlike many of the representatives of the symbolist tradition and their later twentieth-century descendants, does not hide the origin of his poetry, its belonging to a particular environment and landscape. His language is located not within an abstract and remote dimension, but rather resides in a very concrete reality of places, habits and customs. On the linguistic level, this reality makes its presence felt through idiomatic expressions, reported speech, mannerisms, expletives and insults. All of this presupposes a threshold or level, however minimal, of understanding within the reader, a frame of reference pertaining to all (and there is a lot of it) that is ‘local’ in his verses.8 Those who have not breathed the humid scent that pervades them, or, to use the more staid language of criticism, those who cannot perceive the contextual harmonies which reverberate in his poetry, will lose part of the transmitted message, regardless of what personal resonances it may hold for them. The translator’s language tends to react resentfully to this inevitable loss by transforming the concrete into the sublime, the real into the vague, the determined into the undetermined. This is an aspect of poetic translation that Henri Meschonnic has repeatedly criticized, identifying its matrix in an underlying strain of idealism, and branding its realizations as tediously perennial literary jargon.9 The Italian translator’s language tends to reveal an obsessive search for the ‘poetical’, and is characterized by a peculiar syntax which deviates from the norm when translating, for instance, articles and prepositions, as well as a singular preference for the nominal style, and in general, for a language of obscurity which privileges ‘words of appearance’. To paraphrase Yves Bonnefoy, this is a style which disunites the internal relationships within texts,

Translating Larkin

137

placing them in a dimension where meaning is indefinitely located at several removes from everyday language. Instead of following this well-trodden path, I personally prefer to declare a negative balance-sheet quite openly: there is an inevitable loss of some of the semantic determinations originating from the context. Instead of depleting the verbal references these determinations are based on, by translating them with vague expressions, I have offered them to the reader without disguising them or violating them, by modestly relying on triangulations of meaning between source-text, target-text and footnotes.10 Larkin’s poems pose a second challenge to the translator, a challenge which stems from the fact that his work is characterized by a dual compositional range. In High Windows, perhaps the most accomplished texts possess a highly complex narrative and argumentative structure. These alternate with more overtly lyrical and elliptical compositions. Larkin’s mature poetry is pervaded, as Seamus Heaney has noted,11 by an unresolved contrast, arising from the opposition between experience and vision, the conflict between a disconsolate yet rational lucidity and an attentive gaze which scans reality in order to find an epiphany in traces of an ‘unfenced existence: / Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.’12 In High Windows, then, we find poems like ‘The Building’, ‘Posterity’ or ‘Dublinesque’, which are characterized by a varied narrative structure as well as poems which contain, within a few lines, moments of extreme and absolute directness: death intruding on the idyll of early summer in ‘Cut Grass’ or the quasi-pagan prayer to the sun in ‘Solar’. These two textual typologies demand two different approaches on the part of the translator: on the one hand, the translator has to achieve an expressive concentration as close as possible to the dryness of the original without smothering it beneath an excess of words, aggravated yet further by the heaviness of Italian polysyllabic language. On the other, s/he has to organize the target language in such a way as to match the swift, argumentative pace of the English text. To put it simply, the translator should hesitantly work towards finding the ‘right’ word, while at the same time expansively articulating the breath, rhythm and phrasing of a sentence, that is to say, of a discourse characterized by complex syntactical structures and connections. This alternation between hesitancy and expansiveness, between a lyrical disposition expressed through metaphorical images and a narrative mode conjuring up a vast repertoire of details and fragments of daily life, has the salutary effect of preventing the translator from falling into complacent habits, as it forces him/her to find different solutions for each different text. Furthermore, this alternation multiplies the responsibilities of the translator who, obliged to vary tones and compositional modalities, is faced with an everchanging task which becomes all the more challenging when one takes into account the complex metrical and structural features of Larkin’s poems. In his most important collection, The Whitsun Weddings (1965), Larkin had already mastered different metres and rhyme schemes. He used strophes of four, six, seven and eight lines to manufacture compact textual objects strung together with rhyming lines, alliterations and internal assonances. In High Windows too,

138

Enrico Testa

the author’s great ability is magnificently displayed: Larkin adopts stanzas of varying lengths and particularly complex rhyming schemes. This, then, is the third major issue the translator has to come to terms with when translating High Windows. Faced with the impossibility of reproducing the refined metrical constructions of the original, the translator has no other choice but to attempt to create a rhythm which would prevent the Italian text from adopting an anodyne prose-like pace, and which would also echo, however faintly, the expressive tension of the English original. There is no escaping the fact that the translator has to move away from a fixed system of rules and cross over to a freer, more aleatory reconfiguration of the poem’s discursive whole, rather than just the single line. An old procedure of poetic translation is called for here: in partial compensation for the loss of the original’s rhyming parallelisms, which are erased or attenuated, the translator has to employ other rhyming schemes and stress patterns. The resulting ensemble of forms, altogether different from the original, aims to re-establish the equilibrium of internal phonic relationships within the text which the transit from one language to another has altered.13 I shall now provide a few examples of my attempts at achieving this, starting with lines 23–36 of ‘To the Sea’: Strange to it now, I watch the cloudless scene: The same clear water over smoothed pebbles, The distant bathers’ weak protesting trebles Down at its edge, and then the cheap cigars, The chocolate-papers, tea-leaves, and, between The rocks, the rusting soup-tins, till the first Few families start the trek back to the cars. The white steamer has gone. Like breathed-on glass The sun-light has turned milky. If the worst Of flawless weather is our falling short, It may be that through habit these do best, Coming to water clumsily undressed Yearly; teaching their children by a sort Of clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.14

The text contains many end-of-line rhymes and internal phonic echoes which, together with the evocation of grubby details, lend an almost hammering rhythm to the description. The final reflection on time and the bathers’ annual habits seems not so much to contrast with the description as to emanate from it. This is my translation: Da estraneo osservo ora la scena libera da nubi: la stessa acqua limpida sui ciottoli lisci, e, giu´ sulla sponda, il debole trillo di protesta dei lontani bagnanti, e poi la carta dei cioccolatini, foglie di te`, sigari andanti e, tra gli scogli,

Translating Larkin

139

le lattine di minestra arrugginite, sino a che qualche famiglia fa ritorno alla sua macchina. Il bianco bastimento se n’e` andato. La luce del sole S’e` fatta lattiginosa come un vetro che s’appanna. Se il peggio del tempo perfetto e`, per noi, la sua mancanza, puo` darsi che per abitudine costoro facciano il meglio venendo al mare goffamente svestiti ogni anno: pagliacci che ammaestrano i figli con le loro buffe maniere e che aiutano pero` anche i vecchi, secondo il loro dovere.

In Italian, a delicate texture of internal rhymes and assonances, on the one hand, tends to emphasize the progressive aspect of the micro-events represented, while also preparing the reader for the conclusive couplet where the reciprocal stimulation between descriptive content and gnomic effect is assured by the perfect rhyme. However, this is not achieved without some syntactical and semantic stretching: in the original text, ‘clowning’ is an incidental attribute, whereas in the Italian version it becomes a constitutive feature of the figures in the scene. This shift, though justified by previous expressions (such as ‘clumsily dressed’), could be seen as excessive, and I must admit that I am still not entirely comfortable with it. Somewhat similar issues arise in the second example I have chosen to comment upon lines 26–36 of ‘Old Fools’ (‘Vecchi scemi’): Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from shelves; or sometimes only The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning, The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: Not here and now, but where all happened once. Ma forse essere vecchi e` avere stanze illuminate dentro la testa, e in esse delle persone, che recitano. Persone che conosci, ma di cui ti sfugge il nome; ognuno appare in lontananza come un vuoto profondo che si colma: si volta sulla soglia di casa, sistema una lampada, sorride da una scala, prende un libro gia` letto dallo scaffale; oppure qualche volta, soltanto quelle stanze, le sedie e un fuoco ardente o, alla finestra, un cespuglio mosso dal vento o il sole, timido e gentile, sul muro una serata solitaria di mezza estate dopo l’acquazzone. E` la` che vivono: non qui e adesso, ma la` dove tutto e` successo un tempo.

140

Enrico Testa

The percussive cadence of the original – an almost hybrid modality situated between sweetness and violence – resonates through the text both horizontally, hinging upon both the gerunds and the phonic series within single lines, and vertically, with the past participles ‘known’ and ‘blown’. In the Italian version this modulation is transformed into a rhythm that, while faintly preserving the echo of the original, even in the longer lines, is endowed with a slightly different tone (which I feel to be more mine than Larkin’s). Perhaps a bit more ‘tired’, even ‘pathetic’, this is achieved through the use of finite forms when translating non-finite forms of the verb in the original and through double adjectives (‘timido e gentile’, at once simple and literary) when translating the abstract ‘faint friendliness’. While adhering to the text, the translator nonetheless retains a small margin of freedom in the re-creation of rhymes as well as in lexical choices. The Italian translation of ‘This be the Verse’, ‘Sia questo il verso’, is exemplary in this respect: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. Mamma e papa` ti fottono. Magari non lo fanno apposta, ma lo fanno. Ti riempiono di tutte le colpe che hanno e ne aggiungono qualcuna in piu`, giusto per te. Ma sono stati fottuti a loro volta da imbecilli con cappello e cappotto all’antica, che per meta` del tempo facevano moine e per l’altra meta` si prendevano alla gola. L’uomo passa all’uomo la pena. Che si fa sempre piu` profonda come una piaga costiera. Togliti dai piedi, dunque, prima che puoi, e non avere bambini tuoi.

Here the essential rhyme-framework is maintained, albeit imperfectly, in order to sustain the final admonition. Lexically, the choice of ‘pena’ for ‘misery’

Translating Larkin

141

alludes openly to a famous passage from Giacomo Leopardi (‘prova pena e tormento / Per prima cosa’ from ‘Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia’). This allusion is perhaps not inopportune when translating the poetry of an author who wrote in ‘Dockery and Son’ that ‘Life is first boredom, then fear’,15 and whose work was described by Camillo Pennati as ‘Leopardismo da civilta` dei consumi’ (Leopardism for a consumerist civilization)16 and by Douglas Dunn as ‘Leopardi rewritten by Montale’.17 However, the story of this translation is made up of a comparison not only between the original and a single target-text but also between different renderings of the same composition. A brief discussion of three different Italian versions of ‘The Mower’, one of the most intense works of Larkin’s diminishing poetic production following High Windows,18 will thus bring out certain contrasts between possible renderings. Alongside my own translation, then, the versions produced by Marco Fazzini and Roberto Deidier will be considered. The poem itself is characterized by great syntactical simplicity, employing short phrases and linear discourse both in the short parable and in the conclusive considerations which follow it, and this is reinforced by the repetition of the modal ‘should’. Below are the original and the three translations: The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful. Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time. (1) La falciatrice si blocco`, due volte: inginocchiandomi trovai Un porcospino imprigionato tra le lame, Ucciso. Era vissuto nell’erba alta del prato. L’avevo gia` visto e gli avevo pure dato da mangiare, una volta. Adesso avevo irrimediabilmente distrutto il suo mondo discreto. La sua sepoltura non mi fu di nessun aiuto: Al mattino io mi risvegliai e lui no. Il primo giorno dopo una morte, la nuova assenza Resta sempre lı` – uguale;

142

Enrico Testa

dovremmo essere l’uno dell’altro attento, e gentili anche, finche´ ci resta un po’ di tempo. (Enrico Testa) (2) La falciatrice s’arresto` due volte; inginocchiandomi m’avvidi d’un porcospino imprigionato tra le lame, ucciso. Aveva vissuto tra il folto di quel prato. Lo avevo gia` visto prima, persino nutrito una volta. Avevo ora maltrattato il suo mondo discreto] Senza potervi rimediare. Seppellirlo non fu di grande aiuto: Il mattino successivo mi risvegliai ma quello non lo fece. Il primo giorno, dopo la morte, la nuova assenza Appare sempre in egual modo; dovremmo prestarci attenzione A vicenda, dovremmo essere gentili Finche´ c’e` ancora tempo. (Marco Fazzini) (3) La falciatrice s’inceppo` due volte; m’inginocchiai E trovai un porcospino tra le lame, Ucciso. Era vissuto nell’erba alta. Lo avevo gia` visto, persino nutrito. Ora avevo invaso il suo mondo discreto Senza rimedio. Seppellirlo non m’aiuto`. Al mattino mi risvegliai e lui no. Il primo giorno dopo una morte, la nuova assenza E` sempre quella; dovremmo avere cura L’un l’altro, dovremmo essere gentili Finche´ c’e` tempo. (Roberto Deidier)

In comparison to Fazzini’s and Deidier’s translations, mine differs through its adherence to the segmenting function of punctuation in the original (lines 1 and 4) which I have taken to something of an extreme in my use of the dash preceding ‘uguale’ in line 9. Furthermore, I have accentuated and deepened (although this involved lengthening the line excessively) the internal fragmentation of the discourse by adding pronominal contrasts (io / lui), using colloquialisms (‘dar da mangiare’ instead of ‘nutrire’, which both Fazzini and Deidier preferred) and low register, and making brief additions (‘e gentili anche’). The choices made in the closing lines perhaps require further

Translating Larkin

143

explanation: ‘l’un dell’altro’’ is intended to specify the terms of the relationship in question, and for this reason I consider it preferable to ‘a vicenda’. ‘Finche´ ci resta un po’ di tempo’ serves to tie the temporal dimension to the destiny of the participants, while the modal repetition of ‘should’ is suppressed both because of the need in Italian for variatio, and also in order to follow vocal segmentation, which is evoked by the insertion of the conjunction ‘e’. My objective was, perhaps, to achieve some sort of equilibrium between the prosaic tone and the daily banality of the situation on the one hand, and the gnomic effect of the conclusive truth on the other, by emphasizing the colloquial timbre of the voice which gives the former elements their character but at the same time deprives the second half of this poetic equation of any real religious import (although this is perhaps hinted at by the weakened rhyme). In short, I tried to indent the verbal surface with tensions which, while they hardly created an easy melody, equally strove to bring this musicality to the fore, like a distant phonic reverberation, through an apparently casual rhyming tie in the final couplet. What I have said so far provides an opportunity to recapitulate some aspects of my translation in a self-critical manner. In retrospect, I realize that I pushed the poem’s orality to the fore, emphasizing the deictic context as a verbal reflection of the concreteness of the situation, in this sense reflecting Larkin’s famous declaration, to my mind reminiscent of the thinking of the poet Vittorio Sereni, linking the writing of poetry to his ‘responsibility towards experience’ and the preservation of ‘the things I have seen, thought, and heard’.19 In line with these principles, in my translation I have employed schemes of segmentation and fragmentation, as well as formulae and attenuations typical of the spoken word, along with stylistic discontinuities,20 in order to emphasize, in Italian too, the narrative and descriptive dimension of Larkin’s poetry in which the author’s analytical, ironic and doubting disposition is transformed into a monologue reflecting upon the ordinary elements of everyday existence. To this aspect of Larkin’s poetry, distinguished by its anti-melodic features and an expansive, centrifugal procedure (close-ups on details and obscure facets of daily existence), is opposed another, contrary trend, this one gnomic and centripetal. The expression of his personal search for meaning, a meaning to be found in equal measure in banal everyday reality and beyond the confining horizon of History, Larkin’s penchant for the gnomic is particularly active in the closing lines of this poem, and I have tried to reproduce it, when possible, with the abruptness of the rhyme. In his grammar, where so many conjunctions seem to invite the possibility of an alternative, Larkin is what one might call a disjunctive poet, a poet, like many other great authors of the twentieth century, who adopts the trope of contradiction as his coat of arms. When translating his verse, I have tried to emphasize the disjunctive nature of his writing by highlighting, sometimes naively, the two poles of dilatation and concentration, by producing lines that are often too long, and by a somewhat excessive recourse to rhyme.

144

Enrico Testa

To close my self-critical ‘diary’, I shall, after a few technical remarks, consider a final point, which stands halfway between ethics and psychology. In a conference held in 1984, the poet Giorgio Caproni stated that the final version of a poetic translation is ‘a text which, while it takes after the personality of the translated poet and the translator, is neither one nor the other’.21 For Caproni, translation is the mark of a relationship which, while based on mutual recognition and reciprocal expropriation (of one’s own and the other’s voice), does not open up the possibility of total identity between the two voices. My translation of Larkin, then, should be seen in the context both of the process of ‘apprehensio’22 which, in its various meanings, has guided my work, and of the dialogue and exchange with the original voice around which my work has been shaped. After the mutual expropriation of the two voices in play, one arrives at a sort of no man’s land, but the journey does not end there. From this third reality which is not subjugated to the usual tropes of translation, one moves away once more, to return in due course to one’s own place after having dwelt in these ‘foreign lands’. And, on the way back, one discovers in one’s own interiority many half-glimpsed secrets: silence reconquers the word, and the field of one’s experience (more than one’s knowledge) becomes wider.23 Whenever I wake up at night, now, I cannot help but feel a shiver beneath the beams which dash from that ‘high and preposterous and separate’ moon of which Larkin wrote in ‘Sad Steps’. (Translated by Daniela La Penna)

Chapter 11

Translation as Resurrection: Charles Tomlinson’s ‘The Return’ Thomas Day

In the Introduction to his 1983 Translations, Charles Tomlinson makes recourse to the notion of poetic translation formulated by his sometime collaborator Henry Gifford, which he says ‘has always stayed at the back of my mind in all subsequent undertakings’. ‘The aim of these translations’, Gifford wrote of their Versions from Fyodor Tyutchev (1960), has been to preserve not the metre, but the movement of each poem: its flight, or track through the mind. Every real poem starts from a given ground and carries the reader to an unforeseen vantage-point, whence he views differently the landscape over which he has passed. What the translator must do is to recognize these two terminal points, and to connect them by a coherent flight. This will not be exactly the flight of his original, but no essential reach of the journey will have been left out . . . Translation is Resurrection, but not of the body.1

This formulation appears to have been at the back of Tomlinson’s mind in the subsequent undertaking of a poetic sequence that shows ‘translation to be a process indistinguishable from poetic creation’, as Octavio Paz said Eliot and Pound also did.2 ‘The Return’, from Tomlinson’s 1987 collection of the same title,3 is addressed to Paolo Bertolani, whom he met during his time in Liguria in 1950 and 1951 when they were both starting out as impoverished poets, as the sequence recalls.4 Returning to Bertolani’s village of La Serra after thirty years, Tomlinson views the landscape over which he has passed much in the way Gifford describes. When he looks ahead up ‘The Road’ in the first of the four poems, the ascent before him is at once behind him, no essential reach of the original journey is left out by the memory: he recalls ‘[e]ach bend and vista’ of the walk from the village, which is the given ground of the sequence. But the remembrance implies a concomitant forgetting which makes the familiar unfamiliar or different, allowing him to know the place for the first time. Forgetting ‘Brings back the track of what was always there / As new as a discovery’ – the track being both the literal road and the figurative track

146

Thomas Day

through the mind: ‘The place has changed, the image still remains,’ he writes in the second poem, speaking of La Rocchetta, the spot at the hill’s summit. As this imaginative and experiential combination of change and sameness makes it possible for the vantage-point to be discovered anew, it clears the path towards the ‘consonances unforeseen’ between the two poets that form the terminal point at the heart of the final poem. Accordingly, place can be described as ‘an embodiment/ And incarnation beyond argument’: and, as it may be, a resurrection. If, as I am suggesting, Tomlinson understands poetry to be an embodiment of the processes of translation, then this is made explicit in the third poem of this sequence, an elegy for Bertolani’s dead wife, ‘Graziella’. Tomlinson recalls: the day She imitated my clipped foreign way Of saying Shakespeare: English, long unheard, Came flying back, some unfamiliar bird Cutting a wing-gust through the weight of air As she repeated it – Shakespeare Shakespeare –

Her imitation of his accent initiates a transition in the poet’s mind between her Italian, to which his ear has become habituated, and his native though ‘long unheard’ English. That this movement from one language to another is analogous to an act of translation is affirmed by the bird metaphor that gives ‘coherent flight’, to borrow Gifford’s expression, to the ‘clipped’ wings of the foreign-sounding word, which seems to lose its foreignness as the poet’s mother tongue comes ‘flying back’. Just as, in the second poem, ‘phrases marrying a tongue and time / Coil through the mind’s ear’ when he revisits the streets in which he walked all those years ago, so do they now as the poem makes itself heard, their coiling motion figuring the temporal returns involved in the poem’s translative procedures. Through thus marrying two tongues over time, Tomlinson makes present to Bertolani the wife ‘who tempered your beginning pen’ so that she can ‘hear, now, the full gamut of your mastery’, extending to his friend that same ‘deepening of the sense of sacredness of married love’ that he takes to be one of the defining qualities of Dryden’s ‘Baucis and Philemon’ as a work of poetic translation.5 And yet this is an incarnation beyond the argument of ‘The Return’, which states that Graziella ‘Will never take this road with us again’, since ‘The dead do not return’. Indeed, the notion of translation as resurrection (but not resurrection of the body) illustrates that the sequence’s sense of sacredness needs to be thought of as Tomlinson’s ‘attempt to redefine Christian concepts’.6 The Christian concept of translation, which sees it as the necessary consequence of sin, the burden of Babel, comes up against his reference in ‘Between Serra and Rocchetta’ to ‘the rise, the run, the fall of voices’, where the word order implicitly turns on its head the doctrine of the risen Christ atoning for the Fall.

Charles Tomlinson’s ‘The Return’

147

In this connection Tomlinson also seems to be playing with the biblical reversal of Babel, the descent of the tongues of fire at Pentecost, which find a diminished resonance in the fireflies discussed in the second poem and returned to in the fourth, which takes them for its title. There, seen against bay and sky at night, ‘these / Tiny, travelling fires gainsay them both, / Trusting to neither empty space nor seas / The burden of their weightless circlings’ (‘Fireflies’). The cancelling out of the fireflies’ ‘burden’ with ‘weightless’ may suggest that Tomlinson distrusts and wishes to gainsay the faith that illuminates the ‘circlings’ shaping Dante’s fire-wreathed vision of hell. This is, however, belied by the fact that their glow is described earlier in the poem in incarnational terms, as being ‘Flushed into flesh’, which counteracts the deChristianizing force of ‘translation as resurrection, but not of the body’ as a governing principle of these poems. What they work up to, rather, is something of the ‘ungainsayableness’ which Tomlinson, in the same breath as he speaks of wanting to redefine Christian concepts, says is common to poetry and religion both, but which was lost to religion in the nineteenth century when it ‘ceased to care about language’.7 In short, contrary to what is sometimes supposed, he does not have any argument with religion per se, or even more specifically with the Christian incarnation; he looks beyond this, albeit to a beyond that never leaves the track of what was always there, or what is always here. The articulation of this tension, which plays poetry’s discursive resources against its musical and visual qualities, entails a kenotic mode of self-limitation on Tomlinson’s part – though to say so is to disregard his assertion that ‘my poems live in a world of presences that touches on the unknowable, where ‘‘to name the Name’’ seems crudely premature’.8 For instance, when he remembers the name of Shakespeare mimicked by Graziella, he asks: ‘Why does a mere word seem autonomous / We catch back from the grave?’ Rather than occasioning a meditation on The Word, such remembering leads Tomlinson to assert that all he has to work with are mere words, mere English or Italian words. Nor is this cause for regret, or for brooding over one’s sins, since his unanswered and unanswerable question gives rise to nothing so numinous as tongues of fire; merely to the fireflies, which at the end of the sequence remain ‘Uncounted in the sum of our unknowings.’ These are the words of one who knows to count his blessings, one who may ‘savour the good wine of a summer’s night’ with his friend without having to speak of a sacrament or a Saviour. The lower-case ‘grace’, which characterizes the place held for him the first time he came to Liguria, had shriven him of that brooding introspection to which his poetry stands opposed. This is brought to light during his second coming, which is related in such a way as to make it difficult to establish whether he is returning in the flesh or in the mind. In ‘Between Serra and Rocchetta’ he recounts how

148

Thomas Day

I felt the sunlight prise me from myself And from the youthful sickness I had learned As shield from disappointments: cure came slow And came, in part, from what I grew to know Here on this coast among its reefs and islands.

The growth of the poet’s mind is conditioned by emotion recollected in tranquillity, but that is the extent of any similarity between Tomlinson climbing the hill to La Rocchetta, the snow-covered Apennines glittering in the reaches beyond, and Wordsworth crossing the Alps, solipsistically luxuriating ‘In dreams and fictions, pensively composed: / Dejection taken up for pleasure’s sake.’9 ‘We need no fiction of a hillside ghosted,’ we are told at the start of the next poem, ‘Graziella’; although it may derive from Romantic precedents, the repudiated fiction or dream is the figment of an unmistakably Christian imagination, one which, quite appropriately for Tomlinson’s purposes, brings together an English, or rather an American, poet and an Italian one. I am thinking, and so I suspect is he, of the Dantescan encounter in Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’, the last poem in Four Quartets. Eliot is alluding here not only to Dante, or to Dante’s meeting with the shade of the poet Brunetto Latini in Inferno XV; his ‘familiar compound ghost’ comprises, among a number of other names that might be put to a face which has the look of ‘some dead master’, the Shakespeare behind the ‘affable familiar ghost’ of Sonnet 86. Although ‘Shakespeare’ also returns on the lips of Graziella in ‘The Return’, she is not to be likewise compounded into a literary ghost, for in naming the name left silent by Eliot’s allusive manoeuvre, Tomlinson, far from entering upon the unknowable prematurely, retains the poetic utterance within the bounds of the knowable, of ordinary rather than revelatory experience, ‘on the Easter side of death’. There cannot be much doubt as to which side he means, since ‘the dead poets’ do not for Tomlinson ‘assert their immortality most vigorously’10 as they do for Eliot. Tomlinson prefers to speak in the final poem of living poets, himself and Bertolani, ‘Knowing no more of death than other men’: other men, regardless of whether or not they are poets. It is this knowledge which, while presenting a world of presences, prompts them to ‘wait now on the absence of our dead / Sharing the middle world of moving lights / Where fireflies taking torches to the rose / Hover at those clustered.’ In describing this ‘waiting time’, Tomlinson demurs at the waiting time of Dante’s middle world, the hillside ghosted that is Mount Purgatory, which is the source of the ‘refining fire’ spoken of by Eliot’s ghost. The promise of paradise therein, which flowers into the final line of ‘Little Gidding’ where ‘the fire and the rose are one’, is superseded by the ‘fireflies taking torches to the rose’: these, in their multiplicity, and in their Ruskinian ‘peculiar and separating form’,11 divest themselves of the spiritual singularity that Tomlinson elsewhere imputes to Four Quartets,12 serving as manifestations of an earthly Eden, an ‘Eden’ that ‘is given one’,13 as he writes in another poem.

Charles Tomlinson’s ‘The Return’

149

Furthermore, ‘the rending pain of re-enactment’ that apprises Eliot’s conception of purgatory is alleviated by Tomlinson’s re-enactment of Graziella’s affable, familiar banter. Instead of the hint of self-parody about Eliot’s method of ‘imitating’ Dante,14 Graziella’s imitating Tomlinson reveals a ‘living tone / Shaped to that sound, and mocking at its own, / A voice at play, amused, embodied, clear.’ And yet the ‘And yet’ that prefaces this last statement clarifies the nature of the amusement, or play, in a way that abates any sense that Tomlinson’s is a poetry subject to ‘rhetorical tendencies’,15 pointing as it does to what he calls the ‘epistemological comedy’ of his work.16 This highlights the absurdity of taking an absolutist position, and of becoming humourlessly wrapped up in one’s own self-importance, when it would be far more liberating to simply grant other points of view, and so open the possibility of relation: ‘to respect . . . otherness,’ as he puts it, ‘and yet to find our way into contact with that otherness’.17 The epistemological comedy of his relationship with Eliot lies in the knowledge that though the ghosted fiction of ‘Little Gidding’ is to a degree the oppositional focus of Tomlinson’s sequence, Eliot’s voice, with Graziella’s, ‘spryer than any ghost still haunts the ear’.18 One of the reasons why the voice of Four Quartets still haunts his ear is that Tomlinson shares the ghost’s concern for speech, speaking in an earlier poem about Bertolani, entitled ‘Up at La Serra’, of ‘sacra conversazione’, which might serve as the banner under which he models himself as a latter-day practitioner of the conversation poem.19 As those words are also meant to indicate, conversation is equally sacred to Bertolani, who has published several collections of poetry in the dialect of Serra di Lerici,20 and it is partly in this spirit that he and the ‘[i]nnumerable conversations’ which ‘chafe the air’ he breathes are represented in ‘The Return’. For all his concern with speech, Tomlinson would appear to resist the impulsion ‘To purify the dialect of the tribe’ which the ghost and his party accede to in Eliot’s poem, given that the original line from Mallarme´’s ‘Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe’ (‘Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu’) goes hand in hand with the French poet’s understanding that ‘Languages are imperfect because multiple’ and that ‘verse . . ., in all its wisdom, atones for the sins of languages’.21 Tomlinson’s verse, in all its wisdom, makes no such high claim, as the second poem makes clear: the pages which he and Bertolani have ‘[r]ooted in earth’ and in ‘the diversity of languages on earth’ (which for Mallarme´ ‘means that no one can utter words which would bear the miraculous stamp of Truth Herself Incarnate’) concur in the conviction that ‘We have lived into a time we shall not cure’, a conviction which qualifies Tomlinson’s vision of an Eden on earth, allowing for ‘a possible loss’ as well as ‘a possible return’.22 Eliot too may seem to be distancing himself from Mallarme´ even as he invokes him, for, as Michael Edwards has observed, ‘in the very act of translating from one imperfect language to another, he acknowledges that the new verse remains dialectal’.23 Mallarme´’s invitation to purify language through poetry has a correlative implication that Eliot is also wary of, not least because

150

Thomas Day

acutely aware of its seductions. This is the development of ‘pure poetry’, or ‘la poe´sie pure’, which Eliot, in one of his later essays,24 traces from Poe, through Baudelaire and Mallarme´, to Paul Vale´ry. This, he explains, is a ‘process of increasing self-consciousness – or, we may say, of increasing consciousness of language’, wherein the subordination of subject matter to style denotes the pursuit of some ‘theoretical goal’; however, he goes on to say that ‘I believe it to be a goal that can never be reached, because I think that poetry is only poetry so long as it preserves some ‘‘impurity’’ in this sense: that is to say, so long as the subject matter is valued for its own sake.’25 The ghost of ‘Little Gidding’ shares Eliot’s scruples as to this theoretical goal, saying at the outset that ‘I am not eager to rehearse / My thought and theory which you have forgotten. / These things have served their purpose: let them be.’ And so does Tomlinson let these things be. His poetry ‘gives the effect of alertness and chastity’,26 as noticed by Donald Davie, one of Tomlinson’s early advocates and a vociferous exponent of a certain kind of poetic purity.27 However, it is just this alertness with regard to his subject matter, together with his declining to begin writing out of any ‘theoretic preconceptions’, which preserves in his poetry the ‘impurity’ addressed by Eliot.28 As in ‘Graziella’, it is not simply that ‘The dead do not return’, but that they do not return ‘To pry and prompt the living or rehearse / The luxuries of selfdebating verse.’ We catch back from those lines an echo of what the ghost is not eager to rehearse, the decadent ‘luxuries of self-debating verse’ bearing out Eliot’s view of pure poetry as ‘something which must ultimately break down, owing to an increasing strain against which the human mind and nerves will rebel’.29 Tomlinson’s verse effects a lessening of this strain, not by redeeming the time through the miracle of Truth Herself Incarnate, but through translation as resurrection, the process of increasing self-consciousness confounded by the opening up of one language to another, and so of self to other. It seems quite right, then, that in ‘The Return’ – though it is the idea rather than the practice of translation which engages Tomlinson poetically – this should not draw much attention to a theory of language. He austerely refuses to afford himself such luxuries, sensing how ‘severe’ is ‘the grace a place and people share’.

Section IV Theories of Translation: Ethics and Genre

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 12

Translation and the Question of Poetry: Jacques Derrida’s Che cos’e` la poesia? Kate Briggs

In 1988, the Italian poetry journal Poesia invited Jacques Derrida to respond to the question that opens each issue: Che cos’e` la poesia? What is poetry? Or, what kind of thing is poetry? Derrida’s response was published in the original French, with its translation into Italian on the facing pages.1 It has since been republished in differently bilingual and even quadrilingual editions.2 Peggy Kamuf’s English translation of Derrida’s text, first published in her A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (1991), was also printed opposite the original French. The Reader, as its title suggests, is a selection of Derrida’s texts translated into English; curiously, though, only this particular essay on the question of poetry is presented bilingually.3 Why do the translations of Derrida’s Che cos’e` la poesia? always appear, here as elsewhere, coupled with the original? Why, indeed, has there always been cause for a bilingual edition? The formal presentation hints at a central concern of Derrida’s dense and difficult essay: the consubstantiality of the questions of poetry and translation. The bilingual edition is a peculiar format, its very premise undermining what we might naturally assume to be the most basic function of translations: that is, to grant us access to the texts that we are unable to read in the original. Usually, the translation stands in for the original, mediating – and therefore determining – the monolingual reader’s encounter with other languages, literatures and cultures.4 The bilingual edition, on the other hand, presumes some level of competence (or at least interest in) the language of the original text. Nor does the translation stand in for, and thereby come to replace, the original: on the contrary, it mirrors (with all the intimations of fidelity and distortion that the verb implies) the original text. Here there is no question of the translation circulating independently from its source: the translation must stand up to the scrutiny of the reader who has access to the original text – in all of its inevitable difference – on the facing page. It is not just by chance that the majority of texts that appear bilingually are short works of literature or, more frequently, poems. The issue of length is significant: the original has to be short enough so that when coupled with its translation it remains a manageable volume. Length is also an issue for the

154

Kate Briggs

translator: translating for a bilingual edition, the translator’s constraints are redoubled. If the translation must mirror the original on the opposite page, the translator must scrupulously respect the length of the original text, radically reducing the scope for expansion and explicitation: a page for a page. Beyond the fact that poems tend to be short, there is a further, perhaps more fundamental, reason why there is more call for a bilingual edition of a collection of poetry than there would be for a work of literary criticism, for instance. Literature in general, and poetry in particular, is said to suffer more loss in translation than any other kind of text. Because of this, there is an implicit sense in which the translation should not be trusted to represent the original in the target language and culture: it must be backed up, or guaranteed, by the original. The bilingual edition might be considered a kind of concession to the monolingual reader: it gives us access to a text that would have otherwise been illegible, hence inaccessible. More strikingly, though, it is a concession to the original. The fact of a bilingual edition insists on the importance of reading the original as such: it matters, the bilingual edition tells us, that the original be read in its proper language. Offering a translation that directs us toward (rather than seeks to stand in for or replace) the original is therefore also a concession to the pervasive notion that certain kinds of texts – literature in general, and poetry in particular – should not be translated at all. If Derrida’s essay has always been published in a bilingual edition, regardless of the language that it is translated into, this is more than just incidental: it is in the first instance a comment on its status as a text. It matters that the essay also be read in, or at least measured against, the original French. Like a poem, the formal qualities of the text – its economy, its attentiveness to the material and sonorous qualities of words – resist translation. I will return in the conclusion of this article to the issue of the status, and the translatability, of Derrida’s short text. First, I want to consider the further implication of translation’s intervention in the presentation of Derrida’s response to the question of poetry (it is in the nature of the bilingual edition to show even the French reader what the text looks like in translation): that poetry and translation belong together, or somehow call for one another: as if the question of poetry always, inevitably, raised the question of translation.

The ‘Untranslatable’ Poetry, it has often been declared, is untranslatable. More specifically, poetry is that which is untranslatable. Which means not only that poetry emerges as the paradigm of untranslatability – marking the limit of what translation can do – but also that untranslatability is given as the defining feature of poetry. As Antoine Berman observes, from Dante to du Bellay and Montaigne, Voltaire and Diderot to Rilke and Jakobson, a frequent and familiar response to the question ‘What is poetry?’ has been to set poetry against translation.5 Poetry is

Translation and the Question of Poetry

155

where translation fails. It is to this tradition that the poet Robert Frost’s much quoted claim – ‘poetry is that which is lost in translation’ – belongs.6 Frost’s claim is so familiar that it is often dismissed as a banality or platitude. For David Connolly, author of the entry on poetry translation in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (1998), if Frost’s claim tells us anything, it is that poetry translation is difficult. But if we take the claim seriously, the task of poetry translation is far more than just difficult. In Frost’s view, translation entails the destruction or obliteration of poetry. This is not about carelessness, about shoddy or inadequate translations; nor is it a question of the varying degrees of skill with which the translator solves the problems of poetry translation. It is rather about inevitable destruction, obliteration, loss; the implication being that a poem that did not get destroyed or obliterated in translation, a poem that could be transported easily and without fundamental loss from one language to another would not, strictly speaking, be called a poem. Every time there is such obliteration in translation we are dealing with something of the order of poetry. The quality that Derrida in his essay calls the ‘poetic’, following this line of reasoning, is therefore not exclusive to those texts that are institutionally recognized to be poems. Jokes, for instance, would partake in the poetic; so, too, might some forms of prose. To declare that a poem is untranslatable is, as Berman observes, to confer upon it the status of a ‘real’ poem.7 Untranslatability, then, is a quality; it has a value. The suggestion that poetry cannot be translated – for reasons such as the indivisibility of content and form, an attentiveness to the material qualities of words, to the rhythms and spacings of the language in question – therefore tends to get confused or conflated with the idea that poetry should not be translated. For poetry, following Frost, is by definition untranslatable: it is itself only insofar as it is untranslatable. Which means that it is not just that poetry is difficult to translate, but more that poetry should not be translated because its untranslatability is its constitutive value. Untranslatability, as Berman also argues, is poetry’s mode of auto-affirmation, an assertion of its status as poetry (again, a translatable poem would not, strictly speaking, be called a poem). Untranslatability has – or rather is – a value; interestingly, though, it is a value that is only measurable in translation. How do we know whether or not a poem (or any other kind of text) is untranslatable until we have attempted to translate it? We recognize that a poem is untranslatable only after submitting the poem to translation and assessing the loss. Translation is a kind of test in which poetry asserts itself as poetry. When Ezra Pound resolved, at thirty, to know more about poetry than ‘any other man living’, his strategy was to submit poetry to translation. In his 1913 essay ‘How I Began’, Pound declares: I resolved that . . . I would know the dynamic content from the shell, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was ‘indestructible’, what part could not be lost by translation, and – scarcely less important – what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.8

156

Kate Briggs

In Pound’s view, it is only from a knowledge and an experience of translation – and with that a knowledge of other, foreign languages (and Pound knew at least nine)9 – that we come to acquire a knowledge of poetry. An untranslatable poem is therefore, crucially, not a poem that has never been translated. The designation ‘untranslatable’ does not mean ‘untranslated’. ‘Untranslatable’ describes not those rare, perhaps even unimaginable, words, expressions or texts that have never been translated but those words, expressions or texts that we have repeatedly (not) translated: those words, expressions, texts, that call again and again for (re)translation – unexhausted by the work of any particular translator.10 And, as it turns out, those particularly resistant types of language turn out to be more translated (though not necessarily more translatable) than those that give themselves up easily to translation, passing smoothly into another language and thereby undergoing that passage only once. Whatever is called ‘untranslatable’, then, has to be in permanent negotiation with translation.

The Poem and the Hedgehog In Che cos’e` la poesia? Derrida puts all of the above slightly differently. The poem, Derrida argues, bristles with difficulty (he uses, in French, he´risser, the verb to bristle or spike). Difficult to get a handle on, the poem prickles. This is a form of self-protection: the poem balls itself up into the language in which it is written. Do not touch me, says the poem. Above all, do not translate me, do not attempt to transport me. Derrida contrasts the immobility of the poem with the movement of translation: translation is figured in this text as a route, a road; even, as a motorway rushing with traffic. Balled up and still, the poem is that which cannot get across. It is therefore precisely its mechanism for selfprotection that exposes the poem to danger: it is because the poem curls itself up into its particular language, a compacted snarl of meaning and form, that it is all the more vulnerable to destruction by translation. The relentless movement of translation is stronger than any resistance that the poem – which, in the story Derrida is telling, is quite small and insignificant – might put up. The poem exposes itself despite itself: in its attempts at self-protection it ends up inviting its own destruction. The poem, as will have become clear, is for Derrida like a hedgehog: from he´risser to he´risson.11 Derrida’s is an evocative but nonetheless peculiar and incongruous comparison. Poetry, says Derrida explicitly in his essay, is humble, earthy and close to the ground.12 An animal, then. And, moreover, a banal and familiar animal; by no means exotic or exceptional. Stupid, even (beˆte, as they say in French, compacting animality and stupidity into one word that slips between a noun and adjective). Imagine, Derrida asks us, a hedgehog in the middle of the road: aware of approaching danger it curls itself up, bristles its spines against the rush of oncoming traffic. The hedgehog is stupid because, in order to protect itself from the menace it senses, it reacts in the most disastrous way.

Translation and the Question of Poetry

157

There is something ridiculous about the hedgehog, and something even more ridiculous about the rapprochement between the hedgehog and the poem. It is even quite funny. On Sigmund Freud’s account of the comic, its humour is a question of scale: the poem, which is usually represented as something high, lofty, cerebral, sublime (a soaring eagle, for instance), is here given as something low, unremarkable, stupid and small. The disjunction between our expectations of an essay that seeks to respond to the question of poetry and the story Derrida tells gives the comic aspect.13 If the comparison between a hedgehog balled up in the middle of a road and a poem can be called a joke, it does not appear to depend on the manipulation of linguistic material. As an image, it seems to work in any language: in English as in French we are struck by the incongruity of the rapprochement between a hedgehog (un he´risson) and a poem: the comical image of the poem waiting, falsely secure in its self-defence, to be run over by translation. But it should not be forgotten that the essay, though written in French, was always destined for publication in an Italian journal, hence for translation into Italian. In English as in French, the poem is compared to a small snarl of an animal, to be found under piles of leaves in the autumn. In Italian translation, however, Derrida is talking about the istrice: a porcupine with long, sharp quills; an altogether larger, rarer and stranger animal (though with similar self-defence mechanisms). In Italian, the poem is by analogy not humble and banal but striking and unusual. Moreover, as Peggy Kamuf points out in a translator’s note, the joke is elaborated and extended through the sonorous stress on the str- sound throughout the essay in French, which recalls the str of the Italian istrice, allowing the foreign animal to traverse Derrida’s text.14 What to make of this deliberate hinting at the istrice in the original French text, all the while speaking explicitly of the more domestic he´risson rather than the porc-e´pic? Perhaps nothing more than that in translation a poem is never the same as it was; translated, a poem might still have something in common with its original incarnation; nevertheless, it is properly speaking a different animal altogether. The seemingly inevitable transformation that poetry undergoes in translation is related to the issue of economy, or length. A poem, says Derrida, ‘must be brief, elliptical by vocation’. Moreover, a poem must be brief and elliptical ‘whatever may be its objective or apparent expanse’.15 A poem is always economical, however long it might be. Verdichtung, says Derrida in German, recalling Freud’s use of the term Dichtung (the German word for poetry, as Derrida knows), is curled up inside its word for condensation. The poem, in Derrida’s characterization, has a body: a peculiarly compact form achieved through its particular attentiveness to the potential homonymic and homographic effects permissible in a language, effects that in turn allow so much to be said in as few words as possible. Poetry is all about stressing the usually unnoticed bodily qualities of words through the techniques of metre, rhythm, alliteration and so on; it is all about mining a language’s usually untapped resources in order to maintain the dazzling economy of expression that is its unique vocation.

158

Kate Briggs

A poem, then, can be said to be intimately involved with the language in which it is written. This, indeed, is what authorizes the claim that poetry is untranslatable: a poem is so rooted in its original language that it could not possibly be transplanted into another without running the risk of losing everything that made the poem a poem in the first place. Balled up into its own language, tightly compacted, intractable, the poem inadvertently invites its own destruction. But just because the poem is intimately involved with the language in which it is written does not mean that it belongs to that language in any straightforward way. In ‘The Task of the Translator’, Walter Benjamin insists upon the possibility of translation: translatability rather than untranslatability is cited as the distinct quality of the literary work.16 What Benjamin seems to understand by this, though, is a resistance to rather than the facilitation of translation. The work of literature is translatable, it emerges, precisely because it does not give itself up easily to translation: it demands to be translated because it is, somehow, untranslatable, because its capacity to be translated is not exhausted by a first, second or third attempt. Reading Benjamin’s essay, Maurice Blanchot explains how this apparently contradictory claim is related to the inherent mobility of the literary work.17 The literary work holds the future of a language at any particular moment in time; in its works of literature, a language is pointing towards its own change and development, its own becoming. Literary works, on this view, are at the very edge of the languages in which they are written, directed outwards to what a language will become, to the future.18 As such, they cannot be said to belong to the languages in which they are written: the work of literature is written in a language to come (an as yet foreign language). Translation – as the force of the renewal and regeneration of languages – is drawn to and implicated in this: translation accomplishes the work of literature, fulfilling the potential of literature as a force for linguistic change. However resistant to translation a literary work might be, this for Benjamin only makes it more translatable, its appeal for translation more urgent. Pointing outwards, bristling in ways that recall Derrida’s poem-hedgehog, literary works are on the very edges of the languages in which they are written. On the edges and, at the same time, curled up at the very heart: it is because the poem is so close to the secret resources of a language, so intimately bound up with its unique graphic and sonorous qualities, patterns and rhythms, that it can be said to provoke its proper capacity for growth and change. In which language, then, do we write poetry? In both English and not English, French and not French, Italian and not Italian, ‘neither the one nor the other’, says Derrida.19 Neither quite in one language nor in another but somehow between the two: in the middle of the road rather than safely on one side; exposed and at risk.

Translation and the Question of Poetry

159

The Specificity of Translation Why, though, is translation, in particular, so threatening to poetry? Why has poetry traditionally been defined against translation rather than reading, interpretation, commentary or any other of those operations with which translation is often considered synonymous?20 Why is it this movement, in Derrida’s account, but also implicit in all accounts of untranslatability, that bears down on the poem like an automobile at top speed? Considering the poem in the light of its (un)translatability not only offers a means of examining the distinctiveness of poetry; it also, reciprocally, brings into focus the particular demands that we make of translation. Why is the poem deemed untranslatable rather than unreadable, or uninterpretable, or incomprehensible? One response to this question would be to point out that the translator – unlike the reader, critic, interpreter, paraphraser or scholar of poetry – is supposed to write a poem. The difficulty of poetry translation, says Connolly in the Routledge Encyclopedia, is that the translator is supposed to produce a text with a ‘poetic value’ in the target language: ‘the translation of poetry must stand on its own as a poetic text, to a large extent unsupported by glosses or commentary, whether they take the form of footnotes or are embodied in the text.’ This, of course, has not always been the case. There have been debates, over the history of commentary on translation, around whether a poem should best be translated into prose or into verse. In the preface to her 1699 translation of Homer’s The Iliad into French, Anne Dacier makes an interesting case for prose translation, which was very much prevalent in her time: A translator can say in prose whatever Homer did say, but he can never do so in verse, certainly not in our language in which he must of necessity change, add and cut. And what Homer thought and said is certainly of more value than all you are forced to put into his mouth if you translate him into verse, even if it comes out more simply and less poetic in prose . . .21

Stanley Burnshaw formulates a solution not unlike Dacier’s in his book The Poem Itself (1967), to which Connolly refers. The most satisfactory procedure when it comes to translating poetry, says Burnshaw, is to provide the reader with a lexical and contextual commentary as well as a non-literary translation alongside the original. The problem, however, with Dacier’s prose translation – as with Burnshaw’s scholarly explanation and commentary of the poem – is that neither strategy can, strictly speaking, be called translation. The problem seems to be precisely that economy of expression, that brief, elliptical form that is the vocation of the poem (however long it might be). Given an unrestricted number of pages and unlimited footnotes and endnotes, a translator may well be able to say everything that was said in the original poem. In theory, as Derrida suggests in another essay, it should be possible for the translator to give, in footnotes and glossaries and

160

Kate Briggs

commentaries, with brackets and with hyphens, all the possible intentions, meanings, denotations, connotations, semantic over-determinations and formal effects of the original by taking all sorts of detours and deviations from the very short pathway forged by the original.22 Such a translation, though, would not strictly speaking be a translation. It would not be a translation worthy of the name. This is because a translation (if it is to be a translation rather than anything else) should respect the economy of the original; a translation should, quite straightforwardly, be of more or less the same length as the original; that is, quantitatively equivalent. The poem is untranslatable – that is to say at risk from translation – because its own excessive economy is countered by the economical demand of translation.23 Thus, when Vladimir Nabokov, with reference to his own translation of Pushkin’s Onegin, declares ‘I want translations with copious footnotes, footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that page so as to leave only the gleam of one textual line between commentary and eternity’, he knows that this is just a wish, a dream.24 However intimately connected the operations of translation and commentary may be, however closely entwined their history, a translation, if it is to be a translation and not a commentary, must follow its first rule: to give the same content in another language in more or less the same number of words (or, as we saw in the demand of the bilingual edition, pages).25 This is why we speak of untranslatability, signalling the impossibility of translation rather than the impossibility of anything else (reading, interpretation, paraphrase, commentary and so on). Holding on to what is expressed in the poem, translation becomes something like commentary or explanation (as in Dacier’s translation of Homer or Burnshaw’s heavily footnoted poems); holding on to its economical mode of expression, translation involves writing another poem. This is the specific menace of translation: a poem translated is either a poem explained (hence no longer a poem at all) or it is another, different poem: equivalently economical, equivalently untranslatable and bearing, as Connolly put it, its own poetic value. Implicit in Frost’s assertion was the claim that a translatable poem – a poem that could reach the other side safely and intact – would not, in fact, be a poem. A poem translated is a poem-destroyed: a poem-ruin. Yet the inevitability of the poem’s obliteration in translation, which Derrida figures as the vulnerability of a hedgehog curled up in self-defence, also constitutes a chance. A poem translated is a ruin newly built in a different language; as such, there is a chance that it will be more beautiful than the poem it remembers. This is possible only because the mark of the poem – that gesture towards the future, towards what languages will become – is also, as Benjamin suspected, the mark of translation. Dacier quite rightly notes that to translate a poem by another poem is impossible; or, more specifically, it is impossible to translate a foreign poem into the familiar language as it is: the translator must necessarily ‘change, add and cut’ that language.

Translation and the Question of Poetry

161

Risks and Chances: Pound’s Beginnings Pound was especially aware of the poetic possibilities of such changing, adding and cutting. Ming Xie notes that, for Pound, ‘the importance of translating an alien body of poetry . . . seemed to lie in the possibility of developing and expanding the existing poetic vocabulary and repertory of the translating poet’.26 Recalling his poetic evolution between 1910 and 1920, Pound famously declared: ‘What obfuscated me was not the Italian but the crust of dead English, the sediment present in my own available vocabulary – which I, let us hope, got rid of a few years later . . .’27 The process of translation – that which calls for the importation of foreign forms, rhythms and patternings – contributed to and conspired with the elaboration of Pound’s own poetics. Pound’s short essay entitled ‘How I Began’, in which he narrates his beginnings as a poet, offers a means of exploring further the complicity between poetry and translation. Pound tells us the story of a poem: For well over a year I have been trying to make a poem of a very beautiful thing that befell me in the Paris Underground. I got out of the train at, I think, La Concorde, and in the jostle I saw a beautiful face, and then, turning suddenly, another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful face. All that day I tried to find words for what this made me feel. That night as I went home along the rue Rayounard I was still trying. I could get nothing but spots of colour. I remember thinking that if I had been a painter I might have started a wholly new school of painting. I tried to write the poem weeks afterwards in Italy, but found it useless. Then only the other night, wondering how I should tell the adventure, it struck me that in Japan, where a work of art is not estimated by its acreage and where seventeen syllables are counted enough for a poem if you arrange and punctuate them properly, one might make a very little poem which would be translated as follows:– ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.’ And there, or in some other very old, very quiet civilisation, someone else might understand the significance.28

The poem cited turns out to be one of the most famous Imagist poems, entitled ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (1913). The poem is a translation. More precisely, the poem is presented as a translation. It is presented as a translation of an imagined poem written in a very distant and foreign language (not English, French or Italian); a language that Pound did not even speak. Why would the poet be interested in presenting his original poem as the translation of something else? Why, when translation has traditionally been considered a derivative, second-order practice in relation to the spontaneity and creativity of literary production? This recalls a peculiarly Borgesian strategy: what Ge´rard Genette calls the pseudo-re´sume´.29 In ‘An Examination of the work of Herbert Quain’ and ‘Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote’, the

162

Kate Briggs

work of literature consists in detailing an imagined work or body of work of literature.30 Jorge Luis Borges’s stories provide re´sume´s of and offer commentaries on fictional literary works – sometimes written in other languages – by fictional authors. Interestingly, for Borges this was not only a means of bringing into existence works that would be impossible, simply madness, just too difficult or too time-consuming to attempt to write, it was also a way of coming to write, of passing from criticism to fiction (and thereby complicating the distinctions between the two).31 Pound shares the second motive: it is this imagining of a poem in Japanese that allows for the poem – otherwise unwritable – to be written in English. Unlike Borges, though, for Pound this is not at all about making things easier for himself, nor is it about saving time. Pound imagines a poem written in the most economical and perfect form: the haiku. It is already very little. Moreover, in its strict economy, its mere seventeen syllables punctuated properly, it is arguably the poetic form that presents the most difficulties for the translator. Pound effectively imagines a poem that is untranslatable only to suggest that its translation constitutes the only chance for the poem he wants to write. This story of a poem is the story of its journey across languages, of its going very far away in order to come back: a movement or Bildung that plays out Pound’s claim that a knowledge of poetry comes only from an experience of translation, and therefore of other languages.32 Pound recounts in exquisite, rhythmic English (‘I saw a beautiful face, and then, turning suddenly, another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful face . . .’) an experience lived in Paris and that was then compacted into a seventeen-beat poem in Japanese only to come back to us via English translation. The resources of another language enable the expression of an otherwise inexpressible experience; and when that expression is imported back into the familiar tongue through translation, so too is something of those resources: the peculiarity of the poetic form that is the haiku, for instance, brings with it its carefully measured time and re-patterns the rhythms of English. Translation is always possible: even the most compact and perfect poem written in the most distant and unknown of languages, Pound suggests, can be translated. Translation is always possible, but it is also risky. It is not certain that in translation, as a translation, the poem will even be understood in English: it is there, says Pound, in Japan and in Japanese, that someone might understand its significance. The translation of the imagined poem that Pound offers is necessarily inadequate to the original: on his own terms of what gets obliterated in translation and what is indestructible, almost everything of what was already very little would have been destroyed.33 This is a poem-ruin. Yet the translation respects the strict constraint that generated the imagined poem: it is, at least, equivalently economical. What has survived intact in the passage from one language to another is the seventeen-syllable technique that writes the untranslatable. Following the rules by which the other text was produced, the process of translation produces something in turn: a new poem. For this is

Translation and the Question of Poetry

163

a poem-ruin newly built in English. It is the remains of something that never existed here, in this language. This, however, is true of all translations: whether the translations of existing texts or of imagined and therefore radically inaccessible originals. Freud tells us this: translation, as he employs the term as a metaphor for the workings of the unconscious, is not and cannot be about restoration or retrieval; it is instead about writing (the text of a dream for example), here, for the first time.34 This too brings with it its own risks. On Pound’s translations of existing Chinese poems, Xie notes: ‘at least in intention Pound wanted to let the original shine out more fully through and against the medium of translation, so that the original and translation may constitute a harmonious, symbiotic continuity. . .’ But, ‘in practice Pound’s translations, as independent poems in their own right, often tend to substitute or replace the original’.35 The ruin, newly built, might forget that it should be a ruin.

Risks and Chances: Translating Derrida If Derrida’s text on poetry has always been published in bilingual editions, if of all of the essays or extracts of essays published in Kamuf’s reader only this essay was presented bilingually, this is because, as the essay’s evocative image reminds us, the question of poetry cannot be thought without thinking about translation: poetry is defined against and in opposition to translation, it is that which cannot be and should not be translated; which means, in effect, that poetry requires translation, it calls for translation, its very untranslatability exposing the poem despite itself to the risk of destruction. That apparent opposition, then, belies a profound and intimate correspondence. Not only does the poem require the test of translation in order to confirm its status as a poem, but the inevitability of its destruction in translation means that translation is bound to continue, to extend and to affirm the work of poetry. And this, in fact, provides us with a differently formulated response to our opening question. Derrida’s essay presents serious problems for the translator – the play on he´risser and he´risson, for instance, is untranslatable – but no more so, arguably, than any of his other texts. In a kind of refrain that is repeated across the range of his many texts Derrida insists again and again upon the untranslatability of his writing in French. We could cite any number of variations on the affirmation that this or that dazzlingly economical formula works only in French: ‘Only in French can this be said . . .’; or ‘This works only in French.’36 Perhaps the most striking example is the whole of the borderline that underscores his reading of Maurice Blanchot in Parages (1986). ‘This telegraphic band produces an untranslatable supplement,’ Derrida claims, ‘whether I want it to or not.’37 Curiously, though, Derrida’s texts were always destined for translation.38 Che cos’e` la poesia? was written specifically for the Italian journal, which means that it was bound from its inception for

164

Kate Briggs

translation. So why write in such a way that contrives to resist translation? Why endeavour to mobilize the resources of the French language – to produce a text as resistant and as exposed to the risk of translation as a poem would be – when translation was inevitable, even the condition of publication? Derrida addresses the question himself in a foreword to the English translation of Glas (1986) and its accompanying text, the Glassary.39 Derrida admits, in relation to the original Glas (1974), that he did everything he could to write an untranslatable book, binding his text to the grammatical, syntactical and lexical laws of what he calls, here, ‘my tongue’. And yet, once again, the text was always going to be translated. Derrida concedes here to both writing against and seeking translation. To be translated, then, but to be translated as untranslatable; the test of translation sought as the only confirmation of the untranslatability of the original text. This ambiguous desire could on one level be said to be bound up with a certain (and perhaps similarly ambiguous) relationship with his many Anglophone readers: to be read in English (and in Britain and America) as French and to be read in French (and in France) through the prism of having been translated into and annotated and commentated on in English (it is worth noting that the Glassary, a scholarly companion text to the English translation of Glas, is not available in French). The example of Che cos’e` la poesia shows us, though, that there is more than this at stake. If Derrida deliberately contrives to render his text untranslatable (all the while aware that translation is inevitable) this is an invitation to his translators to bristle their own tongues in turn, to respond to Derrida’s pointed and compact prose with a text that is differently snarled and spiked. The destruction of all that is poetic in Derrida’s French text – its curiously distinctive body that simply cannot be carried across safely and intact in translation – is also the chance of a new and equivalently poetic text in Italian, German, English. This strategy – this defiance of translation that is also the call for translation that is also the call for poetry – is brought into sharp focus by the fact that the essay has been published only in bilingual editions, a publishing decision which insists on the continuity between the work of poetry and the work of translation. But it is not a strategy unique to this text. In a letter to his Japanese translator, published in 1987, Derrida advises the translator to invent a new word for de´construction in Japanese, a word that would mean the same thing and something different, and that would take it elsewhere. A word, also, that might be more beautiful. Derrida goes on: ‘When I speak of this writing of the other which will be more beautiful, I clearly understand translation as involving the same risk and chance as the poem.’40

Chapter 13

From a Morality of Translation to an Ethics of Translation: In Step with the Play of Language Carla Locatelli

Post-structuralist theory has consistently maintained a healthy scepticism towards the ‘moral’ value of a translation’s fidelity to the original, that imperative criterion of traditional approaches to translation. There are many reasons for this contemporary theoretical orientation, but the most relevant have to do with the radically transformed notions of literature, and of language itself, in post-structuralist thinking. In the present chapter, then, I focus on some of the theoretical points at stake in these radical metamorphoses, including such notions as ‘text’, ‘discourse’, ‘word’, ‘communication’, ‘signification’ and ‘origin’. I will develop my analysis here within the specific perspective of their relevance to translation theory studies. The post-structuralist epistemological re-working of these concepts also impacts upon a traditional morality of translation, affecting, in particular, notions of ‘priority’, ‘hierarchy’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘violence’, which are commonly acknowledged as pertaining to this idea of morality. I contend that these apparently self-contained notions have in fact always been ‘double’, in the sense that they are relational, involving negotiations between formal description and value, structures and judgement, figures and findings, frameworks and cost. In short, such notions regard ethical imperatives which simultaneously arise from, and govern, the production of texts. Because texts are not merely referential objects (being based on formal structure as well as on the economy of signification and reading), they are, in this sense, quasi-objects. Since texts are complex quasi-objects (objects of understanding, of interpretation, of reading, and not merely referential and/ or representational discourses), they inevitably produce ethical imperatives hinging on epistemological determinations. Insofar as a morality of translation regards texts as quasi-objects, and therefore applies to understanding and signification, this morality is necessarily plural, and should therefore be better understood as ethics, a term which is preferable in that it registers the plural nature of the complex field at stake, a simultaneously moral, political, formal and epistemological field.

166

Carla Locatelli

The transformation of a value-oriented morality into a poly-systemic ethical theory of translation amounts to the conversion of a morality which honoured presupposed universals, into an ethics which respects the multiple discourses in which historical, material, social and cultural ‘co(n)texts’ affect the contemporary understanding of the world, and different ways of worldmaking. In spite of the fact that epistemology and ethics were thought of as distinct entities, especially at the beginning of the twentieth century, today – following the ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy – epistemology and ethics are perceived as inseparable when dealing with texts. This, then, is perhaps what constitutes the post-structuralist revolution in the thinking of an ethics of translation. In other words, epistemology cannot be separated from ethics because in all textual determinations (that is to say, in all the necessary distinctions which determine texts, starting with language), value is implied. In my previous work I have addressed the issue of distinction as a constitutive textual law, formulating the term ‘co(n)texts’ in order to indicate the inseparable relation of texts, co-texts and contexts, which always mutually imply one another.1 Granted that the play of separations is what determines the specificity of a text, the superimposition within the grapheme ‘co(n)text’ highlights the irreducible relational quality of any textual definition. Specifically, ‘the textual separation-procedure which institutes the text is simultaneously also a separation-procedure which textualizes the context, that is, which constitutes it (and does not merely describe, presuppose, or take notice of it as being ‘‘there’’)’.2 Since texts, contexts and co-texts are reciprocally implicated, they should therefore be thought of as open to the possibilities of reciprocal redetermination, and this is also the case in the work and theory of translation. I believe that the most difficult challenge today, in both translation theory and practice, regards the economy and play of the implications and reciprocal determination of co(n)texts. Furthermore, one should keep in mind that in the field of translation (once the text is constituted) the ‘means/ends’ dichotomy applied to textual understanding can only signify a continuum of means and ends (a continuum of the ‘how/what for’ the text is structured). Therefore, this continuum should be the object of a double epistemological and ethical inquiry. Translation is structured by its own polyphonic relation to the continuum of the means and ends of textual constitution, that is to say, to the continuum of reciprocal co(n)textual determinations. While taking these premises into account, I hope to contribute some methodological and epistemological elucidations to the development of translation theory, for the enhancement of a contemporary thinking of the ethics of translation. A theoretical discussion of some of the points in the ‘rhizomatic’3 net which structures translation theory today will respond to calls from theorists such as Steiner and Bassnett4 both to acknowledge the importance of ‘research into the ethics of translation’ and to address ‘broader philosophical issues that underpin translation’.5 These parallel directions of

In Step with the Play of Language

167

investigation (namely the ethical and the philosophical, the epistemological and the cognitive) are imbricated at the very level of the textual determination of the ‘object’ at stake.

The Task of Translation The power and responsibility of knowledge, as well as the necessary skills, and the desire, for translation constitute indivisible sides of the same coin(s). As Roland Barthes forcefully declared, ‘desire is not in the text by the words that ‘‘represent’’ it, which recount it, but by words sufficiently characterized, sufficiently brilliant, triumphant, to make themselves loved, in the manner of fetishes’.6 Barthes goes on to explain: ‘Bataille used to say: ‘‘A dictionary begins once it gives, not the meaning, but the tasks of words.’’ This is a very linguistic notion (Bloomfield, Wittgenstein); but task goes further (moreover, it is a value word); we shift from the word’s use, its utilization (functional notions), to its work, to its delight.’7 The ‘task’ of the translator spans everything from utilization to delight, from highly skilled labour (the burden of ‘invention’ as in determining ‘what may be found there’) to creation (the elation ensuing from establishing successful textual relations). Translation mobilizes words, moving from denotation and reference to signification and supplemental jouissance. This ‘pleasure of the text’ is, quite possibly, the primary force of translation, that is to say, the force driving translation, inasmuch as translation is both performativity and performance. Translation is simultaneously a movement of signification and a specific realization, producing an effect of meaning, which, as we shall see, can sometimes be surprisingly violent. At any rate, translation simultaneously attests to the access to language (an unknown language, and/or an unknown within language) and to the specificity of one form of access; it sometimes also suggests the possibility of re-directing re-presentation.8 Ethical stakes are understandable here as both the in-tensions of ‘texts’ (the irreducible meaning-tensions which constitute them), and the in-tentions of the translator, who is more or less subjectively and culturally conscious and positioned, and who should be understood textually, that is to say through the specific structural and discursive choices made (and not, simplistically, in terms of the psychology of the individual in question). Indeed, as Barthes suggests, ‘task’ is a word which connotes value, not only with regard to words, from ‘utilization’ to ‘delight’, but also with regard to the law of translation and the mission of translation. The law involves the burden of linguistic boundaries, which is inevitable, but demands specific negotiations through in-vention (the process of both ‘finding’ and ‘creating’). The mission involves both the undertaking of the translation, and the teleology of such an enterprise. Ultimately, ‘task’ regards the vocation and destiny of a translator, how s/he deals with conditions of necessary (im)possibility, such as making

168

Carla Locatelli

choices based on a meaning-centred telos, which is, however, always already set within the limits of language and of languages. Furthermore, the inevitable overlapping of representation and representation constitutes the work-field of translation, which is both a product and a process, and both subjective and impersonal: subjective, insofar as there are specific de-cisions involved in the ‘de´coupage of the fabric of the speech act’;9 objective, insofar as the act and process of translation are linguistically, and not personally, driven.

Two Recurrent Questions: Equivalence and Visibility In spite of the complexities outlined above, one could accept Barthes’ suggestion and say that the relation of words and desire maps the territory within which a potential ethics of translation takes place, thereby constituting the possibility of a ‘plural’ morality, no longer ruled by the monolithic Ciceronian ideal of verbum pro verbo.10 Out of the primary lines of theoretical investigation addressing the ethical thematics of translation (traditionally synthesized as a moral issue regarding ‘the translator’s liberty’), then, I have chosen to explore the issues of equivalence and visibility, which seem to me to be in many ways updated and more focused reflections of the larger, traditional theme of ‘liberty in translation’. The questions regarding equivalence and visibility can be formulated as follows: (1) Is the translator’s liberty restricted (at all), or is it completely determined by possibilities (and/or ideals) of equivalence? (2) Is the translator’s invisibility desirable today? Or was this just an ideal discursive mode prescribed by the traditional agenda of ‘fidelity to the original’? I hope that the following discussion of equivalence and visibility will shed some light on these problems.

Equivalence Contemporary thinking regarding equivalence makes it clear that equivalence is not merely an issue of skill; it is not a merely stylistic endeavour, nor an unquestionable teleological imperative. Rather, today we ask: ‘how does equivalence present itself?’ And, more radically: ‘does it (ever) present itself as a possibility?’ Roman Jakobson acutely problematized the issue of full equivalence in the 1950s, thus opening up a trend that appears dominant today, given that equivalence now seems at best a distant possibility, especially in the light of the pervasiveness of diffe´rance.11 ‘The period of postmodernity is characterized by the fundamentalization of plurality’ Aleida Assmann (1996) has remarked, and ‘difference is affirmed in the form of deviance, gaps, and radical alterity’.12

In Step with the Play of Language

169

Moreover, Sanford Budick and J. Hillis Miller,13 among others, have recently emphasized the untranslatability of meanings and cultures, so that even Benjamin’s hypothesis of a reine Sprache (a pure language), as formulated in ‘The Task of the Translator’ (1923), is generally taken today to refer not so much to the tertium comparationis of translation between languages (that is to say, an enabling code or enabling meta-language), but rather to the hypothetical, and by definition inaccessible, condition of possibility for translation. In short, today we are dealing with an always-deferred tertium comparationis, a sort of endlessly repeated tertium non datum. On the other hand, some very noteworthy scholars, Umberto Eco among them, essentially agree on a generic possibility of equivalence, but limit it to ‘propositional content’. This suffices as proof of the practical reality of equivalence in the eyes of many automatic translation scholars. But Eco is also extremely cautious as far as postulating an enabling ‘Adamic language’, that is to say an ‘original language’ which could unify them all (the ‘tertium’ mentioned above), is concerned. Rather, he dedicates his energy to the elucidation of the problem of the plausible (and therefore still hypothetical) possibility of a ‘universal segmentation’ of reality.14 More radically, that is to say, with no recourse to cultural practices as binding laws, Derrida’s meditation on ‘Les Tours de Babel’ highlights ‘inadequation’ as the condition which ‘legitimates’ translation, or, more specifically, makes it simultaneously forbidden and imperative. Derrida notes how translation is ‘inadequate’ in compensating for the loss that the multiplicity of tongues brings about. The fact that multiplicity can be a loss is highlighted by the myth/narrative/proper name of ‘Babel’, which points to ‘confusion’, ‘the confusion of tongues, but also the state of confusion in which the architects find themselves with the structure interrupted’.15 Derrida says of the one word ‘Babel’ that it ‘Tell[s] at least the inadequation of one tongue to another, of one place of the encyclopaedia to another, of language to itself and to meaning, and so forth, [it] also tells of the need for figuration, for myth, for tropes, for twists and turns, for translations inadequate to compensate for that which multiplicity denies us.’16 Once again, we hear that no translation will produce the perfect transparency of a master-meaning; no translation will ever achieve a perfect equivalence with an (imagined) original, and, more importantly, the seeking of a perfect equivalence appears as a blind or delusional desire, presupposing the origin of a metaphysical meaning, rather than acknowledging the work of signification. Besides, Derrida also reads ‘Babel’ as the site where God proclaims his name as Bavel, or ‘Confusion’: ‘for there YHWH confounds the lip of all the earth’.17 He goes on to interpret the extension of this confusion, and to investigate its ethical implications: the Semites want to bring the world to reason, and this reason can signify simultaneously a colonial violence (since they would thus universalize their idiom) and a peaceful transparency of the human community. Inversely, when God imposes and opposes his

170

Carla Locatelli

name /as Confusion/, he ruptures the rational transparency but interrupts also the colonial violence or the linguistic imperialism. He destines them to translation. . . . The ‘tower of Babel’ does not merely figure the irreducible multiplicity of tongues; it exhibits an incompletion, the ‘impossibility of finishing’.18

This impossibility of finishing the work of translation is not due to any contingent insufficiency, but to the very law of translation, and the ‘destiny’ of humans as translators. Derrida notes: ‘What the multiplicity of idioms actually limits is not only a true translation, a transparent and adequate inter-expression, it is also a structural order, a coherence of construct.’19 The missing ‘coherence of construct’ not only implies the absence of a single Grund of rational incontrovertibility, but signals the negation of a uni-verse, which would be founded precisely on the making of a name which precludes the making of names. Babel can be thought of as the uni-verse, ‘as in the unity of a place which is at once a tongue and a tower, the one as well as the other, the one as the other’,20 but this is a universe of confusion. The impossible realization of equivalence as described by Derrida resonates with Blanchot’s remark that ‘thought (in decline and declining itself) represents the furtive groupings that fictively open and close the absence of totality’.21 Is translation itself not a ‘furtive grouping’ that opens or closes the absence of totality (of a text, of a language, of a uni-verse)? Should the ethics of translation not, therefore, be oriented around the values implied in the opening of the visibility of the ‘absence of totality’ in ‘text’ and in the universe? I consider that the ethical task of translation is to honour the silence in what is said (thus opening the visibility of an absence of totality), while taking into consideration the co(n)textual variables that produce ‘texts’ as (specific) objects of understanding (‘texts’ qua objects tend to close that visibility). Letting go of equivalence allows ‘the original’ to plead for translation, and to be, as Derrida says: ‘the first debtor, the first petitioner’. Adrienne Rich describes civilization itself as an act of translation, and, much like Blanchot and Derrida, calls for a vision of absence which would point to what would not and cannot be said, in what is actually said: and we still have to stare into the absence of men who would not, women who could not, speak to our life – this still unexcavated hole called civilization, this act of translation, this half world.22

Staring into absence means understanding civilization as an unfinished work, as a series of inadequacies and subtractions, bringing together (inter)personal and epistemological responsibilities: these are the responsibilities of humans involved in the world-making acts of translations. If civilization is an ‘act of translation’, then, much like interpretation (as understood in the modern

In Step with the Play of Language

171

hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer), translation is ontology. Perhaps translation is the public scene of an ontological inescapability, which represents itself as subjectively driven. At any rate, translation can subsume – as proper to itself – an always-new, always-differing hermeneutical perspective, one that does not postulate the work of interpretation as totalizing, but rather focuses, with conscious and conscientious partiality, on the ever-elusive play of semantics, communication and signification.

Visibility Should the ‘visibility’ of the translator be driven by ideals of responsibility towards the knowledge s/he has in relation to the text, or by ideals of accountability to readers, and/or by both? And should the visibility of the ‘text’ express the differences and gaps inscribed within its constitution, or produce a transparent meaning-effect in translation? The choice between honouring textual knowledge (itself the object of a cultural translation), and/or responding to readers’ expectations, is a highly ethical issue, which cannot be separated from epistemological considerations on textual knowledge and reading. Lawrence Venuti has explored this problem at length, confirming both the post-structural instability of meaning, and the violence of familiarization. He underscores the fact that: ‘[b]ecause meaning is an effect of relations and differences among signifiers along a potentially endless chain (polysemous, intertextual, subject to infinite linkages), it is always differential and deferred, never present as an original unity . . . Meaning is a plural and contingent relation, not an unchanging unified essence.’23 Acknowledging the fact that meaning is ‘a plural and contingent relation’ implies that it cannot be preserved as such, and amounts to an admission that an audience’s demands cannot be met simply by technical skill at the service of a pre-determined meaning. Barthes’ corroborative opinion on the issue of meaning and of its ‘preservation’ went as follows: we do not know where to halt the depth and the dispersion of reading: at the apprehension of a meaning? Which meaning? Denoted? Connoted? These are artifacts, I shall call them ethical artifacts, since denoted meaning tends to pass for the simple, true meaning and to found a law (how many men have died for a meaning?), while connotation permits (this is its moral advantage) positing a law with multiple meanings and thereby liberating reading: but how far? To infinity: there is no structural obligation to close my reading: I can just . . . decide that everything is finally readable (unreadable as it seems), but also, conversely, I can decide that in the depths of every text, however readable its conception, there is, there remains a certain measure of the unreadable.24

Pragmatically, then, the translator’s ethics (inevitably involved with reading) deals with the imperative of ‘finding a pertinence’,25 even while acknowledging

172

Carla Locatelli

the component of the unreadable. ‘Pertinence’ in discourse is the negotiated way in which a meaning is expressed, to become exchangeable, and, at times, also worthy of further value-recognition. In short, ‘pertinence’ is both the criterion and feature of meaning production in translation. Furthermore, the notion of ‘pertinence’ can provide a way out of a ‘meaning essentialism’, according to which hierarchical meanings exist ‘in the text’, independent of signification, independent of diffe´rance. Pertinence can give visibility to the alternatives through which meaning develops. It can show that meaning is structured by irreducibly plural imperatives, and that it is determined according to both semantics and value, and in different but coexisting linguistic systems, discourses and texts. Pertinence is anti-essentialistic and ethical inasmuch as it is established by acknowledging a simultaneous system made of ‘structural’ differences and heterogeneous textual levels and values, which, if taken together, establish the articulation of meaning (also) in translation. On a political level, Venuti highlights the fact that: the aim of translation is to bring back a cultural other as the same, the recognizable, even the familiar; and this aim always risks a wholesale domestication of the foreign text, often in highly self-conscious projects, where translation serves an appropriation of foreign cultures for domestic agendas, cultural, economic, political.26

In other words, he maps out the shifting of the traditional question ‘how to do it?’ to the contemporary questions ‘what for?’ and ‘whose responsibility/ response-ability is it?’ This new perspective explains why the traditionally undisputed usefulness of adapting (and ‘updating’) translations for contemporary audiences, and the advocacy for improved technical performances to allow a smooth rendering of ‘the original’, can no longer be perceived as absolute imperatives. As has already been said, then, ‘familiarization’ is no longer an undisputed value. Post-colonial critics in the field of translation studies have shown how the target culture can exercise a hegemonic power over what is translated, confirming cultural stereotypes in order that the ‘original text’ never achieves a ‘superior’ status. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, for example, have produced a political critique of this ‘cannibalistic agenda’,27 which has shaped translation in colonial settings, and they make it clear that unequal power relations are visible in non-linear ways beneath acts of translation.28 This denunciation is not, however, a prerogative of post-colonial practices: Hugo Friedrich, in 1965, described Jerome’s role as a translator of the Bible in comparison to the power position held by the Roman Emperor. He quotes and translates Jerome as follows: ‘The translator considers thought content a prisoner (quasi captivos sensus), which he transplants into his own language with the prerogative of a conqueror (iure victoris).’ Friedrich comments: ‘This is one of the most rigorous manifestations of Latin cultural and linguistic imperialism, which despises the foreign word as something alien but

In Step with the Play of Language

173

appropriates the foreign meaning in order to dominate it through the translator’s own language.’29 It is hard to disagree with Friedrich’s analysis of the culturally undeniable imperial context of this specific translation of the Bible, but one could argue that it is possible to read Jerome’s statement differently, in a way which does not necessarily imply that he ‘despised the foreign word’. Jerome thought of himself as ‘serving’ God’s meaning, and could not realistically imagine he could dominate such a meaning, though he chose the language of the Empire to ‘pass it on’ (from various languages, into Latin). He could perhaps be accused of ‘appropriating the foreign meaning’, but not of ‘despising the foreign word’ that expressed it. This perspective would give a different connotation to his notion of ‘quasi captivos sensus’ as ‘meanings to be liberated’. Liberating the ‘almost-imprisoned’ thought-content (‘sensus’) meant preserving and spreading God’s word, whose meaning would actually be ‘imprisoned’ if bound to one language only.30 Today, Jerome is more likely to be criticized for believing in a metaphysics of meaning, that is to say, in a notion of (divine) ‘meaning’ independent of ‘word’. And yet, his interest in a variety of tongues is the declared drive behind his translation of the Bible, and he implies attention to plurality as necessary in order to renew the force of meaning (Friedrich himself points out that ‘vis’ is the word Cicero uses for ‘meaning’ in translation in his De optimo genere oratorum). The fact that Jerome proclaimed that he was working with more than just one language (and not only with the Greek of previous translators) and the fact that he referred to Hebrew and earlier Latin versions of the Bible, inscribe a complex plurality in his work, which may well be imperialistic in its successful outcome, but is decidedly pluralistic in practice, in spite of his perhaps naive (metaphysical) belief in translatability.31 Furthermore, a reductive binarism opposing ‘form’ and ‘content’ (‘word’ and ‘meaning’) can be found in Friedrich’s understanding of both Jerome’s work and the translation process, and it thus seems that Friedrich actually preserves the cultural and linguistic dichotomy he purports to denounce as potentially imperialistic. This slight digression can be taken as a pragmatic example of the complexities characterizing the co(n)texts of an ethics of translation, and of the dangers of projection, in applying ideally impartial parameters of interpretation to it. A more contemporary question could be: ‘How is the effect of plurality to be ‘‘rendered’’?’ This is a question Derrida has asked while pointing out that it may regard even a single text: ‘Let us note one of the limits of theories of translation: all too often they treat the passing from one language to another and do not sufficiently consider the possibility for languages to be implicated more than two in a text. How is a text written in several languages at a time to be translated?’32 A more practical way of valorizing plurality is indicated by contemporary perspectives on translation as re-writing. Bassnett and Lefevere, among others, remind us of the rich ambivalence of re-writing. They point out that

174

Carla Locatelli

rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power, and in its positive aspects can help in the evolution of a literature and a society . . . But rewriting can also repress innovation, distort and contain, and in an age of ever increasing manipulation of all kinds, the study of the manipulative processes of literature as exemplified by translation can help us toward a greater awareness of the world in which we live.33

This ethical ambivalence, fostering both creative evolution and repression, lies at the heart of all translating negotiations, and all inter-pretations (that is to say, where an adequate ‘price’ is put on a transference, a ‘relational price’, arrived at through a broker, a negotiator, a translator). This ambiguity simultaneously concerns the ethical and epistemological dimension of all translating protocols and practices. Clearly, it reminds one of Derrida’s critique of (imperialistic) reason versus multiplicity of tongues in his Babel essay. Bassnett and Lefevere suggest practical ways ‘in which different forms of rewriting need to cooperate: we could imagine the translated text, translated in a way that also appeals to the non-professional reader, preceded by a long introduction which sets out to show how the original text works on its own terms, within its own grid, rather than to tell readers only what it is ‘‘like’’ or even ‘‘most like’’ in their own culture’.34 This double imperative, invoking the preservation of ‘appeals to the non-professional reader’ and of the possible expression of textual ‘difference within’, shows, once more, that ‘familiarization’ is a negotiable value. At any rate, the rather traditional but still recurring issues of ‘preservation of meaning’ and ‘familiarization’ (or ‘domestication’) are approached today from a radically new epistemological perspective, and are subject to innovative re-working. In fact, radical hermeneutics from Nietzsche to Foucault has denounced the illusion of ever ‘filling the gap’ between what was meant and what is understood. However, the inanity of striving for access to ‘the original’ should not translate directly into a generic idea that ‘anything will do’ (as detractors of deconstruction are willing to claim). On the contrary, on the epistemological level, an ethical striving orients understanding and translation towards the analysis of the reasons and modes of this inaccessibility. In short, the theme of the betrayal by the ‘traduttore traditore’ has lost much of its relevance today, but only because it does not connect to the ideal traditional rendering of ‘original forms and meaning’. In translation, as Niall Lucy explains: ‘A fully prescribed decision would not be a decision, since no responsibility would be involved in making it. A fully personal decision would not be a decision either, since you wouldn’t have to be accountable for making it beyond saying that it ‘‘felt right’’ for you.’35 The notions of dissemination and the blindness of understanding, which are even faced, in Barthes’ words, with the ‘measure of the unreadable’, provide the translator with new stimuli for an involvement with re-writing. The interpretation of a text is a ‘re-writing’, in the sense that it is a sequence of displacements that constitute the always-defective, but nonetheless always-

In Step with the Play of Language

175

effective, play of interpretation of an always-absent textual structure. Significantly, Derrida terms ‘discourse’, rather than ‘text’, as ‘a system in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences’.36 Furthermore, as has been repeatedly stated, he underscores the irretrievable nature of the ‘original’: ‘the process of signification orders the displacements and substitutions for this law of central presence – but a central presence which has never been itself, has always already been exiled from itself into its own substitute. The substitute does not substitute itself for anything which has somehow existed before it.’37 Indeed, visibility becomes a complex issue, inasmuch as it regards the loss as well as the gain of what can be seen, but only through a partially substitutive substitute. Identity (and the identity of a text) is displaced by the very repetition of the signs that simultaneously constitute it; in short, repetition destabilizes representation. So, the text becomes thinkable as a centre-less structure incessantly displaced by translation. Losing ‘the text’ is the condition for keeping it: in this sense, ‘the text’ is (only) interpretation, and thus translation is simultaneously necessary and impossible.

Conclusions The metaphor of the coin that Derrida convokes in his ‘white Mythology’, in line with Nietzschean thinking, helps us to escape the intertwined notion of the ‘original/copy’ couple, as well as the ‘superior/inferior’ pair. The image of the coin is also appropriate in problematizing the other recurrent feature of ideal translation: the accrual of a profit, as compensation for the loss of the (presumed) original. This ‘compensation’ is never fully granted: the deterioration of the coin through usage is simultaneous with the acquisition of interest. Usure (‘wear/usury’) is the word Derrida uses to express this double occurrence, as the irreducible simultaneity of profit and loss, the space of ‘usury’ constituting the space of symbolic dissemination and exchange, the space of inseparable profit and loss.38 Ultimately, then, what is at stake in translation regards the very possibility of a plurality of ‘styles of reasoning’,39 because, as Derrida points out, ‘It is what one can say which delimits and organizes what one can think. Language provides the fundamental configuration of the properties of things as recognized by the mind.’40 Adrienne Rich has represented this expressive responsibility as a ‘verbal atonement’, that is to say, as a simultaneous expiation and recompense, as propitiation and satisfaction, as compensation and conciliation. She implies that this radical ambivalence is the very law of verbal exchange in the life of human beings: What kind of beast would turn its life into words? What atonement is this all about? – and yet, writing words like these, I’m also living.41

176

Carla Locatelli

These intense lines of poetry put us in mind of something that has been implied throughout this chapter: that translation begins at home, in the very structure of human thinking, however ambivalent this may be. It begins in the very mode of human interpretation and in the very dialogue of human interaction. Knowing that we are in translation, qua human beings, is perhaps the greatest comfort and the greatest challenge in our imagining of the world, and in our ways of world-making. This challenge is both epistemological and ethical.

Notes

Chapter 1: Historicizing Value, Negotiating Visibility: English and Italian Poetic Canons in Translation 1

On the notion of value see the following: Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction; Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Literary Theory; Kermode, History and Value. According to Foucault, hegemanic discursive practices ‘delimit fields of knowledge’, define ‘a legitimate perspective’ for agents of knowledge, while establishing norms for ‘the elaboration of concepts and theories’. See Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, 199. 2 Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge; Foucault, The Order of Things; Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews; Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’; Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 3 See on this, at least, Kirkpatrick, English and Italian Literature from Dante to Shakespeare: A Study of Source, Analogue and Divergence. 4 Throughout this chapter, I shall refer to notions of symbolic and cultural capital, cultural agents and habitus in the full knowledge of the way in which these concepts, formulated by Pierre Bourdieu, have been adapted to literary theory in general and Translation Studies in particular. See, on this, Inghilleri (ed.), Bourdieu and the Sociology of Interpreting and Translating. 5 Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, 15. 6 Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context, 4. 7 Spivak, ‘The Politics of Translation’. 8 Berman, L’e´preuve de l’e´tranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique, 301. 9 Berman, Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, 16 10 Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation; Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation; Venuti (ed.), Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology; Bassnett, Studying British Cultures: An Introduction. 11 Gillespie, ‘Translation and Canon-Formation’. 12 Venuti, ‘Retranslations: The Creation of Value’, 25. 13 Even though the following volumes do not concentrate exclusively on the bilateral relations between Italy and the Anglophone culture, they are notable contributions to our field of enquiry: Buffoni (ed.), Ritmologia; Buffoni (ed.), La traduzione del testo poetico; and Dolfi (ed.), Traduzione e poesia nel Novecento. 14 Ellis, Dante and the English Poets: From Shelley to T. S. Eliot; Anderson, Pound’s

178

Notes

Cavalcanti: An Edition of the Translations, Notes and Essays; Manganiello, T. S. Eliot and Dante; Boldrini, Joyce, Dante, and the Poetics of Literary Relations; Caselli, Beckett’s Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism. 15 Bonsaver, ‘Fascist Censorship on Literature and the Case of Elio Vittorini’; Bonsaver and Gordon, Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th Century Italy; Bonsaver, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy; and Billiani ‘Assessing Boundaries: Censorship and Translation: An Introduction’ and Culture nazionali e narrazioni straniere: Italia 1903– 1943. 16 De Rogatis, ‘Sulla cultura letteraria di Montale: Browning e la costellazione dei ‘‘metafisici’’ ’. 17 See Pavese, Verra` la morte e avra` i tuoi occhi; Rosselli, Sleep: Poesie in inglese; Niccolai, Harry’s Bar e altre poesie; and Frasca, Rive and Lime. 18 Venuti, ‘Introduction’ to the section on ‘Italian’, in The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, 467. 19 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 203. 20 In his The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction, 168–84. 21 Re, ‘(De)Constructing the Canon: The Agon of the Anthologies on the Scene of Modern Italian Poetry’. 22 Rosselli had already been translated by Beverly Allen, Desmond O’Grady, Emmanuela Tandello and Peter Robinson for various anthologies. 23 See, e.g., Chiesa and Tesio, Le parole di legno: Poesia in dialetto del ’900 italiano; and Sulis, ‘Ridefinire il canone: i dialettali e le antologie poetiche del Novecento’. 24 McRae and Findlay, ‘Varieties of English’, 38. 25 For a rapid survey of this tradition, see Barbara Reynolds’s entry on ‘Dante’ in The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, 469–72. 26 Hill, ‘Poetry as ‘‘Menace’’ and ‘‘Atonement’’ ’. 27 Healey, Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation: An Annotated Bibliography 1929–1997, p. xix. 28 See Tomlinson, Translations. 29 For instance, the Italian number of The Literary Review, n. 3 Autumn 1959, published poems by Bertolucci, Caproni, Gatto, De Libero, Luzi, Sinisgalli and Spaziani. In 1961, the San Francisco-based Inferno Press published the anthology Modern Italian Poets, which lists only poets with indisputable hermeticist credentials (Betocchi, De Libero, Fasolo, Fiorentino, Parronchi, Quasimodo, Risi, Sbarbaro, Solmi and Valeri). 30 Anthony Molino translated Porta’s Melusine: A Ballad and a Diary for the Montrealbased Guernica in 1992, in the ‘Essential Poets’ series. 31 Similarly to Mandelbaum, J. G. Nichols has translated the classics of Italian literature with Leopardi’s Canti and a selection of his prose (1996), Petrarch’s Canzoniere (2000) and Dante’s Inferno (2005). As far as his translations of early twentieth-century poetry are concerned, he has experimented, on the one hand, with the most prominent member of crepuscolarismo with Gozzano’s Colloquies (1987) and, on the other, with the turgid musicality of D’Annunzio’s Halcyon (2006). Galassi’s name is inevitably linked to his celebrated translation of Montale’s poetry (1998) while Peter Robinson’s interests in Italian poetry are firmly located in the second half of the twentieth century, as his translations of select poetry by Vittorio Sereni (2002, with Marcus Perryman) and Luciano Erba (2006) eloquently demonstrate. 32 Apter, The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature, 9. 33 De Stae¨l, ‘Sulla Maniera e dell’utilita` delle traduzioni’.

Notes

179

34

For more details on these publications, see Savoca and Guastella, Concordanza delle traduzioni poetiche di Giuseppe Ungaretti, pp. x–xi, xxix–lxxxi. 35 For more details on these translations, see Tondo, Salvatore Quasimodo, 181–2. 36 Capoferro, ‘Poesia Inglese in Italia dagli anni trenta agli anni sessanta’, 312. 37 For a discussion of the neo-avanguardia canon of foreign poetry in translation and of the Einaudi anthologies see La Penna, ‘Traduzioni e traduttori’. See Billiani, ‘Renewing a Literary Culture through Translation: Poetry in Post-War Italy’, for a survey of the editorial decisions pertaining to the translation of foreign poetry taken by Einaudi and Mondadori in the post-war period. 38 See, e.g., his Per interposta persona: Lingua e poesia nel secondo Novecento. 39 Croce, Aesthetic, 68, 73. 40 Lewis, ‘The Measure of the Translation Effects’.

Chapter 2: An Enquiry into Linguistic and Stylistic Features of Modern Translation into Italian 1

Graziosi, Questioni di lessico: L’ingegno, le passioni, il linguaggio. Pascal, Pense´es, 763. 3 Schwarz-Bart, L’ultimo dei giusti, 184. 4 Marroni, La lingua delle traduzioni di Bel-Ami 1887–1979. 5 Malcovati, ‘Introduzione’, xxxix–xli. 6 Ghini, Tradurre l’Onegin. 7 Niculescu, Strutture allocutive, pronominali, reverenziali in italiano. 8 See Maupassant, Bel Ami. 9 Agostino Villa translated Chekhov’s Racconti (2 vols) for Einaudi in 1950, whereas Alfredo Polledro translated Chekhov’s entire collections of short stories in the 12volume edition for the Milanese publisher Rizzoli (1951–7). 10 Grabher translated Ivanov in 1923 (reissued in 1940) and Il giardino dei ciliegi in 1924 (reissued in 1941) for the Florence-based Vallecchi. He also edited and translated Chekhov’s complete dramatic works in Teatro, published by the Florence-based Sansoni in 1950. 11 Ginzburg translated Anna Karenina for the Turin-based publisher Slavia in 1929. However, the Milanese publisher Rizzoli advertised the Anna Karenina translated by Ginzburg in 1939 as the first integral Italian translation of the Russian novel. 12 Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere, tome I, 204. 13 See Mengaldo, Gli incanti della vita, 93–115. 14 Furio Brugnolo has published a useful overview of the history and structure of alexandrine verse. See Brugnolo ‘Breve viaggio nell’alessandrino italiano’. 15 Obviously, though, I am well aware of the veritably miraculous results that these constraints have produced in works such as Le Cid, Phe`dre and Be´re´nice. 16 Fubini, ‘Ritmo e metro’, 41. 17 It is worth remembering that, as Dante Isella has shown, Montale’s three metrically faithful translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets (XXII, XXIII and XLVIII) were, in fact, produced after the ‘original’ sonnets of La bufera, not before. See Montale, Quaderno di traduzioni, 16–21. 18 Montale, Quaderno di traduzioni, 110–13. 19 Ibid., 62–3. 2

180

Notes

20

Sereni, Il musicante di Saint-Merry, 141. Solmi, Quaderno di traduzioni, vol. 2, 95. 22 Ibid., 102–3. 23 Sanguineti, Quaderno di traduzioni. 24 Giorgio Orelli translated Goethe’s Poesie scelte in 1974 for the publisher Mondadori. 25 At the very least, the reader should consult the following essays by Contini: ‘Come lavorava l’Ariosto nelle Satire’, ‘Radiografia di Leopardi’, ‘Varianti leopardiane: La sera del dı` di festa’, ‘Saggio d’un commento alle correzioni del Petrarca volgare’. 26 Manzoni, I promessi sposi I, §§ 29–30, 32–4. 21

Chapter 3: Translation and the European Tradition: The Italian ‘Third Generation’ 1 See Vegliante, Ungaretti entre les langues. If not otherwise stated, all quotations are translated by Alex Marlow-Mann. 2 For a fuller account of the epistolary and cultural exchanges among the poets discussed in this piece, see my ‘Una comparatistica fatta prassi. Traduzione e vocazione europea nella terza generazione’, in my edited volume Traduzione e poesia nell’Europa del Novecento. 3 Macrı`, La teoria letteraria delle generazioni. Macrı` recalls that the third generation (also central to the twentieth century in Italy in a chronological sense) refers to Florentine or Southern Italian Hermeticism in the strictest sense of the term. 4 Macrı`, Le mie dimore vitali (Maglie – Parma – Firenze), and ‘Lo ‘‘spazio domestico’’ di E. U. D’Andrea’. 5 For a generational reading of Bilenchi, exemplifying Macrı`’s critical approach to prose, see Dolfi, ‘Sulle tracce della diacronia (per una approssimazione)’. 6 In an unpublished extract from one of his youthful letters, Macrı` openly expounds the European ideal of his generation and the sacrifice it involves. Macrı`’s letters quoted in this study are unpublished and conserved among the papers of the ‘Centro Studi Oreste Macrı`’ housed in the Palazzo Suarez in the Archivio Contemporaneo Alessandro Bonsanti in G. P. Vieusseux library in Florence. 7 This was in spite of a certain functional anti-Leopardism. See Dolfi, ‘Leopardismo e terza generazione’. For Macrı`’s belated salvaging of Leopardi see ‘Leopardi o della ‘‘belta`’’ pietrificata’. 8 Dante’s influence runs throughout the European tradition, sometimes by way of Foscolo and Montale, as described in Macrı`, Semantica e metrica dei ‘Sepolcri’ del Foscolo; see also his La Vita della parola: Studi montaliani. The reception of Foscolo and Manzoni at a national and European level is described in Macrı`, Varia fortuna del Manzoni in terre iberiche (con una premessa sul metodo comparatistico) and Il Foscolo negli scrittori italiani del Novecento: Con una conclusione sul metodo comparatistico e una appendice di aggiunte al ‘Manzoni iberico’. 9 Macrı`, ‘ ‘‘Maggiori’’ e ‘‘minori’’ o di una teoria dei valori’, in La vita della parola: Ungaretti e poeti coevi. 10 Macrı`, ‘La traduzione poetica negli anni Trenta (e seguenti)’, in La vita della parola: Da betocchi: a tentori. 11 Macrı`, ‘Leone Traverso e l’esperienza ermetica’, in La vita della parola. 12 Ungaretti’s text was, for Traverso (unlike Macrı`), ‘actorly’.

Notes 13

181

Macrı` explored the traces of Christian heresy in all the authors he studied and translated. Oreste Macrı`, ‘L’eresia cristiana nella poesia occidentale’, in La vita della parola: Studi su Ungaretti e poeti coevi. Such traces were also found by Luzi in Novalis and by Traverso in Rilke. For a study of this entire generation’s enthusiasm for Rilke see Dolfi, ‘Rilke e le modalita` di lettura di una generazione (a partire da una copia annotata nella biblioteca Macrı`)’ and Bevilacqua, Rilke: Un’inchiesta storica. 14 Here the necessity of providing an overview of the third generation in the strictest sense of Florentine and Southern Hermeticism forces us to abbreviate our account: ‘Hispanophilia, subsequently converted into Hispanicism, came later. Led by Carlo Bo, followed by myself and the aforementioned Bodini, it also interested Traverso, Luzi e Bigongiari, not to mention Baldi, who . . . was attracted by the Romanist theories of Mene´ndez Pidal’. Macrı`, ‘Sergio Baldi poeta traduttore e critico’, 10. 15 Macrı`, Il cimitero marino di Paul Vale´ry: Studi, testo critico, versione metrica e commento. The volume reprises a study undertaken by the youthful Macrı` in the 1940s, enlarging and enriching it greatly. 16 In an unpublished letter written to Macrı` on 23 December 1951, Caproni complains about the editorial intrusions in a translation that had cost him almost two years of work. Conversely, but still in relation to more or less deliberate editorial misguidance, in a letter dated 11 September 1956 Caproni, on receiving a free copy of his book published by Vallecchi, offered his friend an authorial errata corrige. 17 The apparent musicality of the latter two poets contrasts with the linguistic asperity of others (above all, Fre´naud and Ce´line). 18 Solmi, La salute di Montaigne e altri scritti di letteratura francese and La luna di Laforgue e altri scritti di letteratura francese. 19 Ungaretti, La guerre; see also Derniers jours, which also included P-L-M. 20 For a reflection on French influences on the first and second generation see Sozzi, ‘Da Baudelaire a Valery: Comi e i poeti francesi’. Valeri was, among other things, professor of French literature at the University of Venice. 21 Ho¨lderlin, Poesie. A second, revised edition was published in Milan by Mondadori in 1971. 22 Here I equate the ‘third generation’ with Hermeticism. 23 See Macrı`’s writings in the Italian double trilogy and the generation’s biographical testimonies contained in Le mie dimore vitali. 24 In this regard, Macrı` stated that: ‘Other translator-poets like Poggioli and Traverso made the same sacrifice as Baldi. However, it was only subjectively a sacrifice; rather there was a transfer to another expressive category or literary genre, not in the Crocean sense, but in the sense of a meta-genre including poetry: translation and criticism itself as a paraphrastic-paradigmatic reduction of the syntagmatic structure of an artistic work, and therefore, in the case of the greatest critics, a work of art or composition in itself.’ Macrı`, Sergio Baldi poeta traduttore e critico, 16. 25 For bibliographical references relating to Jacobbi’s translations and work on foreign literature the essential reference point is now the CD-Rom edited by Polidori, Ruggero Jacobbi / Bibliografia degli scritti di Ruggero Jacobbi. / Inventario del Fondo Ruggero Jacobbi presso l’Archivio contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’ / Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario ‘G. P. Vieusseux’, including the facsimile edition of Jacobbi’s Rondini di Spoleto. For Jacobbi’s critical reception see Dolfi, Diciotto saggi su Ruggero Jacobbi: Atti delle giornate di studio Firenze, 23rd–24th March 1984 and Dolfi, L’eclettico Jacobbi: Percorsi multipli tra letteratura e teatro. Atti della giornata di studio – Firenze, 14th January. On Jacobbi’s translations of

182

Notes

baroque theatre see Jacobbi, Quattro testi per il teatro: Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Molie`re. On his translations of Brazilian theatre, see Jacobbi, Teatro in Brasile. 26 The author signed his poetry as Francesco Tentori and his translations as Francesco Tentori Montaldo. For a brief profile of Tentori and an account of his friendship with Macrı`, see Dolfi, ‘Francesco Tentori: al fuoco vivo della rimembranza’, and Tentori, ‘Lettere a una voce (con un’appendice epistolare di Oreste Macrı`)’. 27 The influence of the language of translation has rarely been acknowledged by poets, but has been openly acknowledged by writers like Tabucchi and Del Giudice. See, e.g., the testimonies contained in Dolfi and Papini, Scrittori a confronto: Incontri con Aldo Busi, Maria Corti, Claudio Magris, Giuliana Morandini, Roberto Pazzi, Edoardo Sanguineti, Francesca Sancitale, Antonio Tabucchi. 28 Macrı`, ‘La traduzione poetica negli anni Trenta (e seguenti)’. 29 Macrı`, ‘La traduzione poetica’. 30 Macrı` studied Port-Royal poetics in his ‘La traduzione nella poetica di Port-Royal’. 31 Usually, Italians became acquainted with foreign literatures through foreign models; e.g., Duhamel’s L’Anthologie de la poe´sie lyrique en France and L’Anthologie des poe`tes de la NRF. Clearly of similar importance was the reception of Italian authors abroad. See, as far as the most recent contributions related to France are concerned, Cre´mieux’s famous Panorama de la litte´rature italienne contemporaine; the miscellaneous volume Gli studi francesi in Italia tra le due guerre; and Rovetta, ‘Echi di letteratura italiana nella NRF dal 1909 al 1943’. 32 Bo, Bilancio del Surrealismo; Antologia del Surrealismo; Lirici spagnoli. See also Bodini, Poeti surrealisti spagnoli. 33 Some information on Macrı`’s translation work can be obtained from Sansone and Dolfi’s essay in Dolfi, Per Oreste Macrı`: Atti della giornata di studio. Florence – 9th December 1994, from the essays in Dolfi, Lettere a Simeone: Sugli epistolari a Oreste Macrı`, and from Guı´llen, Oreste Macrı`: Cartas ine´ditas (1953–1983). For a complete list of the ‘general correspondence’ (excluding the Spanish correspondence) and for information concerning manuscripts and notes by Macrı` (most important in this regard are the notes on foreign literature and translation) see the CD-Rom contained in the facsimile reprint of Esemplari del sentimento poetico contemporaneo. The Spanish correspondence is catalogued and collected, together with the library’s complete catalogue, in a CD-Rom, Catalogo della biblioteca di Oreste Macrı` con un’addenda all’inventario del Fondo Oreste Macrı` presso l’Archivio contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’ / Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario ‘G. P. Vieusseux’ issued together with Dolfi, Percorsi di macritica. On the majority of the Spanish correspondence see Trentini, Lettere dalla Spagna: Dagli epistolari a Oreste Macrı`. For a study of the Biblioteca Macrı` see Dolfi, I libri di Oreste Macrı`: Struttura e storia di una biblioteca privata. 34 Baldi’s theory of translation is summarized by Macrı` in his reflections on the review of Bigongiari’s Vento d’ottobre by ‘Duca Sergio’: ‘Baldi defines the ‘‘semantic’’ character of translation as the formal de-structuring and restructuring according to the degree of affinity between the original text and the genius of the translator or, in the case of Bigongiari, poet-translator . . . Baldi and his colleagues’ sense of the dignity of translation, as an autonomous genre, is epitomized by the humorous yet earnest imperative issued by Khane [Leone Traverso]: ‘‘Improve the text’’.’ Macrı`, Sergio Baldi poeta, traduttore e critico, 19, 21. 35 Traverso’s translation work merits a separate study, as would that of other translator-poets of the third generation. It will suffice here to recall that in the preface to Elegie duinesi, Traverso showed himself to be fully aware of the difference between

Notes

183

languages, speaking of a ‘faint unknown’ in the German language where Italian has need of specifics. 36 On Pagano as a translator, see Giusti, ‘Visioni di Francia all’ombra dell’ ‘‘Albero’’ ’. The convergence of Comi and Pagano’s ideas on translation is demonstrated, for example, by Pagano’s anthology (which includes texts by Nerval, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Corbie`re, Mallarme´ and Rollinat), Antologia dei poeti maledetti, versioni metriche di Vittorio Pagano, as well as Prete’s study ‘Il ritmo dell’eccesso: Sulle traduzioni baudelairiane di Vittorio Pagano’. 37 Caproni translated Apollinaire, Char, Fre´naud, Pre´vert, Verlaine, Lorca, Machado, Hugo, Baudelaire, as described in his Quaderno di traduzioni. 38 According to the author’s own declaration in Musicante di Saint-Merry e altri versi tradotti published in 1981 by Einaudi, Seroni turned to translation whilst in prison: ‘I never thought of translating others’ texts until one of my companions in prison, who could read English much better than me but who did not have experience of poetry, handed me a literal version of one of E. A. Poe’s poems that he had prepared.’ 39 ‘Translation is either (intentionally) poetic or it is not translation.’ Macrı`, ‘La traduzione poetica negli anni Trenta’, 47. 40 Macrı`, Leone Traverso e l’esperienza ermetica. 41 Translator-poets like Fortini and Sereni should be situated in a different current to the ‘Hermetic’ one that is here taken to be dominant. 42 Macrı`, ‘La traduzione poetica negli anni Trenta’, 49. 43 Be´cquer, Rime; the first edition by Guanda is from 1945. 44 Nerval, Le figlie del fuoco; first edition published by Guanda in 1952. 45 Bigongiari, Poesia francese del Novecento, now in facsimile edition. Bigongiari was responsible for Bompiani’s edition of the works of Conrad. For information on this editorial undertaking and for a list of the relative correspondence see the CDRom: Inventario della corrispondenza a Piero Bigongiari. 46 Dolfi, Rilke e le modalita`. 47 Bigongiari, ‘Perche´ ho tradotto Ronsard’. 48 Ibid. Given its limited availability I will quote at length from this text. For further reflections on the subject of translation by Bigongiari see also the interviews collected in Bigongiari, Nel mutismo dell’universo: Interviste sulla poesia 1965–1997. 49 Bigongiari, ‘Rosard o il visibile attraverso la parola’. 50 Ibid. 51 Bigongiari, Il caso e il caos. On Bigongiari as an art critic, see Donati, L’invito e il divieto: Piero Bigongiari e l’ermeneutica d’arte. 52 Similarly, in one of his collections Caproni reproduced the quotation: ‘Pleurer longtemps solitaire / me`ne a` quelque chose’. Also relevant here is Caproni’s Guetteur me´lancolique; see Dolfi, ‘Le coeur bat dans le centre de Paris’: sul Caproni di ‘Erba francese’. 53 Bigongiari, ‘Perche´ ho tradotto Ronsard’. 54 Ibid. 55 Bigongiari, ‘Vivere la contraddizione’, in Dolfi, Nel mutismo dell’universo, 153. On Bigongiari’s thoughts on translation, see also ‘Intervista non immaginaria’, in Dolfi, Nel mutismo dell’universo, 44–5. 56 Caproni, on the other hand, spoke of the translator as someone who transcribes musical texts for another instrument. Giorgio Caproni, ‘Divagazioni sul tradurre’, 64. 57 On Sereni and the impact that Banfi’s reflections had on his poetics (in terms also of the topic under discussion here), see D’Alessandro, L’opera poetica di Vittorio Sereni.

184

Notes

Fortini’s reflections on tradition, translation and adaptation can be found in his Saggi italiani: Temi e problemi. 58 Luzi, La cordigliera delle Ande. ‘But one can see that, for certain texts, the only way to read them, or rather to read them more thoroughly, it is to translate them.’ Sereni, Il musicante di Saint-Merry, p. viii. 59 Parronchi, Quaderno francese: Poesie tradotte con alcuni commenti. 60 Sereni in the preface to Il musicante di Saint-Merry, pp. v–xi. 61 Fortini, ‘Traduzione e rifacimento’, in Saggi italiani. See also his ‘Cinque paragrafi sul tradurre’ in the same volume. 62 On this see also Bertolucci’s critical essays in a book with a significant title, Ho rubato dei versi a Baudelaire: Prose e divagazioni. 63 Bigongiari, ‘La positivizzazione del negativo’, in Nel mutismo dell’universo, 178. 64 Caproni, ‘Divagazioni sul tradurre’, 62. 65 Ibid. 66 Caproni, ‘Il Vale´ry di Tutino’, in ‘Del traddurre’, 47. 67 Entitling the first paragraph of his essay on translation ‘Del Tradurre’, ‘Traduzione, e civilta`’, Anceschi mentions that: ‘A history of the taste for translation can be one of the most revealing windows onto the history of a literary civilisation.’ He also observes how differently scholars of the calibre of Angelo Monteverdi, Gianfranco Contini and Umberto Terracini had tackled the relationship ‘between linguistics and the problem of translation’. Anceschi, ‘Del tradurre’, 51, 52. 68 Anceschi, ‘Del tradurre’, 53; originally in italics. 69 The young Gianfranco Contini wrote in this regard: ‘one of the best of our young translators, Renato Poggioli, tends to present himself . . . as a ‘‘professional’’ translator, still in the grip of literal word-for-word translations, who does not support this exercise with his own interests. He is an expert and frequently poetic translator who does not produce his own poetry. The verse tradition is vocationally a cultural act of poetics’. Contini, ‘Di un modo di tradurre’, 374–5. Contini discusses this in relation to the classics but the same could easily be applied to contemporary poets. 70 Contini, ‘Di un modo di tradurre’, 378. 71 On the intertwining of these traditions and Caproni’s writing in Erba francese, see Dolfi, ‘Le coeur bat dans le centre de Paris’: Sul Caproni di ‘Erba francese’. 72 He spoke of translations as ‘imitations’, convinced as he was of the impossibility of a perfect restitution. ‘The translator, some say, is an interpreter, like a violin or piano virtuoso. This is a commonly held idea that is rather simplistic . . . [I]t would be more fitting if one considered the translator in the same way as someone who has to transcribe for violin, say, something which has been written for the flute and is therefore forced to resolve, or to attempt to resolve, certain passages or effects appropriate to the flute with others appropriate to the violin in order not to betray the original musical idea through the (inevitable) differences in timbre and sound which cannot be eliminated.’ Caproni, ‘Divagazioni sul tradurre’, 64. 73 Caproni, ‘Divagazioni sul tradurre’, 60. A volume on the subject of Sereni’s correspondence with his Hermetic friends is currently being prepared under the editorship of Maria Carla Papini; Bigongiari’s French correspondence will appear in a volume in preparation under the editorship of Enza Biagini; the dense web of correspondence between Bigongiari and Sereni relating to the poetry of Char would also be worth studying. Equally valuable for the birth of Italian Hispanicism and the history of Guanda’s foreign literature series is the correspondence between Bodini and Macrı`.

Notes

185

Here I will provide just one exemplum, based on the unpublished testimony of Giorgio Caproni. 74 Caproni, ‘Il Vale´ry di Tutino’, 48. 75 Caproni sent about forty pieces of correspondence to Macrı`. There are a few letters, mostly cards or postcards, written with a delicate hand, often, as was the poet’s habit, in green ink. Above all, they contain signs of affection and respect, together with the trepidation with which Caproni sent his friend and ‘maestro’ his own verses for an opinion (‘I send them to you with immense trepidation’ he writes in a message dated 29 June 1947). 76 Caproni, ‘Il Vale´ry di Tutino’, 48. 77 Caproni’s letter to Macrı` dated 15 May 1947. In relation to his need for, and impatience to receive, Macrı`’s criticisms of his work, he writes: ‘Oh, the waiting with which this ‘‘woeful year’’ I hid myself from the inexplicable history and events of the last days which had replaced my season and that of the world with images of stone and blood and ‘‘faces cast down on stones’’ . . . Lost, I needed to find myself, and to find myself in your lines . . . Now I do not say it to offer you praise of which you have no need: but I want to serve at least as a witness, since within me I have the proof of your tremendous and yet so charitable capacity to weave the most intricate map of a poet, to the point of clarifying the smallest capillaries, unknown to the poet himself. You who know how to translate with the very same words the lyric into logical language in an almost narrative fashion through the natural light of your wisdom.’ Or, following a letter sent to Macrı` from Rome on 9 September 1958 on the subject of his passion and competence in the field of Spanish language and literature, Caproni notes in a letter sent from Rome on 30 July 1961: ‘I owe everything to you and to Bo.’ 78 From Loco on 21 August, a trembling Caproni sent his own translations of Machado to Macrı`. He writes ‘I fear my Machado is full of errors (I do not know Spanish)’, which says much about his passion for poetry, which on occasion led him even to forget his knowledge of foreign languages. Equally there is a letter sent to Macrı` from Rome on 4 September of an unknown year from his youth in relation to Macrı`’s ‘amendments’ to ‘my poor Lorca’. ‘I only have a basic knowledge of Spanish,’ observed Caproni while discussing the corrections with his friend. Ready to defend the poetic logic of his choices he goes on to say, ‘You translated ‘La luna / que finge cuando nina dolente res immo`vil’ as quando spunta and suggest al primo quarto. But I wanted to conserve quando `e piccina and for this reason translated (not well) da bambina, to suggest ancora bambina.’ 79 See another letter to Macrı` dated 29 June 1947: ‘I saw your beautiful translation of Machado and will soon tell of its worth in ‘‘Fiera’’.’ 80 This can easily be deduced from the message’s address, which finds Macrı` still in his first Florentine house at Via Jacopo Nardi 67. Machado would be the subject of a discussion between the two from 26 September 1947. 81 In relation to this last point it is worth recalling a letter to Macrı` dated 3 September 1959 in which Caproni talks of Bertolucci’s anthology of Spanish and Spanish-American authors, Poesia straniera del Novecento, and of the poems translated by – in an attempt to invoke the pietas of his friend – ‘your very devoted Giorgio’. 82 Caproni is here quoting Dante. Giorgio Caproni’s postcard to Oreste Macrı` dated 22 October 1988 continues, after the quotation from memory of the verses, with a ‘Dear Oreste, ‘‘see if you can finally make me happy!’’ [‘‘vedi oggimai se tu mi puoi far lieto!’’] For years and years these verses have been fluttering around in my head ever since I read them in a book of Spanish grammar in Livorno when I was not yet 10 years

186

Notes

old. From that incomplete and undoubtedly ungrammatical exercise they enchanted me and stuck in my memory. Can you, famous Sage also in Spanish matters, tell me the author and title? My ignorance does not help; the same has happened with many other verses, especially in Latin, which I can recite by heart without knowing who wrote them. Thank you. I am not at all well and hope that you are better than me. Did you receive from Lugano my microscopic pamphlet?’ 83 It is the seventh of Be´cquer’s Rimas.

Chapter 4: Value and Authority in Anthologies of Italian Poetry in English (1956–1992) 1

Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. For a survey of anthologies of Italian poetry in English published during the twentieth century, see Caselli, ‘ ‘‘The Land of Paradox’’: Il Novecento poetico Italiano in traduzione inglese’. See also Healey, Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography 1929– 1997. 2 Venuti reflects on this potential theoretical backlash in his ‘Translating Derrida on Translation’. 3 Lowell, Imitations. 4 Fulton, An Italian Quartet: Versions after Saba, Ungaretti, Montale, Quasimodo. 5 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 73. 6 Singh, Contemporary Italian Verse. 7 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 303. 8 Singh translates Luzi, Sereni, Betocchi, Solmi, Penna, Sinisgalli, Gatto, Bertolucci, Caproni, Parrochi, Fortini, Risi, Zanzotto, Erba, Cattafi, Sanguineti, Roversi, Giudici, Pagliarani, Raboni, Porta, Balestrini, Pasolini, and Majorino. 9 Singh, Contemporary, 5. 10 Bradshaw, From Pure Silence to Impure Dialogue: A Survey of Post-War Italian Poetry 1945–1965. 11 Within this context, I will consider Heaney as part of a British tradition including, not unproblematically, Northern Irish and Irish poetry. 12 Roberts, The Faber Book of Modern Verse, ed. and revised by Peter Porter. 13 See Schmidt and Lindop, British Poetry since the 1960s; Easthope and Thomson, Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory; Jones and Schmidt, British Poetry since the 1970s: A Critical Survey; Acheson and Huk, Contemporary British Poetry: Essays in Theory and Criticism. 14 Davie, Purity of Diction in English Verse; Morrison, The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s. 15 Conquest, New Lines: An Anthology. 16 In this respect Tom Paulin’s attacks on Ashbery are emblematic. 17 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 273–306. 18 de Bosis, The Golden Book of Italian Poetry. 19 ‘This is the background to modern Italian poetry. Leopardi was not recognized in his days for the supreme poet that he is: the century after him was spanned by three who were much less inspired, Carducci, Pascoli, D’Annunzio: and, then, with the vivid disintegration of Campana, the new age opens. As I write, Montale’s newest volume, La bufera e altro, is propped on the bookshop counters. The printing is not of the finest and

Notes

187

the book may not look impressive, but I, for one, feel that this is, for now and the future, a memorable production. The poet who has already given us Falsetto, Delta, the series of Mediterraneo, and Motteti [sic], La casa dei doganieri, has added to these richly, and in one poem at least, «L’anguilla», seems to have mounted higher than ever – like the anguilla itself, thrashing its way upstream in defiant joy. This is a good moment for Italian Poetry. G. R. Kay, Rome, October 1956.’ Kay, The Penguin Book of Italian Verse, p. xxvi. For a list of Montale’s editions during the twentieth century, see my ‘ ‘‘The Land of Paradox’’ ’, 261, note 31. 20 Poggioli, A Little Anthology of Italian Poetry, 309–29. 21 For a discussion of translation of T.S. Eliot’s poetry in the Italian see Capoferro, ‘Antologie e canone letterario: poesia inglese in Italia dagli anni Trenta agli anni Sessanta’. 22 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 285–6. 23 In 1992, Luigi Ballerini, following a thesis argued by Luigi Anceschi, argued that we should not regard Montale as the bearer of the weight of modernity within the Italian context; such a role should instead be played by Ungaretti, who is read by Ballerini as guiding a literary tradition leading from Mario Luzi to the Gruppo 93. Ballerini thus proposes an interpretation of twentieth-century Italian poetry based on the notion of linguistic experimentalism, but does not challenge the rather rigid double genealogical model within which Montale (or Ungaretti) has often been made to fit. 24 See Capoferro, ‘Antologie e canone letterario’; see also Healey, Twentieth-Century Italian Literature. 25 From a chronological point of view at least, the United States was quicker than Britain to produce special issues of poetry magazines. Caetani, An Anthology of New Italian Writers, selected from Botteghe Oscure was distributed in the USA by New Directions, in 1950 and later republished by Lehmann in London in 1951 and by Greenwood Press in 1970 in Westport, CT. 26 Italy 1963. The London Magazine, n.s. 3 (Oct. 1963), 5–87. 27 Barnstone and Terry, Modern European Poetry: French/German/Greek/Italian/Russian/ Spanish. 28 ‘But the single-minded revolution against all Italianate decorums, including crepuscolarism, resided in one man – Ungaretti – among the first and foremost in the European vanguard’, Modern European Poetry, 271. 29 The poets included are: Luzi, Sereni, Betocchi, Solmi, Penna, Sinisgalli, Gatto, Bertolucci, Caproni, Parrochi, Fortini, Risi, Zanzotto, Erba, Cattafi, Sanguineti, Roversi, Giudici, Pagliarani, Raboni, Porta, Balestrini, Pasolini and Majorino. 30 Trevelyan, Italian Writing Today. 31 Ibid., 9. 32 Golino, Contemporary Italian Poetry. An Anthology, reprinted by Greenwood Press in 1976. 33 Ibid., p. vii. 34 Ibid., p. xiii. 35 Swann, Mediterranean Review, 11 (Summer 1972). 36 Weissbort, Swann and Feldman (eds.), Modern Poetry in Translation. 37 Swann and Feldman, Collected Poems of Lucio Piccolo. 38 Feldman and Swann (eds.), Selected Poetry of Andrea Zanzotto. 39 Shema: Collected Poems of Primo Levi; The Dawn is Always New: Selected Poems of Rocco Scotellaro. 40 Feldman and Swann, Italian Poetry Today.

188

Notes

41

Ibid., 10. Ballerini, Shearsman of Sorts: Italian Poetry 1975–1993. Forum Italicum. Italian Poetry Supplement Journal of Italian Studies (1992). 43 Thomas Harrison also edited The Favourite Malice: Ontology and Reference in Contemporary Italian Poetry. 44 Modern Italian Poetry, reprinted in Poetry Australia, 22: 23–25. 45 Modern Italian Poetry, 4. 46 Ibid., 22. 47 Leavis, Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture, 3. 48 Bradshaw, From Pure Silence to Impure Dialogue: A Survey of Post-War Italian Poetry 1945–1965. 49 Allen, Kittel and Jewell (eds), The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present, A Bilingual Anthology. 50 Smith, The New Italian Poetry: 1945 to the Present. A Bilingual Anthology. 51 Ibid., 1–2. 52 Jucker, Italy quoted ibid., 2. 53 Smith, The New Italian Poetry, 3. 54 Smith is quoting in 1981 a political analysis of 1970. Ibid., 3. 55 Said, Orientalism. Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Poststructuralism, and the Colonial Context. 56 Smith, The New Italian Poetry, 14. 57 A different periodization can be found in Smith and Picchione, Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology. 58 Smith and Gioia, Poems from Italy. 59 Ibid., 17. 60 Triana-Toribio, Spanish National Cinema, 7. Triana-Toribio is referring to Camporesi’s Para grandes y chicos: un cine para los espan ˜ oles (1940–1990). 61 Gioia and Palma, New Italian Poets. 62 Translators such as Dana Gioia, Jonathan Galassi, Lawrence Venuti, Ruth Feldman and Robert McCracken translate in this volume poetry by Maria Luisa Spaziani, Rossana Ombres, Rodolfo Di Biasio, Fabio Doplicher, Umberto Piersanti, Luigi Fontanella, Patrizia Cavalli, Paolo Ruffilli, Milo De Angelis, and Valerio Magrelli. See also Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 303. 63 New Italian Poets, 8. 64 Ombres, Di Biasio and all poets up to Fontanella are said to belong to a ‘middle generation’; the others are said to belong to the post-World War II generation. 65 Easthope, Poetry as Discourse, 4–5. 42

Chapter 5: Varifocal Translation in Ciaran Carson’s Inferno 1

Scott, Translating Baudelaire, 15. Carson, The Inferno of Dante Alighieri: A New Translation. Some of the examples explored in this essay were first canvassed in my review of the Carson Dante, ‘Jamming up the Flax Machine’. 3 Paterson, The Eyes: A Version of Antonio Machado, 56. 4 Carson, The Inferno, IV, 106–25. 5 Steiner, After Babel, 332. 2

Notes

189

6

Sontag, ‘Notes on ‘‘Camp’’ ’, 279. Dante’s Italian is quoted from Giorgio Petrocchi’s edition, La commedia: secondo l’antica vulgata. 8 Browning, The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. See also Reynolds, ‘Browning and Translationese’. 9 Empson, ‘Hayward’s Translation of Faust’. 10 Carson, The Inferno, XIX. 11 Browning, The Ring and the Book, II. 25. 12 Eliot, ‘Dante’, 238, 239. 13 Eliot, ‘What Dante Means to Me’, 133, 129, 135, 134, 135. 14 Heaney, ‘Envies and Identifications’, 173, 169, 170. 15 Ibid., 176. 16 Mandelstam, ‘Conversation about Dante’, 51. 17 Carson, The Inferno, VI, 61–3. 18 Ibid., XI, 30 and XXIII, 55. 19 Ibid., III, 22–8. 20 Ibid., xi. 21 Ibid., x. 22 Ibid., xx. 23 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 20, 36. 24 They are repeated throughout The Translator’s Invisibility, for example 98, 147, and reaffirmed in (for instance) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference, 9– 14, 77, and ‘Translating Humour: Equivalence, Compensation, Discourse’, 9. 25 See also Hewitt, ‘An Examination of the Bleek and Lloyd Collection of /Xam Bushman Narratives, With Special Reference to the Trickster Ikaggen’. 26 Derrida, ‘Des tours de Babel’, 217, 173. 27 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 67–8; Hammond, Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome, 36. 28 Venuti, ‘Translating Humour’, 12–14. 29 Willans and Searle, How to be Topp, 35. 30 Derrida, Acts of Literature, 38. 31 Lewis, ‘The Measure of Translation Effects’, 270. 32 Ibid., 271–2 33 Ibid., 271. 34 Dante, Inferno, I, 65. 35 Ricks, Allusion to the Poets, 9. 7

Chapter 6: Acts of Literary Impertinence: Translating Belli’s romanesco Sonnets 1

Jackson, ‘Introduction’, p. xii. Abeni, ‘L’area anglosassone’, 197; translation mine. 3 Norse, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, 265–6. 4 Although only forty-six sonnets appeared in the collection, in his autobiography Norse refers to ‘some seventy sonnets in all’. Ibid., 266. 5 So far Neill has published two chapbooks of translations, A Hantle o Romanesco Sonnets bi Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli 1791–1863, and Seventeen Sonnets by G. G. Belli. I am 2

190

Notes

indebted to Jim Inglis for bringing three further sonnets to my attention which appeared in Epoch 12 (January 2000). This increasingly substantial achievement has to date received little critical attention. 6 The case of Scots is unusual here. It is a language rather than a dialect, with a rich literary tradition and dialects of its own. It is defined as a regional or minority language for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, and as a lesser-used language by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages. These definitions are insufficient, however, to encompass its literary position, in which the accessibility of much Scots poetry has allowed it to be read, with glossaries, and anthologized alongside English-language poetry. It is in that context that the present chapter brings together translations into Scots and into English dialect. 7 Williams, ‘Some Notes on Translation’, p. xxii. 8 DuVal, ‘Translating the Dialect: Miller Williams’, 31. 9 Belli, ‘Introduzione’, 8. 10 ‘parlari non esclusivamente appartenenti a tale o tal plebe o frazione del popolo’, ibid. 11 Bonaffini, ‘Translating Dialect Literature’ at http://userhome.brooklyn. cuny.edu/bonaffini/DP/bonaffini1.htm, viewed 25 June 2007. 12 Williams is the only translator since the 1950s to translate Belli’s language into ‘standard’. Michael Sullivan’s unpublished translations use a lively Cockney; a recent translation by Paul Howard of ‘La bbona famijja’ which was placed in the inaugural Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation is rendered in a Yorkshire regional voice. 13 Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, 323, 243. 14 Burgess, Abba Abba, 90–1. 15 Norse, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, 265. 16 Ibid., 266. 17 Garioch, Collected Poems, 217 and xxviii. 18 Ibid., p. vii. 19 Carrell, Seven Poets, 63. 20 Williams, ‘Preface’, 1. 21 This analogy between French and Modern Greek is strikingly argued in Queneau’s essay ‘E´crit en 1937’. 22 Williams, ‘Preface’, 1. 23 Ibid. 24 Roman Sonnets no. XXXVI. 25 Abeni, ‘L’area anglosassone’, 210. 26 The editors of the Hudson Review waited until their contract with that printer expired some months later, and printed twenty-six sonnets in their April 1956 issue. Norse, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, 268–9. 27 The existence of a tradition of Lancashire dialect poetry existing by the 1970s is attested by volumes such as John Sparth, Both Blood and Sheen and the collections of verse from the long-running county journal Lancashire Life, Just Sithabod and Cheyp at t’Price. 28 Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, 242. 29 Burgess, Abba Abba, 91. 30 Ibid., 89. 31 Ibid., 120. 32 Belli, ‘Introduzione’, 9.

Notes 33

191

Burgess, Abba Abba, 111. Ellis, ‘Decanonising the Canon? The Role of the Translator’, 66. 35 Findlay, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, 36. 36 Corbett, Written in the Language of the Scottish Nation; Findlay, Frae Ither Tongues. 37 Findlay, Frae Ither Tongues, 6. 38 Anonymous, ‘Notes on contributors’, 104. 39 Findlay, Frae Ither Tongues, 7. 40 Carrell, Seven Poets, 61. 41 Duranti, ‘The Paradox of Distance: Belli Translated into English and Scots’, 41. 42 Abeni, ‘L’area anglosassone’, 200–4 43 Roman Sonnets, no. I. 44 Burgess, Abba Abba, 127 45 Abeni, ‘L’area anglosassone’, 209. 46 The poem, along with the second and third in the sequence, were published on the website of the online journal Epoch, now no longer live. I am grateful to the journal’s editor Jim Inglis for supplying the texts of the three translations (personal communication, 30 April 2005). 47 Burgess, Abba Abba, 104. 48 Roman Sonnets, no. XXIX. 49 Burgess, Abba Abba, 101 50 Duranti, ‘The Paradox of Distance: Belli Translated into English and Scots’, 38. 51 Burgess, You’ve Had your Time, 242, 243. 52 Burgess, Abba Abba, 91. 53 Ibid., 122. 54 Ibid., 125. 55 Ibid., 111. 56 Ibid., 108. 57 Williams, ‘Some Notes on the Translations’, p. xxi. 58 Belli is represented in Classe by a paragraph in the section on Italian literature by ´ Cuilleana´in. Cormac O 59 Jackson, ‘Introduction’, p. xii 60 ‘It is an ingenious, allusive book, but those who lack the patience or the appetite for this slightly self-indulgent kind of literary codebreaking may find themselves baffled and unmoved.’ Lewis, review of Abba Abba, 9. 61 Roman Sonnets, back cover. 62 Findlay, ‘Translating into Dialect’, 199. 63 Barbara Reynolds, rev., 103. 64 Quoted in Findlay, ‘Translating into Dialect’, 200. 65 The use of the word ‘dialect’ to refer to Scots is particularly problematic. As Findlay points out, his own use of the word to describe Kelman’s language is something to which ‘I suspect . . . [Kelman] would have strong political objections . . ., since the term implies that what he speaks and writes is not ‘‘standard’’, whereas for him it is ‘‘standard’’ ’. Ibid., 201. 66 Whyte, Modern Scottish Poetry, 120. 67 Howard, ‘Translator’s commentary’, 9. 68 Vighi, ‘I sonetti oltre frontiera’, 374. 34

192

Notes

Chapter 7: Trilussa: A Case Study in the Translation of Dialect Poetry 1 I wish to thank Zygmunt Baran´ski and Robin Kirkpatrick for their advice. Showerman, Trilussa: Roman Satirical Poems and their Translations; Kirschenbaum, Fables of Trastevere; Du Val, Tales of Trilussa; and Hooper, ‘Dialectal Dialectics: Translating Trilussa’. Where not otherwise noted, the translations in this chapter are mine. 2 Va`rvaro, Linguistica romanza, 36. 3 Posner, The Romance Languages, 190. 4 Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language, 324, 325. 5 Trudgill, Sociolinguistics, 18. 6 Vignuzzi, ‘Lazio, Umbria and Marche’, 317. 7 In the fable ‘Libberta`’, freedom is given the form of a woman whom unscrupulous men try to molest. Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 576. 8 The exception is represented by a few examples of pastiche French in early sonnets such as ‘Le Soprascritte’, ‘La donna barbuta’ and ‘La lingua francese’; Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 21, 61, 75. 9 Belli, Sonetti, 165. 10 Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 102–4. 11 Ibid., 607. 12 ‘Un Gatto, che faceva er socialista / solo a lo scopo d’ariva` in un posto, / se stava lavoranno un pollo arosto / ne la cucina d’un capitalista. // Quanno da un finestrino su per aria / s’affaccio` un antro Gatto: – Amico mio, / pensa – je disse – che ce so’ pur’io / ch’appartengo a la classe proletaria! // Io che conosco bene l’idee tue / so certo che quer pollo che tu magni, / se vengo giu`, sara` diviso in due: / mezzo a te, mezzo a me. . . Semo compagni! // – No, no: – rispose er Gatto senza core – / io nun divido gnente co’ nessuno: / fo er socialista quanno sto a diggiuno, / ma quanno magno so’ conservatore!’ Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 236. Showerman, Trilussa, 144. 13 Albeit some allowances must be made for the development of standard English since the interwar period when most of Showerman’s translations were written, so that what may have seemed natural to him appears mannered to the twenty-first-century reader. But this would not apply to a construction such as ‘’twas’, which was an archaism even in the mid-twentieth century. 14 My translation reads: ‘A leftie cat, what sometimes changed ’is chune, / because it was ’imself ’e fort of most, / was munchin’ slowly on a chicken roast, / inside the kitchen of a rich tycoon. / Anuvver cat then peered in frew the glass / of a small window ’igh up in the wall. / ‘‘Jus’ fink of me mate,’’ ’e began to call, / ‘‘you’s not the only one ’oo’s workin’ class! / I knows your ideology, I do, / I’m sure if I can some’ow get down there, / you won’t mind splittin’ that there bird in two./ ’Alf each we’ll ’ave. We’s comrades, fair is fair!’’ // But that cold ’ard-’earted puss, ’e wouldn’t give/ ‘‘Me, I don’t share wiv no one else,’’ ’e said / ‘‘I’m jus’ a leftie when I ain’t bin fed, / but when I’m full I’m quite conservative!’’ ’ Hooper, ‘Translating Trilussa’, 302. 15 Showerman, Trilussa: Roman Satirical Poems and their Translation, 23. 16 Duggan, A Concise History of Italy, 172. 17 Clark, The Longman History of Italy, 165. 18 ‘Me scusera` che sto cosı` sciattata / signora mia, nun aspettavo gente: / lei tutta scicche, nu’ glie dico gnente. . . / Come sta bene! Come s’e` ingrassata!. . . // Chi? ` andata a Messa, indegnamente. . . / Caterina? Sta da mia cognata. . . / Lugrezzia? E

Notes

193

Quando vengon’a casa, chi le sente?! / A sapello, l’avrebbero aspettata! // Se ne va? Me saluti la sorella. . . / Grazie. Sara` servita. Sissignora, / cerchero` de venirce. Arivedella. // Oh! s’e` rotta le cianche, si’ ammaita! / Caterina, Lugrezzia, uscite fo`ra, / che´ ’sta scoccia-stivali se n’e` ita!’ Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 76. 19 See also Kirschenbaum, Fables from Trastevere: The romanesco verse of Trilussa, p. ix. 20 Ibid., p. x. 21 Ibid. 22 Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 211; Kirschenbaum, Fables from Trastevere, 30–1. 23 ‘Ce fu una Mosca che me se poso` / su un pasticcio de gnocchi; io la cacciai: / ma quella, sı`! scocciante piu` che mai, / fece un giretto ar sole e ritorno`. / – Scio`, je strillavo – scio`!. . . / che´, se t’acchiappo, guai! / Se fussi una farfalla, embe`, pazzienza, / che´ armeno, quelle, vanno su le rose: / ma tu che te la fai / su certe brutte cose, e` ’na schifenza!. . . // La Mosca me rispose: – Avrai raggione, / ma la corpa e` un po’ tua che da principio / nun m’hai saputo da` l’educazzione. / Io trovo giusto che me cacci via / se vado su la robba che te piace, / ma nun me spiego che me lasci in pace / quanno me poso su la porcheria!’, Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 469; Kirschenbaum, Fables of Trastevere, 11. 24 Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 469. 25 ‘There are four metrical systems in English poetry: the accentual, the accentualsyllabic, the syllabic, and the quantitative. Of these, the second accounts for more poems in the English language – and in this anthology – than do the other three together.’ Norton Anthology of English Poetry, p. lxii. 26 Du Val, ‘Translating the Dialect’, 28. 27 Williams, ‘Some Notes on the Translations’, p. xxii. 28 Du Val, ‘Translating the Dialect’, 30–1. 29 ‘Li sassi che volaveno per aria / cascaveno de peso tra le file / de li sordati, verdi pe’ la bile / de conserva` la carma necessaria. // Come voˆi che sparassero? Er fucile / che mira su la crasse proletaria / e` un’infamia, un sopruso, una barbaria / che fa vergogna a un popolo civile! // E pe’ questo tiravo! A un polizziotto / je detti un se´rcio in testa e je strillai / ‘Impunito! Bojaccia! Galeotto!’ // Era precisamente er brigadiere / che m’aresto` quer giorno sur tranvai / perche´ fregai l’orloggio a un forastiere.’ Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 14. 30 ‘Impunito! Bojaccia! Galeotto!’ are the three original insults, of which the first two are sufficiently obscure to merit footnotes in the Mondadori edition. Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 14. 31 ‘Mentre me leggo er solito giornale / spaparacchiato all’ombra d’un pajaro, / vedo un porco e je dico: – Addio majale! – / vedo un ciuccio e je dico: – Addio somaro! – // Forse ’ste bestie nun me capiranno, / ma provo armeno la soddisfazione / de pote´ di’ le cose come stanno / senza paura de finı` in priggione.’ Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 753. Du Val, ‘Translating the Dialect’, 111. 32 The first stanza of my translation reads: ‘One mornin’ I’m readin’ the Daily Reporter, / stretched out in the shade an’ feelin’ chipper. / I sees a pig, says ‘‘ello porker.’’ / I sees a cow, says ‘‘’ello ’eifer.’’ ’ Hooper, ‘Translating Trilussa’, 303. 33 Grillandi, ‘Trilussa, la favola e La Fontaine’, 301. 34 Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 804. 35 ‘Un conijo coraggioso’ is only one among many poems containing topical references. Other instances in poems cited here include ‘All’ombra’’s allusions to the suppression of free speech under Fascism and ‘L’affare de la razza’’s satire of the 1938 ‘Leggi razziali’. Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 753, 907. 36 ‘Le Lion’ tells of the failure of ‘Sultan leopard’ to heed the advice of his vizier, the

194

Notes

fox, either to attack his neighbour the lion whilst he (the lion) is still a cub or, once the lion is grown, to befriend him. Its moral, ‘Proposez-vous d’avoir le lion pour ami / si vous voulez le laissez craıˆtre’, makes clear that the lion in question is intended to be universally relevant; he is not reminiscent of Louis XIV, and nor is the fable’s message specific to seventeenth-century France. La Fontaine, Fables, 235. 37 Du Val, ‘Translating the Dialect’, 30. 38 Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology, 85. 39 Pasolini, ‘La poesia dialettale del Novecento’, 68. 40 Pasolini’s own romanesco novels and films make use of a far less standardized form of the dialect, although their language is still inevitably not precisely verisimilar. Indeed it is arguable that Pasolini’s dialect works perform a similar literary operation to Trilussa’s: despite their far greater opacity compared to Trilussa’s poetry, both the Friulian poetry and the romanesco novels and films were manifestly for national, not local, publication and appreciation and so could be seen to make use of dialectal speech’s ‘covert prestige’ to gain credibility amongst an audience of speakers of the standard language. However, in the context of ‘La poesia dialettale del Novecento’, Pasolini is clearly trying to establish the geographical and cultural authenticity of dialect writing per se, and Trilussa’s work represents an inconvenient anomaly – hence the condemnation it receives. For a full consideration of Pasolini’s use of language see the essays by De Mauro and Baran´ski in Pasolini: Old and New. 41 The cat in the Romanesco original is called ‘Ajo`’, which was the name of Trilussa’s own cat. I have been unable to discover any significance, Jewish or otherwise, of the name Ajo` or indeed of the two other names which the narrator’s friend suggests, ‘Aju`’ and ‘Aja`’ and so have interpreted them as nonsense words; as the reference to Trilussa’s cat would inevitably be lost, I saw no reason to use nonsense names in my translation. 42 Hooper, ‘Translating Trilussa’, 306. 43 ‘Ciavevo un gatto e lo chiamavo Ajo`; / ma, dato ch’era un nome un po’ giudio, / agnedi da un prefetto amico mio / pe’ domannaje se potevo o no: / volevo sta’ tranquillo, tantoppiu` / ch’ero disposto de chiamallo Aju`. // – Bisognera` studia` – disse er prefetto – / la vera provenenza de la madre. . . – / Dico: – La madre e` un’a`ngora, ma er padre / era siamese e bazzicava er Ghetto; / er gatto mio, pero`, sarebbe nato / tre mesi doppo a casa der Curato. // Se veramente ciai ’ste prove in mano, / – me rispose l’amico – se fa presto. / La posizzione e` chiara. – E detto questo / firmo` una carta e me lo fece ariano. / – Pero` – me disse – pe’ tranquillita`, / e` forse mejo che lo chiami Aja`.’ Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, 907–10. 44 ‘Il ‘‘romanesco’’ di Trilussa e` un linguaggio cosı` vicino alla lingua commune che puo` essere facilmente inteso dagli italiani da ogni regione.’ Trilussa, Tutte le poesie, p. ix. 45 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 311. 46 Ibid., 305. See also Venuti, ‘Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry’. 47 Jones, ‘Dialect Writing’, 189. 48 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 279. 49 Ibid., 79. 50 Ibid., 311. 51 Pym, ‘Venuti’s Visibility’, 174. 52 Ibid., 176. 53 For translating practices aimed at vindicating the importance of dialect poetry, see Luigi Bonaffini, ed., Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy: Texts and Criticism. A Trilingual Anthology, and Achille Serrao, Luigi Bonaffini, Justin Vitiello, eds., Via Terra: An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Dialect Poetry.

Notes

195

Chapter 8: Arsenio’s Alchemy: Notes on Eugenio Montale’s 1933 Translations of T.S. Eliot and Le´onie Adams 1

Bassnett and Lefevere, ‘General Editors’ Preface’, p. vii. Commenting on Jakobson’s view that ‘poetry by definition is untranslatable’ and, consequently, that ‘only creative transposition is possible’ (Jakobson, ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, 236), George Talbot asserts that ‘the concept of creative transposition implies that absolute translation of poetic texts is an illusion: the transfer from one language to another cannot be total’ (Talbot, Montale’s mestiere vile: The Elective Translations from English of the 1930s and 1940s, 26). I expand on these issues in my Italian essays ‘Minuzie montaliane’ in Bettarini, Manghetti and Zabagli (eds), Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Clizia and ‘Debiti e doni della traduzione poetica: Montale tra T.S. Eliot e Beckett. Schede su Montale tradotto e traduttore’. I wish to thank Sally Hill of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Daniel Ribot for their help with the English translation. Special thanks to Jean Cook (New York) and Mario Rovere at Biblioteca Comunale ‘Sormani’ (Milan) for their invaluable assistance. Where not otherwise noted, the translations in this chapter are mine. 2 ‘[A] list of theories of translations runs the risk of being a dictionary of commonplaces’, in Calo`, Manuale del Traduttore, 16. 3 Sansone, ‘Traduzione ritmica e traduzione metrica’, 12. 4 In an essay on Montale’s translation of Hudson’s Green Mansions, Grignani and Bonadei point out that ‘Montale never explained his own idea of translating in essays; one has to find it in the articles he wrote about other people’s translations or about his own.’ Grignani and Bonadei, ‘Schegge per l’analisi di Montale traduttore di Hudson’, 184. 5 Talbot, Montale’s mestiere vile: The Elective Translations from English of the 1930s and 1940s, 78. 6 See Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories, 1; Bassnett and Lefevere ‘General Editors’ Preface’, p. vii; and Douglas Robinson, Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche, p. xvii for an overview of the expansion of translation studies. For Gentzler, however, ‘ ‘‘Translation Theory’’ is and is not a new field; though it has existed only since 1983 as a separate entry in the Modern Language Association International Bibliography, it is as old as the tower of Babel.’ Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories, 1. 7 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 6–7. 8 Ibid., 2. 9 The Greek word for poetry, po´esis / poı´esis, derives from the verb poieıˆn, ‘to create’. The creative aspect of poetry can thus be considered inherent to both the original and the translated text. Calo` has stated that, even from a legal point of view, ‘this connotation, already present in copyright law, is identified as ‘‘creative elaboration’’ ’. Calo`, Manuale del Traduttore, 13. Cesare Pavese, one of Italy’s most skilful and sophisticated translators (and translation editors) agreed. In a letter to Enrico Bemporad dated 4 April 1931, responding to his Florence-based publisher’s comments on his translation of Sinclair Lewis’ Our Mr Wrenn, Pavese identifies two typologies: ‘[e]ither a precise, cold and impersonal translation, which, even if it could be achieved, the public would barely understand, or a translation that is a second creation, and so exposed to the dangers of any creation and above all, a translation aware of the audience it speaks to.’

196

Notes

In another letter, dated 15 January 1940, to another publisher, Bompiani, regarding the translation of John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, subsequently translated by Vittorini and then by Montale himself, Pavese points out that ‘[i]n order to translate well one has to fall in love with the verbal material of a work and one has to feel this work being reborn in one’s own language with the urgency of a second creation. Otherwise, translation is a mechanical job that anyone can do.’ Pavese, Lettere 1922–44, 290 and 554, respectively. 10 Montale, ‘Intenzioni’ (‘Intervista immaginaria’), first published in La Rassegna d’Italia, in 1946; now in Montale, Il secondo mestiere: Arte, musica, societa`, 1482. In one of his ‘dispersed poems’, Montale voices his view of commissioned translations: ‘per me ha tanto di barba / questo mestiere vile / ma solo traduzioni / mi chiedono i coglioni’. Montale, ‘Addio addio crudele’, in Tutte le poesie, 821. According to Gilberto Lonardi, the literary translator operates in two zones: that of ‘liberta`’ (‘freedom’) and that of ‘dura necessita`’ (‘stark necessity’). Lonardi, Il vecchio e il giovane, e altri studi su Montale, 144. 11 In the second of their letters, dated 22 February 1928, Montale writes to Frank: ‘Do you think it would be possible for me to find somebody to do a translation, even a rough one, of three or four short poems? Larbaud would happily publish them in Commerce – he had suggested that Mme. Le Sache´ Bossuet have a go, but she didn’t manage to get anywhere with it.’ Bernardini Napoletano, ‘Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Nino Frank’. 12 As Grignani and Bonadei point out, ‘a sort of e´clat, a strong grammar of vision that allows Montale always to give a reading of what he is translating that is Italian and his own, no matter whether he is translating from English, French or Spanish’ emerges, clearly and authoritatively, from Montale’s poetic translations. His signature as a literary translator, therefore, ‘has to be understood more in lexical than grammatical terms, above all when the vocabulary assumes phonic and chromatic as well as rhythmic and syntactic values’. Grignani and Bonadei, ‘Schegge per l’analisi di Montale traduttore di Hudson’, 183. 13 Examining the differences between ‘traduzione’ (translation) and ‘rifacimento’ (adaptation or re-working), the poet and translator Franco Fortini has outlined the history of literary translation in twentieth-century Italy: ‘[i]f one takes into account the history of literary translation from the point of view of the development of cultural institutions in the last fifty years, one can conclude that after the Twenties, when poets seemed only occasionally to understand the importance of translation for their own work, an age of great developments in poetic translation follows, between 1930 and 1943.’ Fortini, ‘Traduzione e rifacimento’, 123. In the context of Montale’s development as a poet, it is important to bear in mind that these are the years that marked the ‘rite of passage’ from the Ossi di seppia to Le occasioni. 14 In this period, Montale above all translated American novelists. Talbot, Montale’s mestiere vile, 15. 15 Montale, ‘Nota’, in Quaderno di traduzioni, now in Montale, L’opera in versi, 1154. 16 In the opening remarks to Montale’s poetic translations, Lonardi defines them as ‘wondrous ‘‘conversion exercises’’ ’. Lonardi, ‘Dentro e fuori il tradurre montaliano’, 144. 17 Piersanti, for instance, emphasizes that, ‘once it is established that the text cannot be reduced to a pretext (herein lies . . . the morality of translating, the respect towards the ‘‘world’’ and ‘‘art’’ of an author that we are about to translate into another language) the approaches can vary dramatically: and it is not always true that a more

Notes

197

‘‘detached’’ and ‘‘controlled’’ translation is necessarily inferior to an ‘‘emotionally involved’’ translation’. Fortini, ‘Traduzione e rifacimento’, 129. 18 Grignani and Bonadei summarize Montale’s approach to translation in these terms: ‘If one has to draw conclusions from Montale’s writings, he did not formulate any ideal method of ‘‘calque’’, and he was certainly against ‘‘interlineal’’ translation of the kind Goethe defined as ‘‘parodic’’. On the other hand, Montale is against . . . using force on the receiving textual structure, the target language: in the famous 1947 article entitled ‘‘Eliot e noi’’, he warned the translator not to transform beyond recognition ‘‘the plastic and calm spirit of our language’’. The poet’s sympathy goes to the writertranslator, an ‘‘unfaithful genius’’ perhaps – the expression is to be found in a text from 1949 explicitly dedicated to the problem of translation – but, nonetheless, his conception does take into account the irreducible internal form of the language and then allows small adjustments which force the language into a rhythmic acceleration. Montale’s idea that every poetic language is a historicized language, a relationship, suggests that in his translations of poems and prose we should not expect literalness.’ Terracini, Il problema della traduzione, 29. 19 Fortini, ‘Traduzione e rifacimento’, 126. 20 Another Italian poet and translator, Giorgio Caproni, talks of ‘irresistible sympathy’ (Caproni, ‘L’arte del tradurre’, 122) as the simplest and at the same time most complex reason that motivates a poet to translate another poet. According to Lawrence Venuti, this ‘sympathetic’ approach characterizes the practice of translation as transparent and defines the role of the translator on the basis of his ‘identification with the foreign author’s personality’. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 274–5. 21 Bisutti, ‘Sul rapporto fra poeta tradotto e traduttore’, 180. 22 A clear and convincing definition of translation as empathy is offered by Poggioli: ‘translation is, both formally and psychologically, a process of inscape, rather than of escape; and this is why, of all available aesthetic concepts, the best suited to define the activity and experience of the translator is that of Einfu ¨ hlung or ‘‘Empathy’’, which must not be understood merely as the transference of an emotional content. The foreign poem is not merely an object, but an archetype, which provokes an active spiritual impact.’ Poggioli, ‘The Added Artificer’, 141–2. 23 Bisutti, ‘Sul rapporto fra poeta tradotto e traduttore’, 179. Poggioli describes how ‘[t]he foreign poem becomes in him ‘‘a model’’, in the sense that this word has recently acquired in the field of scientific theory and inquiry. It is in such a context that we can define translation as a form of literary mimesis, and in such a context alone.’ Poggioli, ‘The Added Artificer’, 141. 24 For example, in the preface to his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, Leopardi writes: ‘Since I have undertaken the enterprise, I am now in a position to say from my own experience that without being a poet one cannot translate a true poet.’ Leopardi, ‘Traduzione del libro secondo della Eneide’, 969. Orelli points out that ‘the fundamental condition for a translation to be beautiful is that the translator himself be a poetic spirit’. Orelli, ‘Sulla ‘‘fedelta` alla poesia’’ nel tradurre’, 321. 25 Poggioli, ‘The Added Artificer’, 141–2. 26 Caretti, ‘Testi montaliani inediti’. 27 Montale, ‘Intenzioni (Intervista immaginaria)’, 1482. As Talbot puts it, ‘[h]aving come into contact with Modernism, Montale cultivated a foreign sensibility in his own work’. Talbot, Montale’s mestiere vile, 244. 28 Lonardi emphasizes that Montale pursues this ‘objective of rhythmical dynamism’ by refusing to settle for a ‘synchrony between the syntactic unit and metre’. Lonardi,

198

Notes

‘Dentro e fuori il tradurre montaliano’, 159. In a short but incisive essay on translation, Gianfranco Contini points out that ‘the metrical crisis, initiated by Carducci’s metrica barbara, has had consequences that are more than incidental and have affected the [Italian] art of translating. And these are the rupture of the nineteenth-century canon or common place of average humanistic tastes, and the rupture of the equivalence between Italian closed form and a foreign closed form.’ Contini, Esercizıˆ di letteratura, 372. 29 Referring to the ‘Mottetti’ sequence in Le occasioni in particular, Lonardi emphasizes how ‘the translator’s high reactivity towards the most stimulating texts (in the sense of a dense poetry of objects, above all the poetry of Hopkins, Yeats and Joyce, but also Shakespeare’s sonnets) indirectly confirms that the indigenous examples were insufficient’. Lonardi, ‘Dentro e fuori il tradurre montaliano’, 149. 30 Smith, The Origins of Modernism: Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the Rhetorics of Renewal, 6. 31 Fortini, ‘Traduzione e rifacimento’, 130. 32 Lonardi, ‘Dentro e fuori il tradurre montaliano’, 163. 33 Eliot, ‘La figlia che piange’ and ‘Canto di Simeone’, trans. E. Montale, published in Circoli (1933). 34 Adams, ‘Ninna nanna’, adaptation by E. Montale. Published in Circoli in 1933. 35 Adams, ‘Mortalite´ d’avril’, in Anthologie de la nouvelle poe´sie ame´ricaine, 9. 36 Irma talks of reading Ossi di seppia, and meeting Eugenio Montale for the first time, in her correspondence with Gino Bigongiari, in a letter dated October 1931, and in one dated 20 July 1933. A selection of passages from the journals and correspondence of Irma Brandeis is forthcoming: Irma Brandeis: Origini di una musa, I. Intimita`. 37 Brandeis, ‘Al lettore da I.B.’, in Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Clizia, 279. 38 In Irma’s diary, according to Rosanna Bettarini, ‘a few lines shed light on the brief summer of 1933’ between 24 June and 14 September. See Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Clizia, XIII. 39 Adams, High Falcon and Other Poems, in Pritoni (ed.), Catalogo del Fondo Montale, 98 (n. 952, F.M. FIR 1). 40 Montale, Lettere a Clizia, 286, 326. 41 The lines in question read as follows: ‘Ma ora squilla il telefono e una voce / che stento a riconoscere dice ciao. / Volevo dirtelo, aggiunge, dopo trent’anni. / Il mio nome e` Giovanna, fui l’amica di Clizia / e m’imbarcai con lei. Non aggiungo altro / ne´ dico arrivederci che sarebbe ridicolo / per tutti e due.’ Montale, ‘Interno/Esterno’, in Montale, L’opera in versi, 698, vv. 19–25. 42 For this information I am indebted to the staff of the Sarah Lawrence College Archives, and in particular to Christina Lehman. 43 Talbot, Montale’s mestiere vile: The Elective Translations from English of the 1930s and 1940s, 221. 44 Montale, ‘Nota’, in Circoli (1933), 50; now in L’opera in versi, 1161. 45 Talbot, Montale’s mestiere vile, 66. 46 The following lines are particularly significant: ‘Quella belta` che ti ravvolge e` ancora / parvenza del mio cuore che nel tuo / alberga – e il tuo nel mio’ (‘For all that beauty that doth cover thee / is but the seemly raiment of my heart, / which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me’, sonnet XXII); ‘Anch’io sul far del giorno ebbi il mio sole / e il suo trionfo mi brillo` sul ciglio: / ma, ahime`, pote´ restarvi solo un’ora sola, / rapito dalle nubi in cui s’impiglia’ (‘Even so my sun one early morn did shine / with all triumphant splendour on my brow; / but out, alack, he was but one hour mine, / the region cloud hath masked him from me now’, sonnet XXXIII). One might speculate

Notes

199

whether the number of this sonnet is linked to the year when Irma and Eugenio met; ‘Ma tu che rendi men che nulla questi / gioielli se ti mostri, tu mio primo / conforto e ora mio cruccio’ (‘But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, / most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief’, sonnet XLVIII). 47 Praz, La casa della vita, 237. 48 Praz, ‘Cronache inglesi’, in Cronache letterarie anglosassoni, 190. 49 Montale, ‘Eliot e noi’. L’immagine (1947); now in Il secondo mestiere: Prose 1920–1979, 713–14. 50 In Moloney’s words, Mario Praz was the ‘cultural operator’ between ‘Montale in Italy and Eliot and The Criterion in London’. Moloney, Montale and Eliot: Affinities and Influences, 18. For a comprehensive account and analysis of Praz’s involvement with Montale’s translations of T.S. Eliot’s poetry, see Sonzogni, ‘Praz, uno snodo tra T.S. Eliot e Montale (Appunti su Montale traduttore di T.S. Eliot)’. 51 Adams, ‘Caryatid’. This Quarter, II, 2 (1930): 211. 52 For a literary profile of Irma Brandeis, see De Caro’s biographical and bibliographical study, Journey to Irma. Una approssimazione all’ispiratrice Americana di Eugenio Montale. Parte prima. Irma, un ‘romanzo’. Brandeis’s short essay on Montale’s poetry, ‘An Italian Letter’, was published in The Saturday Review of Literature, 18 July 1936, 16. 53 De Caro, Journey to Irma: Una approssimazione all’ispiratrice Americana di Eugenio Montale. Parte prima. Irma, un ‘romanzo’, 55. In an essay on Brandeis’ translations of Montale’s poetry, Rebonato has highlighted the impact and implications of their relationship on their literary and poetic ‘exchanges’. Rebonato, ‘La ‘‘pianola’’ di Montale: Irma Brandeis e la traduzione dei mottetti’. 54 As Bettarini explains in her impeccable annotations to the Montale–Brandeis correspondence, ‘[b]y ‘‘editor’’ of the ‘‘Circoli’’ issue, M[ontale] means Giacomo Prampolini (1898–1975) who, as indicated by the Table of Contents, was indeed responsible for the ‘‘Presentation and selection’’, and who also oversaw the translation of numerous texts; the publication’s general editors, however, were Adriano Grande e Guglielmo Bianchi’. Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Clizia, 309. 55 Ibid., 27. 56 Ibid., 59, Montale’s English. 57 Ibid., 60. 58 Ibid., 61. 59 Ibid., 67. 60 Ibid., 70–1. 61 Ibid., 60. 62 Ibid., 184. Montale’s English. 63 Ibid. Montale’s English. 64 ‘Briciole’ [crumbs] is the term used by Montale to present the poetic translations included in his Quaderno di traduzioni (Montale, ‘Nota’, L’opera in versi, 1154. 65 Montale, Lettere a Vale´ry Larbaud (1924–1937). 66 In the original, ‘che non s’impara mai’. Montale, Auto da fe´, now in Il secondo mestiere: Arte, musica, societa`, 61. 67 nı´ Leathlobhair, ‘Translation with a Mandatory Health Warning: Contemporary Irish Poetry a´ aistriu´/Filı´ocht Comhaimseartha in Translation’, 59. 68 Kemeny, quoted in Wardle, Avviamento alla traduzione, 18. 69 Bettarini, ‘Introduzione’, in Eugenio Montale. Lettere a Clizia, XXXIX.

200

Notes

Chapter 9: Going after ‘La Bufera’: Geoffrey Hill Translates Eugenio Montale 1

Montale, Tutte le poesie, 197. Hill, Without Title, 80. 3 Hill, Collected Poems, 204. The statements refer respectively to the final sonnet of ‘Lacrimae’ after Lope de Vega and to the poems ‘Two Chorale-Preludes’ based on poems in Paul Celan’s Die Niemandsrose. 4 ‘La Bufera’ reads: ‘(Les princes n’ont point d’yeux voir ces grand’s merveilles, / Leurs mains ne servent plus qu’a` nous perse´cuter. . . AGRIPPA D’AUBIGNE´, A` Dieu). La bufera che sgronda sulle foglie / dure della magnolia i lunghi tuoni / marzolini e la grandine, // (i suoni di cristallo nel tuo nido / notturno ti sorprendono, dell’oro / che s’e` spento sui mogani, sul taglio / dei libri rilegati, brucia ancora / una grana di zucchero nel guscio / delle tue palpebre) // il lampo che candisce / alberi e muri e li sorprende in quella / eternita` d’istante – marmo manna / e distruzione – ch’entro te scolpita / porti per tua condanna e che ti lega / piu` che l’amore a me, strana sorella, – // e poi lo schianto rude, i sistri, il fremere / dei tamburelli sulla fossa fuia, / lo scalpicciare del fandango, e sopra / qualche gesto che annaspa . . . // Come quando // ti rivolgesti e con la mano, sgombra / la fronte dalla nube dei capelli, // mi salutasti – per entrar nel buio.’ 5 Hill, Triumph of Love, CXXXIV, 31–2. 6 Citations in this paragraph are taken from The Triumph of Love, CXXXIV, 31, 33, 15– 17, 2, 6–7. 7 Hill, Triumph of Love, CXXXIV, 31. 8 Ibid., 34. 9 Hill, Collected, 15–16, 103–34. 10 Montale, Tutte le poesie, 195–211. 11 Sixteenth-century French Huguenot soldier and poet Agrippa D’Aubigne´ is renowned for his compelling accounts of the horrors of war, specifically the French Wars of Religion (1562–98). Montale’s quote is taken from D’Aubigne´’s ‘Priere a` Dieu pour venger les Protestants’ – to be found in Brerenton (ed.), Penguin Book of French Verse: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, 133–9, 27, 29. Montale will later refer to this quotation when explaining why the pamphlet could not be published in Italy during the Fascist regime. He writes: ‘The booklet, with that epigraph by d’Aubigne´, who criticizes the sanguinary princes, was unpublishable in Italy, in ’43’; translation mine. Eugenio Montale, ‘Intenzioni – Intervista Immaginaria’, 83. 12 Hill, Triumph, CXXXIV, 2. 13 See Becker, ‘ ‘‘What we are not’’: Montale’s Anti-Fascism Revisited’. 14 Hill, Collected, 61, 70, 152. 15 Hill, The Orchards of Syon, LIII, 11–13. 16 Rebay, ‘Un cestello di Montale: Le Gambe di Dora Markus e una Lettera di Roberto Balzen’, 162–3. 17 For further discussion of Montale’s muses and their identities see Tomlinson, ‘A Poet and his Muses’; Robinson, ‘Montale and the Muse’; Butcher, ‘A ‘‘lauro risecchito’’? The poet Montale and Self-Deprecation from Satura to Altri Versi’; Rebay, ‘Un cestello di Montale: Le Gambe di Dora Markus e una Lettera di Roberto Balzen’; and Sonzogni in this volume. Testa, Tomlinson and Rebay also discuss Montale’s fascism. 2

Notes

201

18

For further details of the relationship between Eugenio Montale and Irma Brandeis see Eugenio Montale, Lettere a Clizia. 19 Hill, Orchards, XLVI, 6–10. 20 Hill, Collected, 67. 21 See Tomlinson, ‘A Poet and his Muses’, 178; Montale ‘Intenzioni’, 83. 22 Testa, Montale, 60; translation mine. 23 Montale, ‘Intenzioni’, 83; translation mine. 24 These quotations are from Orchards, XXVI (17–18), VII (22–23), L (13) respectively. 25 Hill, Orchards, LIII, 12. 26 Ibid., XLVI, 9. 27 Hill, Triumph, LV, 1. 28 Hill, Orchards, X, 1–5. 29 Citations in this paragraph are from Hill, Orchards, LXVI (4–5), XVI (13–15), LXVIII (15–16) respectively. 30 Hill, Orchards, XXXVIII, 3–4. 31 Ibid., LIII, 1–4. 32 See Leonetta Bentivoglio, ‘Il dolore di Ingeborg’, La Repubblica, 16 Oct. 2003. Accessed 5 June 2006. . 33 Hill, Orchards, LVI, 8–11. 34 Ibid., LIII, 13–18. 35 Ibid., LV, 5, 7. 36 Ibid., LIV, 15–16. 37 Ibid., LV, 7. 38 Ibid., LIV, 13. 39 Ibid., LVI, 15/16. 40 These final quotations are to be found respectively in Hill, Orchards, X (4–5), XVI (14), LXV (9), LXVI (16–17). 41 Hill, Orchards, LXXII, 15–16. 42 As The Orchards of Syon can be interpreted as Hill’s attempt to reach Paradise after the Purgatory of The Triumph of Love and the Hell of Speech! Speech!, a female guide and possible saviour in the figure of the beloved lady is not surprising. However, for all the glory of ‘Goldengrove’, it is beyond the perpetual questioning that informs Hill’s work to settle for Dante’s certainty of God, a possible Paradise (whatever that may be) and ultimate salvation. The Orchards are an attempt to gain all this but to the end we are left wondering about their success. Hill’s ineffective ‘Montalean’ muse could be seen as a further representation of this impossibility.

Chapter 10: Translating Larkin 1 2 3 4 5 6

Oliva, ‘Introduzione’, 30. 1989. The five poems were republished in the 1997 re-edition of the anthology. Larkin, Alte finestre. Gardini, ‘Philip Larkin’. Deidier, ‘Tre Poesie di Philip Larkin’. Esposito, Poesia del Novecento in Italia e in Europa, vol. 2, 81.

202

Notes

7

Larkin, Fading. Significant in this respect is Seamus Heaney’s statement that Larkin’s ‘collected work would fit happily under the title Englanders’. Heaney, ‘The Main of Light’, 19. 9 Meschonnic, ‘On appelle cela traduire Celan’. 10 I have added an appendix to the translations, in which I explain terms and situations which were markedly local. See Testa, ‘Appendice’. 11 Heaney, ‘The Main of Light’, 16. 12 The lines are from the poem ‘Here’, in the collection Whitsun Weddings. Larkin, Collected Poems, 136. 13 See Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 361. 14 Larkin, Collected Poems, 140. 15 This poem is also from The Whitsun Weddings, ibid., 152. 16 Pennati, ‘Note sulla poetica di Larkin’, 35. 17 Dunn, ‘La straziante purezza di Larkin’, 13. 18 Larkin, Collected Poems, 214. 19 Quoted in Oliva, ‘La poesia di Philip Larkin’, 9. 20 This fragmentation and segmentation of discourse can be seen as a ‘weakened version’ of the deconstruction of the sentence which, in the shape of hyperbatons and syntactical complexities, is one of the phenomena that P. V. Mengaldo has highlighted in numerous essays as a particular feature, though not always a positive one, of poetic translations in Italian. See Mengaldo, ‘Premessa’, p. ix. 21 ‘. . . un testo che, pur rassomigliando alla personalita` del tradotto e del traduttore, non e` precisamente ne` l’uno ne` l’altro’. Caproni, ‘Sulla poesia’, 36. 22 Steiner, After Babel, 16. 23 Caproni, ‘Sulla poesia’, 37. 8

Chapter 11: Translation as Resurrection: Charles Tomlinson’s ‘The Return’ 1

Tomlinson, ‘Prefatory Note’, Translations. Octavio Paz’s remark is adduced by Henry Gifford in an article about his collaborations with Tomlinson. Henry Gifford, ‘The Poet as Translator’, 70. 3 Tomlinson, The Return, 7–11. 4 See Tomlinson’s account of this in his interview with Richard Swigg, ‘Tomlinson at Sixty’, 225–6. 5 Tomlinson, Poetry and Metamorphosis, reprinted in Tomlinson, Metamorphoses: Poetry and Translation, 109. 6 Swigg, ‘Tomlinson at Sixty’, 232. 7 Ibid. 8 ‘Charles Tomlinson: The Art of Poetry LXXVIII’ (interview with Willard Spiegelman). 9 William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850), VI, ll. 550–1. 10 Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919), 14. 11 An expression of Ruskin’s quoted by Tomlinson in his interview with Bruce Meyer. ‘A Human Balance: An Interview with Charles Tomlinson’, 440. 12 In a recorded conversation with Octavio Paz at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1989. Octavio Paz Talks to Charles Tomlinson (Keele Recordings, 1989). 2

Notes

203

13

Tomlinson, ‘Eden’, Collected Poems, 159. A method which he discusses in ‘What Dante Means to Me’ (1950), 128. 15 He deplores such rhetorical tendencies in Dylan Thomas and J. F. Hendry. See Tomlinson, ‘Some Presences on the Scene: A Vista of Postwar Poetry’, 231. 16 ‘Charles Tomlinson in Conversation’ (with Michael Schmidt), 37. 17 Tomlinson, The Poem as Initiation; italics mine. 18 Richard’s Swigg’s comment on Tomlinson’s ‘combative’ relationship with the poet of Four Quartets fails, I argue, to tackle the main point of Tomlinson’s discussion. Swigg, Charles Tomlinson and the Objective Tradition, 15. 19 Tomlinson, Collected Poems, 78–82. 20 Including Seina`, E gose, l’aia and Die. 21 Mallarme´, ‘Crisis in Poetry’, 38. 22 Mallarme´, Selected Prose, 38. Tomlinson, ‘A Human Balance’, 438. 23 Edwards, ‘ ‘‘Renga’’, Translation, and Eliot’s Ghost’, 27. 24 Eliot, ‘From Poe to Vale´ry’ (1948). 25 Ibid., 39. 26 Davie, ‘Introduction to Charles Tomlinson’s The Necklace’, 190. 27 Davie is the author of Purity of Diction in English Verse. 28 Tomlinson, ‘A Human Balance’, 439. 29 Eliot, ‘From Poe’, 42. 14

Chapter 12: Translation and the Question of Poetry: Jacques Derrida’s Che cos’e` la poesia? 1 Derrida, ‘Che cos’e` la poesia’, Poesia: Mensile internazionale di cultura poetica (Nov. 1988). 2 See, e.g., Derrida, Che cos’e` la poesia?, a polygot edition published in Berlin in 1990. 3 Derrida, ‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’, trans. Peggy Kamuf. In Peggy Kamuf (ed.), Between the Blinds: A Derrida Reader. 4 Hence the decisive role translations can play in the formation of cultural identities. See Venuti’s chapter on this topic in his The Scandals of Translation. 5 Berman, La traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain, 42. 6 Cited in Connolly’s entry on ‘Poetry Translation’ in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. 7 Berman, La traduction et la lettre, 42. 8 Pound, ‘How I Began’, 147. 9 Xie, ‘Pound as Translator’, 205. 10 To paraphrase Cassin’s definition of the untranslatable as she formulates it in the introduction to her Vocabulaire europe´en des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles. 11 As Timothy Clark notes in his chapter on Derrida’s essay and Paul Celan’s concept of Atemwende: ‘This is not the first time the lowly hedgehog has found itself at the heart of a provocative text on poetics . . . By choosing to relate the poetic in terms of the fable of the hedgehog, Derrida cannot but be engaged with one of the best known of [Friedrich Schlegel’s] Anthenaeum Fragments (1798), no. 206.’ Clark, The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis of Subjectivity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Writing, 259. 12 Derrida, ‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’, 235.

204 13

Notes

See Sigmund Freud’s discussion of what he calls ‘ideational mimetics’ in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 251–3. 14 Derrida, ‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’, 223. 15 Ibid., 225. 16 Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, 71. 17 Blanchot, ‘Translating’, 58. 18 Ibid., 59. 19 Derrida, ‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’, 223. 20 See in particular Steiner’s After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, where the author offers a generalized conception of translation, whereby translation is considered to be just another word for understanding and interpretation. 21 Dacier, ‘Introduction to the translation of the Iliad’, 12. 22 Derrida, ‘What is a ‘‘Relevant’’ Translation?’ 23 This, indeed, is the point that Derrida’s makes: ‘[W]hen several words occur in one or the same acoustic or graphic form, whenever a homophonic or homonymic effect occurs, translation in the strict, traditional, and dominant sense of the term encounters an insurmountable limit . . . It is necessary either to resign oneself to losing the effect, the economy, the strategy (and this loss can be enormous) or to add a gloss, of the translator’s note sort, which always, even in the best of cases . . . confess the impotence or failure of translation.’ See ‘What is a ‘‘Relevant’’ Translation?’, 177. 24 Nabokov, ‘Problems of Translation: Onegin in English’, 83. 25 In his ‘L’Age de la traduction’, Berman argues: ‘il existe un lien d’essence entre traduction et commentaire remontant (sans s’y limiter) a` la traduction philosophique et the´ologique (ou religieuse). Tout commentaire d’un texte e´tranger comporte un travail de traduction. A la limite, est traduction. Inversement, toute traduction comporte un e´le´ment de commentaire, comme on peut le voir avec les ‘‘translations’’ me´die´vales’, 12. 26 Xie, Ezra Pound and the Appropriation of Chinese Poetry: Cathay, Translation and Imagism, 219. 27 Cited in Xie, Ezra Pound and the Appropriation of Chinese Poetry, 219. 28 Pound, ‘How I Began’, p.147. 29 Genette, Palimpsestes: La Litte´rature au second degre´, 359. 30 Borges, ‘An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain’; ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’. 31 See Genette’s discussion of Borges’s use of the pseudo-re´sume´ in Palimpsestes, 359– 364. 32 Pound, ‘How I Began’, 147. 33 In another, later essay entitled ‘How to Read’, Pound offers the results of his inquiry into what the test of translation reveals about the distinctiveness of poetry. Pound identifies three kinds of poetry, all of which involve what he calls ‘charging’ language with a certain kind of force or energy, which he then considers in terms of their translatability. This, at least, is the sequence of ideas in the essay, but we could argue the reverse: that it was only through testing the translatability of certain poems that Pound identified three kinds of poetry. Poetry, in all its forms, is for Pound about doing something to the language in question. The first kind Pound baptizes melopoeia; ‘wherein words are charged, over and above their plain meaning, with some musical property, which directs the bearing or trend of that meaning’. While, says Pound, melopoeia can be ‘appreciated by a foreigner with a sensitive ear, even though he is ignorant of the language in which the poem is

Notes

205

written’, it is nevertheless ‘practically impossible to transfer or translate it from one language to another, save perhaps by divine accident, and for half a line at a time’. Phanopoeia, on the other hand, involves ‘a casting of images upon the visual imagination’ and is as such entirely translatable: ‘when it is good enough it is practically impossible for the translator to destroy it save by some very crass bungling, and the neglect of perfectly well known and formulative rules’. The third and final kind Pound calls logopoeia or ‘the dance of the intellect among words’. Peculiar to logopoeia is the way in which ‘it employs words not only for their direct meaning, but it takes count in a special way of habits of usage, of the context we expect to find with the word its usual concomitants, of its known acceptances, and of ironical play’. It is, says Pound, ‘the latest come, and perhaps most tricky and undependable mode’. Logopoeia does not translate; ‘or, one might say, you can not translate it ‘‘locally’’, but having determined the original author’s state of mind, you may or may not be able to find a derivative or equivalent’. It might be possible for the translator to find an equivalent poem in another language, one that fulfils a similar function, but in literal translation it loses its force as a ‘dance’, its quick-stepping from there to here, giving its particular rhythm, its own off-beats. Pound therefore finds that what could not be lost by translation is effectively very little: only what he calls ‘a casting of images upon the visual imagination’, images that do not necessarily depend upon the particular language in which they are expressed. Poetry is destroyed, however, as soon as the force of the poem, its charge, depends on its ‘shell’, on the particular resources of the language in which it is written: sonority, musicality, permissible only thanks to the material qualities of words in melopoeia, and a certain wittiness or play given by their semantic wealth and the possibilities of syntax in logopoeia. See Pound, ‘How to Read’, 25–7. 34 Freud uses the term translation in a variety of different contexts to describe all kinds of operations. In the context of the round-table discussion on translation with Derrida among others, Patrick Mahony enumerates: ‘On a strictly terminological plane, ¨ bersetzung – in all of I have done a thorough inventory of the word ‘‘translation’’ – U Freud’s texts. While he considers repression to be a rift or fault in the translation, on several occasions in his writings he implicitly conceives all of the following to be translations: hysterical, phobic, and obsessional symptoms, dreams, recollections, parapraxes, the choice of the means of suicide, the choice of fetish, the analyst’s interpretations and the transpositions of conscious material to consciousness.’ In Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, 96–7. Indeed, Freud memorably compares both the dream-work and the work of interpretation to the work of translation. However, the interpretation of a dream (one produced, for instance by the operative rule of condensation) involves the writing of a new, more complete and more detailed dream-script. Hence the interpretation cannot properly be called the ‘original’ of which the dream was a ‘translation’, despite Freud’s initially happy comparison: The dream-thoughts and the dream-content are presented to us like two versions of the same subject matter in two different languages. Or, more properly, the dreamcontent seems like a transcript of the dream thoughts into another mode of expression, whose characters and syntactic laws it is our business to discover by comparing the original and the translation. (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 381) Freud must be using the term ‘translation’ metaphorically, especially if he wants to hold onto the idea of the radical inaccessibility of the unconscious, and hence of the

206

Notes

‘original’ dream thoughts. This use of translation as a metaphor nevertheless tells us something interesting about translation as a linguistic operation. Like the analyst charged with interpreting a dream, the monolingual reader of a translation has no access to the original text. And yet, the reader knows that something is missing – something must be missing, just because this is a translation and not the original itself. That said, a text that pretended to write back in what the translation left out, to present the original as such, restored and intact, would be just another translation (that is, if it is not a work of commentary or criticism). And, as another translation, this new version would be deficient in its own way. The only means available of assessing what goes missing in translation is to translate again, just as the only way to retrieve or restore the original dream-thoughts is to write a new text. Every translation, every re-translation is in this way an event: it involves writing the original in another other language for the first time. When the translation is all we have, this effectively means writing the original for the first time (consider, for example, the writing of the Bible or The Thousand and One Nights in translation, as translations). Hence Jean Laplanche’s persuasive argument that what in Freud’s work is called ‘translation’ is never about recovery or retrieval: translation is a movement not backwards but forwards, a projection rather than a restoration. (See Laplanche, La re´volution copernicienne inacheve´e, 290). Thus Laplanche finds in Freud’s use of translation as a metaphor hints of Walter Benjamin’s messianism: translation as a gesture toward the future. 35 Xie, Ezra Pound and the Appropriation of Chinese Poetry, 216. 36 With reference to the formula ‘L’Un se garde de l’autre’. Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, 78. 37 Derrida, ‘Living On / Border Lines’, 101. 38 Arguably, Derrida’s texts are read far more frequently in (especially English) translation than they ever are in the original French. On Derrida’s success in AngloAmerican universities in particular, see Cusset’s book French Theory: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis. 39 Derrida, ‘Proverb: He That Would Pun’. 40 Derrida, ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, 275–6.

Chapter 13: From a Morality of Translation to an Ethics of Translation: In Step with the Play of Language 1

Locatelli, ‘Co(n)testi’. Ibid., 23. Translation mine. 3 See Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 4 Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation; Bassnett, Translation Studies. 5 Bassnett, Translation Studies, 9. 6 Barthes, ‘Outcomes of the Text (1972)’, 249. 7 Ibid., 248–9. 8 I insist on the hiatus inscribed in ‘re-presentation’ as a warning against a mimetic fallacy that would assume that representation (as referential content) is the primary object of translation. 9 Barthes, ‘Outcomes’, 249. 10 As I indicated earlier, in order to preserve the mark of the ‘plural’, I will use the 2

Notes

207

word ‘morality’ to indicate a field-determination ruled by singular imperatives, and I will use the word ‘ethics’ to indicate a cognitive field determined by plural imperatives. 11 Jakobson, ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’. 12 Assmann, ‘The Curse and Blessing of Babel; or, Looking Back on Universalisms’, 99. My italics. 13 Budick, ‘Crises of Alterity: Cultural Untranslatability and the Experience of Secondary Otherness’; Hillis Miller, ‘Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth’. 14 Eco, Dire quasi la stessa cosa: Esperienze di Traduzione, 345–53. For a discussion of the problem of the segmentations of experience and thought, which inform and are informed by the specific segmentation of different languages, see Eco’s Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition and Experiences in Translation. 15 Derrida, ‘Des Tours de Babel’, 167. 16 Ibid., 165, emphasis added. 17 Ibid., 170. 18 Ibid., 174, 165, emphasis added. 19 Ibid., 165–6. 20 Ibid., 169. 21 Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 58. 22 Rich, ‘Poem 5’, ‘Twenty-One Love Poems’ in The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977, 27, emphasis added. 23 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 17–18. 24 Barthes, ‘On Reading’, 35, emphasis added. 25 Ibid. 26 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 18, emphasis added. 27 Bassnett and Trivedi, Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice. 28 See, e.g., Dingwaney and Mayer, Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts; Simon and Paul St Pierre, Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. 29 Friedrich, ‘On the Art of Translation’, 12–13. 30 I am grateful to Patricia Salomoni for bringing to my attention the extensive quotation from Jerome’s Epistula 57: ‘sufficit in praesenti nominasse hilarium confessorem, qui homilias in Iob et in Psalmos tractatus plurimos in latinum uertit e greco nec adsedit litterae dormitanti et putida rusticorum interpretatione se torsit, sed quasi captiuos sensus in suam linguam uitcoris iure transposuit’. The figurative and co(n)textual dimension of the quotation would require a complex reading, which it is unfortunately impossible to explore here. 31 I am grateful to Ann Matter for calling to my attention Jerome’s declared multilingualism, and plurality of sources. 32 Derrida, ‘Des Tours de Babel’, 171. 33 Lefevere and Bassnett, ‘General Editors’ Preface’ in Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, p. vii. 34 Lefevere and Bassnett, ‘Where are we in Translation Studies?’, 11. 35 Lucy, A Derrida Dictionary, 107. This is one of the first dictionaries to clearly declare itself not to be ‘a book of definitions’. This statement seems particularly relevant in the area of contemporary thoughts on translation. 36 Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, in Writing and Difference, 280. 37 Ibid. 38 Derrida, ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’. Derrida also

208

Notes

discusses this complex thematics at length in ‘Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas’ and in ‘The Supplement of the Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics’. 39 Hacking, ‘Styles of Scientific Reasoning’. 40 Derrida, ‘Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language’ (1967), 189. 41 Rich, ‘Poem 7’, ‘Twenty-one Love Poems’, in The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977, 28.

Bibliography

Abeni, Damiano. ‘L’area anglosassone’. In Damiano Abeni, Raffaella Bertazzoli, Cesare G. De Michelis and Pietro Gibellini (eds.), Belli oltre frontiera: La fortuna di G. G. Belli nei saggi e nelle versioni di autori stranieri, 195–304. Rome: Bonacci, 1983. —‘Robert Garioch: G. G. Belli sulla scia di Fergusson e Burns’. In Riccardo Merolla (ed.), G. G. Belli romano, italiano ed europeo: Atti del II convegno italiano di studi belliani: Roma, 12–15 novembre 1984, 223–31. Rome: Bonacci, 1985. Acheson, James and Romana Huk (eds). Contemporary British Poetry: Essays in Theory and Criticism. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. Adams, Le´onie. ‘Mortalite´ d’avril’. In E. Jolas (ed.), Anthologie de la nouvelle poe´sie ame´ricaine, 9. Paris: Kra, 1928. —High Falcon and Other Poems. New York: John Day Company, 1929. —‘Caryatid’. This Quarter, II, 2 (1930): 211. —‘Ninna nanna. Adaptation by Eugenio Montale’. Circoli, III, 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1933): 102– 3. Alighieri, Dante. Inferno of Dante, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1980. —Purgatorio of Dante, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1982. —Paradiso of Dante, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. —La commedia: secondo l’antica vulgata. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. Florence: Le Lettere, 1994. —Inferno, trans. J. G. Nichols, London: Hesperus, 2005. Allen, Beverly, Muriel Kittel and Keala Jane Jewell (eds). The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1986. Althusser, Louis. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’. In Lenin and Philosophy, pp. 122–73. London: New Left Books, 1971. Anceschi, Luciano. ‘Del tradurre’. Il Verri (1960): 50–3. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Anderson, David (ed.). Pound’s Cavalcanti: An Edition of the Translations, Notes and Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Anonymous, ‘Notes on Contributors’, Chapman 68 (Summer 1992): 104. Apter, Emily. The Translation Zone; A New Comparative Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Assmann, Aleida. ‘The Curse and Blessing of Babel; or, Looking Back on Universalisms’. In Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (eds), The Translatability of Cultures:

210

Bibliography

Figurations of the Space Between, pp. 85–100. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Baker, Mona, (ed.). The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Ballerini, Luigi and Paul Vangelisti (eds.), Nuova poesia americana: Los Angeles. Milan: Mondadori, 2005. — (eds). Nuova poesia americana: San Francisco. Milan: Mondadori, 2006. Baran´ski, Zygmunt (ed.). Pasolini: Old and New. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996. Barnstone, Willis and Patricia Terry (eds). Modern European Poetry: French/German/Greek/ Italian/Russian/Spanish. Toronto, New York, London: Bantam Books, 1966. Barthes, Roland. ‘Outcomes of the Text (1972)’. In The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard, 238–49. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies. 3rd edn. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. — (ed.). Studying British Cultures: An Introduction. (1st edn 1997) 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Bassnett, Susan and Andre Lefevere. ‘General Editors’ Preface’. In Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, pp. vii–viii. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Bassnett, Susan and Harish Trivedi (eds), Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2000. Becker, Jared M. ‘‘‘What we are not’’: Montale’s Anti-Fascism Revisited’. Italica, 60:4 (1983): 331–9. Beckett, Samuel. Poesie in inglese, trans. Juan Rodolfo Wilcock. Turin: Einaudi, 1964. Be´cquer, Gustavo Adolfo. Rime, ed. Oreste Macrı`. Naples: Liguori, 1995. Belli, Giuseppe Gioacchino. I sonetti, ed. Giorgio Vigolo. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1952. —‘Introduzione’. In Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, I sonetti, ed. Giorgio Vigolo. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1952. —The Roman Sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, trans. Harold Norse. Highlands, NC: Jargon, 1960. —Sonetti. Milan: Mondadori, 1978. Belli, [5 poems], trans. William Neill, in Chapman 68 (Summer 1992): 38–41. Beltrametti, Franco. Another Earthquake, trans. Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1976. Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Task of the Translator’. In Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, 69– 82. London: Pimlico, 1999. Berman, Antoine. L’E´preuve de l’e´tranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique. Paris: Gallimard, 1984. —Pour une critique de traductions: John Donne. Paris: Gallimard, 1995. —‘L’Age de la traduction’. In Martine Broda (ed.), La Traduction-poe´sie. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1999. —La traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain. Paris: Seuil, 1999. Bernardini Napoletano, F. ‘Eugenio Montale, Lettere a Nino Frank’. In Marco Forti (ed.), Almanacco dello Specchio, 32. Milan: Mondadori, 1986. Bertolani, Paolo, Seina`. Turin: Einaudi, 1985. —E gose, l’aia. Parma: Ugo Guanda, 1988. —Die. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 1998.

Bibliography

211

Bertolucci, Attilio. Ho rubato dei versi a Baudelaire: Prose e divagazioni, ed. Gabriella Palli Baroni. Milan: Mondadori, 2000. Bettarini, Rosanna, Gloria Manghetti and Franco Zabagli (eds). Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Clizia, with an introductory essay by Rosanna Bettarini. Milan: Mondadori, 2006. Bevilacqua, Giuseppe. Rilke: Un’inchiesta storica. Rome: Bulzoni, 2006. Biagini, Elisa (ed.). Nuovi poeti americani. Turin: Einaudi, 2006. Bigongiari, Piero. Poesia francese del Novecento. Florence: Vallecchi, 1968. —Il caso e il caos: Il Seicento fiorentino tra Galileo e il ‘recitar cantando’. Milan: Rizzoli, 1974. —‘Ronsard o il visibile attraverso la parola’. In L’evento immobile, 63–75. Milan: Jaca Book, 1987. —‘Perche´ ho tradotto Ronsard’. In Franco Buffoni (ed.), La traduzione del testo poetico, 377–83. Milan: Guerrini, 1989. —Nel mutismo dell’universo: Interviste sulla poesia 1965–1997, ed. Anna Dolfi. Rome: Bulzoni, 2001. Billiani, Francesca. ‘Assessing Boundaries: Censorship and Translation: An Introduction’. In Francesca Billiani (ed.), Translation and Modes of Censorship and Translation: National Contexts and Diverse Media, 1–25. Manchester: St Jerome Press, 2007. —Culture nazionali e narrazioni straniere: Italia, 1903–1943. Florence: Le Lettere, 2007. —‘Renewing a Literary Culture through Translation: Poetry in Post-War Italy’. In Jeremy Munday (ed.), Translation as Intervention, 140–60. London: Continuum, 2007. Blake, William. Visioni. Trans. Giuseppe Ungaretti. Milan: Mondadori, 1965. Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster, trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. —‘Translating’. In Friendship, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, 57–62. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Bo, Carlo. Lirici spagnoli. Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941. —Antologia del Surrealismo. Milan: Edizioni di Uomo, 1944. —Bilancio del Surrealismo. Padova: CEDAM, 1944. Bodini, Vittorio (ed.). Poeti surrealisti spagnoli. Turin: Einaudi, 1963. —The Hands of the South, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. Washington, DC: The Charioteer Press, 1980. Boldrini, Lucia. Joyce, Dante, and the Poetics of Literary Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Bonaffini, Luigi, (ed.). The Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy: Texts and Criticism. A Trilingual Anthology. New York, Ottawa, Toronto: Legas, 1997. —‘Translating Dialect Literature’ at http://userhome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bonaffini/DP/bonaffini1.htm Bonsaver, Guido. ‘Fascist Censorship on Literature and the Case of Elio Vittorini’. Modern Italy, 8:2 (2003): 165–86. — and Robert S. C. Gordon (eds), Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th Century Italy. Oxford: Legenda, 2005. —Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007. Borges, Jorges Luis. ‘An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain’. In Collected Fictions: Ficionnes, trans. Andrew Hurley, 107–12. London: The Penguin Press, 1998. —‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’. In Collected Fictions: Ficionnes, trans. Andrew Hurley, 88–96. London: The Penguin Press, 1998. Bradshaw, Vittoria. From Pure Silence to Impure Dialogue: A Survey of Post-War Italian Poetry 1945–1965. New York: Las Americas, 1971.

212

Bibliography

Brandeis, Irma. ‘Al lettore da I.B.’ In Rosanna Bettarini, Gloria Manghetti and Franco Zabagli (eds), Eugenio Montale: Lettere a Clizia, 279. Milan: Mondadori, 2006. —Origini di una musa: Passi diaristici ad epistolari scelti e presentati da Jean Cook, ed. Marco Sonzogni. Balerna: Edizione Ulivo, 2008. Brerenton, Geoffrey (ed.). Penguin Book of French Verse: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964. Browning, Robert. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. In The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, 17 vols, vol. 13, 259–357. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1889. —The Ring and the Book. In Ian Jack and Michael Meredith (gen. eds.), The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, vols 7–9, ed. Stefan Hawlin and Tim Burnett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998–2003. Brugnolo, Furio. ‘Breve viaggio nell’alessandrino italiano’. AnticoModerno, 2 (1996): 257–83. Budick, Sanford. ‘Crises of Alterity: Cultural Untranslatability and the Experience of Secondary Otherness’. In Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (eds), The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, pp. 1–22. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Buffoni, Franco (ed.). La traduzione del testo poetico. Milan: Guerrini, 1989. — (ed.). Ritmologia. Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 2002. Burgess, Anthony. Abba Abba (1977). London: Minerva, 1990. —You’ve Had Your Time. London: Heinemann, 1990. Butcher, John. ‘A ‘‘lauro risecchito’’? The poet Montale and Self-Deprecation from Satura to Altri Versi.’ The Italianist, 21–22 (2001–02): 82–102. Cadioli, Alberto. Letterati editori: L’industria culturale come progetto. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1995. Caetani, Marguerite (ed.). An Anthology of New Italian Writers, selected from Botteghe Oscure. Rome: Istituto Grafico Tiberino, 1950. Calo`, E. Manuale del Traduttore. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1984. Camporesi, Valeria. Para grandes y chicos: Un cine para los espan ˜ oles (1940–1990). Madrid: Ediciones Tyrfa´n, 1994. Capoferro, Riccardo. ‘Antologie e canone letterario: poesia inglese in Italia dagli anni Trenta agli anni Sessanta’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), Traduzione e poesia nell’Europa del Novecento, 303–22. Rome: Bulzoni, 2004. Caproni, Giorgio. ‘L’arte del tradurre’. In Franco Buffoni (ed.), La traduzione del testo poetico, 31–8. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1989. —‘Divagazioni sul tradurre’. In La scatola nera, 58–66. Milan: Garzanti, 1996. —‘Sulla poesia’. In La Scatola nera. Milan: Garzanti, 1996. —‘Il Vale´ry di Tutino’, in La Scatola nera, 45–50. —Quaderno di traduzioni. Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Caretti, Lanfranco. ‘Testi montaliani inediti’. Il Ponte, XXXIII, 4–5 (30 Apr.–31 May 1977): 487–96. Carrell, Christopher. Seven Poets. Glasgow: Third Eye Centre, 1981. Carson, Ciaran. The Inferno of Dante Alighieri: A New Translation. London and New York: Granta Books, 2002. Caselli, Daniela. ‘‘‘The Land of Paradox’’: Il Novecento poetico italiano in traduzione inglese’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), Traduzione e Poesia nell’Europa del Novecento, pp. 253–301. Rome: Bulzoni, 2004. —Beckett’s Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.

Bibliography

213

Cassin, Barbara. Vocabulaire europe´en des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles. Paris: Seuil, 2004. Chambers, Jack K. and Peter Trudgill (eds). Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Chiesa, M. and Giovanni Tesio (eds). Le parole di legno: Poesia in dialetto del ’900 italiano. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. Clark, Martin. The Longman History of Modern Italy. Harlow: Longman, 1984. Clark, Timothy, The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis of Subjectivity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Writing. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. Classe, Olive (ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Literary Translation in English, 2 vols. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000. Connolly, David. ‘Poetry Translation’. In Mona Baker (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 170–6. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Conquest, Robert (ed.). New Lines: An Anthology. London and New York: Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, 1956. Contini, Gianfranco. ‘Saggio d’un commento alle correzioni del Petrarca volgare’. In Varianti e altra linguistica, 5–32. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. —‘Di un modo di tradurre’ (1940). In Esercizıˆ di lettura sopra autori contemporanei con un’appendice su testi non contemporanei; Nuova edizione aumentata di ‘Un anno di letteratura’, 372–9. Turin: Einaudi, 1974. —‘Come lavorava l’Ariosto nelle Satire’. In Ultimi esercizıˆ ed elzeviri, 279–84. Turin: Einaudi, 1989. —‘Radiografia di Leopardi’. In Ultimi esercizıˆ ed elzeviri, 285–92. Turin: Einaudi, 1989. —‘Varianti leopardiane’. In Ultimi esercizıˆ ed elzeviri, 293–8. Turin: Einaudi, 1989. Corbett, John. Written in the Language of the Scottish Nation: A History of Literary Translation into Scots. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1999. Cremieux, Benjamin (ed.). Panorama de la litte´rature italienne contemporaine. Paris: Kra, 1928. Croce, Benedetto. Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, trans. Douglas Ainslie. London: Vision Press, 1967. Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. cummings, e.e. Poesie scelte. Trans. Salvatore Quasimodo. Milan: Scheiwiller, 1958. Cusset, Franc¸ois. French Theory: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis. Paris: Editions de la De´couverte, 2003. Dacier, Anne. ‘Introduction to the translation of the Iliad’, trans. Andre´ Lefevere et al. In Andre´ Lefevere (ed.), Translation / History / Culture: A Sourcebook, 10–14. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. D’Alessandro, Francesca. L’opera poetica di Vittorio Sereni. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2001. D’Annunzio, Gabriele. Halcyon, trans. J. G. Nichols. Manchester: Carcanet, 2006. Davie, Donald. Purity of Diction in English Verse. London: Chatto and Windus, 1952. —‘Introduction to Charles Tomlinson’s The Necklace’. In Clive Wilmer (ed.), With the Grain: Essays on Thomas Hardy and Modern British Poetry, pp. 187–91. Manchester: Carcanet, 1998. de Bosis, Lauro (ed.). The Golden Book of Italian Poetry. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1932. De Caro, Paolo. Journey to Irma: Una approssimazione all’ispiratrice americana di Eugenio Montale. Parte prima. Irma, un ‘romanzo’. Foggia: De Meo, 1999.

214

Bibliography

Deidier, Roberto. ‘Tre Poesie di Philip Larkin’. Il gallo Silvestre, 12 (1999): 18. Deleuze, Gilles. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. ‘Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language’ (1967). In Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, 155–205. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. —‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, 278–93. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. —‘The Supplement of the Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics’. In Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, 175–205. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. —‘Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas’. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, 79–153. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. —‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’. In Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, 207–71. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. —‘Living On / Border Lines’, trans. James Hulbert. In Harold Bloom et al. (eds), Deconstruction and Criticism, 75–176. New York: Seabury, 1979. —‘Des Tours de Babel’. In Joseph F. Graham (ed.), Difference in Translation, 165–207. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. —The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. Peggy Kamuf et al. New York: Schocken, 1985. —‘Proverb: He That Would Pun’. In John P. Leavy, Jr and Gregory Ulmer (eds), Glassary (companion volume to Glas), pp. 17–22. Lincoln, NE and London: Nebraska University Press, 1986. —‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’ Poesia: Mensile internazionale di cultura poetica (Nov. 1988): 5–10. —Che cos’e` la poesia? Berlin: Brinckmann and Bose, 1990. —‘Che cos’e` la poesia?’, trans. Peggy Kamuf. In Peggy Kamuf (ed.), Between the Blinds: A Derrida Reader, 221–37. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. —‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, trans. David Wood and Andrew Benjamin. In Peggy Kamuf (ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, 270–6. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. —Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. —Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. —‘What is a ‘‘Relevant’’ Translation?’, trans. Lawrence Venuti. Critical Inquiry, 27 (Winter 2001): 174–200. De Rogatis, Tiziana. ‘Sulla cultura letteraria di Montale: Browning e la costellazione dei ‘‘metafisici’’’, Moderna, I:2 (1999): 107–57. De Stae¨l, Anna Germaine Louise. ‘Sulla Maniera e dell’ utilita` delle traduzioni’, trans. Pietro Giordani. Biblioteca italiana, 1 (Jan. 1816): 9–18. Dickinson, Emily. Poesie, trans. Margherita Guidacci. Florence: Cya, 1947. —Poesie, trans. Barbara Lanati with an introduction by Rossana Rossanda. Rome: Savelli, 1977. —Poesie (gen. ed. Massimo Bacigalupo). Milan: Mondadori, 1996. Dingwaney, Anuradha and Carol Mayer (eds). Between Languages and Cultures. Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts. Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. Di Nola, Laura. Poesia femminista italiana. Rome: Savelli, 1978. Dolfi, Anna. ‘Leopardismo e terza generazione’. In La doppia memoria: Saggi su Leopardi e il leopardismo, 137–87. Rome: Bulzoni, 1986.

Bibliography

215

—‘Francesco Tentori: al fuoco vivo della rimembranza’. In Il liberta` di lettura; Note e riflessioni novecentesche, 117–23. Rome: Bulzoni, 1990. —‘Sulle tracce della diacronia (per una approssimazione)’. In Oreste Macrı`, Caratteri e figure della poesia italiana contemporanea, iii–xxvi. Trento: La Finestra, 2002. —Percorsi di macritica (with CD-rom). Florence: Firenze University Press, 2007. — (ed.). Diciotto saggi su Ruggero Jacobbi: Atti delle giornate di studio Firenze, 23rd–24th March 1984. Florence: Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux, 1987. — (ed.). Per Oreste Macrı`: Atti della giornata di studio. Florence – 9th December 1994. Rome: Bulzoni, 1996. — (ed.). Lettere a Simeone: Sugli epistolari a Oreste Macrı`. Rome: Bulzoni, 2002. Dolfi, Anna and Maria Carla Papini (eds). Scrittori a confronto: Incontri con Aldo Busi, Maria Corti, Claudio Magris, Giuliana Morandini, Roberto Pazzi, Edoardo Sanguineti, Francesca Sancitale, Antonio Tabucchi. Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. Donati, Riccardo. L’invito e il divieto: Piero Bigongiari e l’ermeneutica d’arte. Florence: SEF, 2002. —‘Una comparatistica fatta prassi: Traduzione e vocazione europea nella terza generazione’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), Traduzione e poesia nell’Europa del Novecento, 13–30. Rome: Bulzoni, 2004. —‘Rilke e le modalita` di lettura di una generazione (a partire da una copia annotata nella biblioteca Macrı`)’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), Traduzione e poesia nell’Europa del Novecento, pp. 433–46. Rome: Bulzoni, 2004. —Percorsi di macritica. Trento: La Finestra, 2006. — (ed.). L’eclettico Jacobbi: Percorsi multipli tra letteratura e teatro. Atti della giornata di studio – Firenze, 14th January. Rome: Bulzoni, 2003. — (ed.). I libri di Oreste Macrı`: Struttura e storia di una biblioteca privata. Rome: Bulzoni, 2004. — (ed.). Traduzione e poesia nel Novecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 2004. Donati, Riccardo, Carlo Pirozzi and Ilaria Tagliaferri (eds). Inventario della corrispondenza a Piero Bigongiari. Trento: La Finestra, 2003. Duggan, Christopher. A Concise History of Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Dunn, Douglas. ‘Garioch, Robert’. In Ian Hamilton (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, 180. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. —‘La straziante purezza di Larkin’. In Philip Larkin, Fading, trans. Marco Fazzini, 12– 14. Grottammare: Stamperia dell’Arancio, 1994. Duranti, Riccardo. ‘The Paradox of Distance: Belli Translated into English and Scots’. New Comparison, 8 (Autumn 1988): 36–44. Du Val, John. Tales of Trilussa. Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 1990. —‘Translating the Dialect: Miller Williams’ Romanesco’. Translation Review, 32–33 (1990): 27–31. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Easthope, Antony. Poetry as Discourse. London and New York: Methuen, 1983. — and John O. Thomson (eds). Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Eco, Umberto. Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (1997), trans. Alistair McEwen. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. —Experiences in Translation, trans. Alistair McEwen. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2001. —Dire quasi la stessa cosa: Esperienze di traduzione. Milan: Bompiani, 2003.

216

Bibliography

Edwards, Michael. ‘‘‘Renga’’, Translation, and Eliot’s Ghost’. PN Review 7:2 (1980): 24– 8. Eleodori, Ilaria, Helenia Piersigilli, Francesca Polidori and Cristina Provvedi (eds). Inventario del Fondo Oreste Macrı` presso l’Archivio contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’. CD-rom enclosed to Oreste Macrı`, Esemplari del sentimento poetico contemporaneo (1941). Trento: La Finestra, 2003. Eliot, Thomas S. ‘La figlia che piange e Canto di Simeone’, trans. E. Montale. Circoli, III, 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1933): 50–7. —‘Dante (1929)’. In Selected Essays, 237–77. London: Faber and Faber, 1951. —‘Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)’. In Selected Essays, 13–22. London: Faber and Faber, 1951. —La terra desolata, trans. Mario Praz. Turin: Einaudi, 1965. —‘From Poe to Vale´ry (1948)’. In To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings, 27–42. London: Faber and Faber, 1978. —‘What Dante Means to Me (1950)’. In To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings, 125–35. London: Faber and Faber, 1978. Ellis, Steve. Dante and the English Poets: From Shelley to T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. —‘Decanonising the Canon: The Role of the Translator?’ In Peter Bush and Kirsten Malmkjaer (eds), Rimbaud’s Rainbow: Literary Translation in Higher Education, 63–8. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998. Empson, William. ‘Hayward’s Translation of Faust’. Edinburgh Review, 57:105 (Apr. 1833): 107–43. Erba, Luciano. The Greener Meadow: Selected Poems, trans. Peter Robinson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Esposito, Eduardo (ed.). Poesia del Novecento in Italia e in Europa, 2 vols. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000. Even-Zohar, Itamar, and Gideon Toury (eds). Theory of Translation and Intercultural Relations. Special issue, Poetics Today, 2:4 (1981). Feldman, Ruth and Brian Swann (eds), Italian Poetry Today, with an introduction by Glauco Cambon. St Paul Minnesota: New Rivers Press, 1979. Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy (eds). The Norton Anthology of Poetry. (1st edn 1970) 4th edn. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. Findlay, Bill. ‘Translating into Dialect’. In David Johnston (ed.), Stages of Translation: Essays and Interviews on Translating for the Stage, 199–217. Bath: Absolute Classics, 1996. —Editor’s Introduction. Frae Ither Tongues: Essays on Modern Translations into Scots, 1–12. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2004. Folena, Gianfranco. Volgarizzare e tradurre. In Saggi Italiani, 359–79. Milan: Garranti, 1987. Turin: Einaudi, 1991. Fortini, Franco. ‘Traduzione e rifacimento’. In Giuseppe Petronio (ed.), La traduzione: Saggi e studi. Trieste: Lint, 1973. (2nd edn. Turin: Einaudi, 1991.) —Saggi italiani: Temi e problemi. Bari: De Donato, 1974. —Il ladro di ciliege. Turin: Einaudi, 1982. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. London: Tavistock, 1970. —The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1972. —Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Ronald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977. Frabotta, Biancamaria. Donne in poesia. Rome: Savelli, 1976.

Bibliography

217

France, Peter (ed.). The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Frasca, Gabriele. Lime. Turin: Einaudi, 1995. —Rive. Turin: Einaudi, 2001. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey. In the Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 4., 2nd edn. London: Penguin, 1991. —Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey. In the Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 6. 2nd edn. London: Penguin, 1991. Friedrich, Hugo. ‘On the Art of Translation’. In Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (eds), Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, 11–16. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Fubini, Mario. ‘Ritmo e metro’, in Metrica e poesia: legioni sulle forme metriche italiane, vol I, 13–78. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962. Fulton, Robin. An Italian Quartet: Versions after Saba, Ungaretti, Montale, Quasimodo. London: Alan Ross London Magazine Edition, 1966. Gardini, Nicola. ‘Philip Larkin’. Poesia, 16 (Apr. 1998): 18. Garioch, Robert. Collected Poems. Manchester: Carcanet, 1977. —‘Introduction’. In Collected Poems. Manchester: Carcanet, 1977. Genette, Ge´rard. Palimpsestes: La Litte´rature au second degre´. Paris: Seuil, 1982. Gentzler, Edwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001. Ghini, Giuseppe. Tradurre l’Onegin. Urbino: Quattro Venti, 2003. Gifford, Henry. ‘The Poet as Translator’. Agenda, 33:2 (1995): 61–71. Gillespie, Stuart. ‘Translation and Canon-Formation’. In Peter France and Stuart Gillespie (gen. eds.), The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 3: 1660– 1790, ed. Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins, 7–20. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Giudici, Giovanni. Addio, proibito piangere. Turin: Einaudi, 1982. —A una casa non sua: Nuovi versi tradotti. Mila: Mondadori, 1997. Giuliani, Il cuore zoppo. Milan: Magenta, 1955. Giuliani, Alfredo (ed.). Novissimi: Poetry for the Sixties, trans. Luigi Ballerini, Dick Bradley, Michael Moore, Stephen Sartarelli and Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1995. Giusti, Simone. ‘Visioni di Francia all’ombra dell’ ‘‘Albero’’’. In Patrizia Guida (ed.), Girolamo Comi: Atti del convegno internazionale, Lecce – Tricase – Lucugnano 18–20 ottobre 2001, 203–29. Lecce: Milella, 2001. Goethe, Wolfgang. Poesie scelte. Trans. Giorgio Orelli. Milan: Mondadori, 1974. Golino, Carlo (ed.). Contemporary Italian Poetry: An Anthology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962. Reprinted by Greenwood Press in 1976. Gozzano, Guido. The Man I Pretended To Be, trans. Michael De Palma. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. —The Colloquies and Selected Letters, trans. J. G. Nichols, Manchester: Carcanet, 1987. Gramsci, Antonio. Lettere dal carcere. Rome: Editrice l’Unita`, 1988. Graziosi, Elisabetta. Questioni di lessico: L’ingegno, le passioni, il linguaggio. Bologna: Mucchi, 2004. Griffiths, Eric and Matthew Reynolds (eds). Dante in English. London: Penguin, 2005. Grignani, Maria Antonietta and Rosanna Bonadei. ‘Schegge per l’analisi di Montale traduttore di Hudson’. In Franco Buffoni (ed.), La traduzione del testo poetico, 255–71. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1989.

218

Bibliography

Grillandi, Massimo. ‘Trilussa, la favola e La Fontaine’. In Studi Trilussiani, 295–307. Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani, 1977. Guidacci, Margherita. A Book of Sybils, trans. Ruth Feldman. Boston, MA: Rowan Tree Press, 1989. —Landscape with Ruins, trans. Ruth Feldman. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992. Guı´llen, Jorge. Oreste Macrı`: Cartas ine´ditas (1953–1983), ed. Laura Dolfi. Valencia: Pretextos, 2005. Gunn, Thom. I miei tristi capitani e altre poesie, trans. Camillo Pennati. Turin: Einaudi, 1969. —Tatto, trans. Luciano Erba. Parma: Guanda, 1979. Gwynn, R. S. ‘Miller Williams, Translator’. In Michael Burns (ed.), Miller Williams and the Poetry of the Particular, 95–107. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991. Hacking, Ian. ‘Styles of Scientific Reasoning’. In J. Rajchman and C. West (eds), PostAnalytic Philosophy, 145–65. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Haller, Hermann. The Hidden Italy: A Bilingual Edition of Italian Dialect Poetry. Detroit: Wayne State University Press: 1986. —The Other Italy: The Literary Canon in Dialect. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1999. Hammond, Paul. John Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Harrison, Thomas (ed.). The Favourite Malice: Ontology and Reference in Contemporary Italian Poetry. New York, Norriston and Milan: Out of London, 1983. Hawkins, Peter S. and Rachel Jacoff (eds). The Poets’ Dante: Twentieth-Century Responses. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Healey, Robin. Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography 1929–1997. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Heaney, Seamus. ‘The Main of Light’. In The Government of the Tongue: The 1986 T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings, 15–22. London and Boston, MA: Faber and Faber, 1988. —‘Envies and Identifications: Dante and the Modern Poet’ (1985). In Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001, 168–79. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Heppenstall, Rayner. Review of Abba Abba, by Anthony Burgess. — Two Moons. The Times, 2 June 1977: 9. Hermans, Theo. The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1985. Herrnstein Smith, Barbara. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Literary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Hewitt, Roger. ‘An Examination of the Bleek and Lloyd Collection of /Xam Bushman Narratives, With Special Reference to the Trickster Ikaggen’. (Unpublished PhD thesis, London University, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976.) Hill, Geoffrey. Collected Poems. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. —Canaan. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996. —The Triumph of Love. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999. —Speech! Speech! Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000. —The Orchards of Syon. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2002. —‘Poetry as ‘‘Menace’’ and ‘‘Atonement’’’. In Jon Cook (ed.), Poetry in Theory: An Anthology 1000–2000, 464–73. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. —Without Title. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006. Ho¨lderlin, Friedrich. Poesie, ed. Giorgio Vigolo. Turin: Einaudi, 1958.

Bibliography

219

Hooper, Lawrence. ‘Dialectal Dialectics: Translating Trilussa’. The Italianist, 25:2 (2005): 280–306. Howard, Paul. ‘The translator’s commentary’, in ‘The Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation 2004’ (pamphlet): 8–9. Hughes, Ted. Pensiero-Volpe e altre poesie, trans. Camillo Pennati. Milan: Mondadori, 1973. —Fiori e insetti: Qualche uccello e un paio di ragni, trans. Nicola Gardini. Milan: Mondadori, 2000. —Poesie, trans. and ed. by Nicola Gardini and Aura Ravani. Milan: Mondadori, 2008. Inghilleri, Moira (ed.). Bourdieu and the Sociology of Interpreting and Translating. Special issue The Translator, 11:2 (2005). Italy 1963. The London Magazine n.s. 3 (Oct. 1963): 5–87. Jackson, Kevin. ‘Introduction’. In Anthony Burgess, Revolutionary Sonnets, pp. vii–xviii. Manchester: Carcanet, 2002. Jacobbi, Ruggiero. Quattro testi per il teatro: Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Molie`re, ed. Anna Dolfi. Rome: Bulzoni, 2003. —Teatro in Brasile, ed. Luciana Stegagno Picchio and Alessandra Vannucci. Rome: Bulzoni, 2005. Jakobson, Roman. ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’. In Reuben A. Brower, (ed.), On Translation, 232–9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. Jones, Peter and Michael Schmidt (eds). British Poetry since the 1970s: A Critical Survey. Manchester: Carcanet, 1980. Jones, Verina R. ‘Dialect Writing’. In Peter Hainsworth and David Robey (eds), The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature, 188–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Joyce, James. Poesie, trans. Edoardo Sanguineti, Alfredo Giuliani, Adriano Rossi and Juan Rodolfo Wilcock. Milan: Mondadori, 1961. Jucker, Ninetta. Italy. New York: Walker, 1970. Kermode, Frank. ‘Institutional Control of Interpretation’. In The Art of Telling: Essays on Fiction, 168–84. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. —History and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Kirkpatrick, Robin. English and Italian Literature from Dante to Shakespeare: A Study of Source, Analogue and Divergence. London: Longman, 1995. Kirschenbaum, Blossom. Fables from Trastevere: Translations by Blossom Kirschenbaum from Verses by Trilussa. Woods Hole, MA: Pourboire Press, 1976. — ‘Fables from Trastevere: the romanesco verse of Trilussa’, Italian Journal, 8: 3–4 (1994): 32–37. Kujama¨ki, Pekka. ‘Finnish Comet in German Skies: Translation, Retranslation and Norms’. Target, 13:1 (2001): 45–70. La Fontaine, Jean. Fables: E´dition Comple`te. London: Commodore Press, 1976. La Penna, Daniela. ‘Traduzioni e traduttori’. In Stefano Giovannuzzi (ed.), Gli anni ’60 e ’70 in Italia: Due decenni di ricerca poetica, 297–322. Genoa: San Marco dei Giustiniani, 2003. Laplanche, Jean. La re´volution copernicienne inacheve´e. Paris: Aubier, 1992. Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems, ed. A. Thwaite. London and Boston, MA: The Marvell Press and Faber and Faber, 1988. —Alte finestre, trans. L. Pontrandolfo and J. Wing. Pisa: ETS, 1990. —Fading, trans. Marco Fazzini. Grottammare: Stamperia dell’Arancio, 1994. —Finestre alte, trans. Enrico Testa. Turin: Einaudi, 2002. nı´ Leathlobhair, Eni. ‘Translation with a Mandatory Health Warning: Contemporary

220

Bibliography

Irish Poetry a´ aistriu´/Filı´ocht Comhaimseartha in Translation’. Beyond Babel: A journal of undergraduate academic writing, I (1998): 1–10. Leavis, Frank R. Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture. Cambridge: Gordon Fraser, 1930. Lefevere, Andre´ and Susan Bassnett. ‘Where are we in Translation Studies?’ In Andre´ Lefevere and Susan Bassnett (eds), Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, 1–11. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998. Leopardi, Giacomo. ‘Traduzione del libro secondo della Eneide’. In Opere, vol. I, ed. Sergio Solmi. Naples: Ricciardi, 1956. —The Canti with a Selection of his Prose, trans. J. G. Nichols, Manchester: Carcanet, 1994. Levi, Primo. Shema: Collected Poems of Primo Levi, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. London: Menard Press, 1976. Lewis, Jeremy. Review of Burgess, Abba Abba in The Times (2 June 1977): 9. Lewis, Philip E. ‘The Measure of the Translation Effects (1985)’. In Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, 264–83. London: Routledge, 2000. The Literary Review. Special issue on Italian poetry. n. 3 (Autumn 1959). Locatelli, Carla. ‘Co(n)testi’. In Carla Locatelli (ed.), Co(n)texts: Implicazioni testuali, 11– 36. Trento: Editrice Universita` degli Studi di Trento, 2000. Lonardi, Giorgio. Il vecchio e il giovane, e altri studi su Montale. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1980. Lowell, Robert. Imitations. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961. Lucy, Niall. A Derrida Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Luzi, Mario. La cordigliera delle Ande. Turin: Einaudi, 1983. Macrı`, Oreste. ‘Lo ‘‘spazio domestico’’ di E. U. D’Andrea’. L’Albero, 48 (1972): 99–114. —Varia fortuna del Manzoni in terre iberiche (con una premessa sul metodo comparatistico). Ravenna: Longo, 1976. —Il Foscolo negli scrittori italiani del Novecento: Con una conclusione sul metodo comparatistico e una appendice di aggiunte al ‘Manzoni iberico’. Ravenna: Longo, 1980. —Semantica e metrica dei ‘Sepolcri’ del Foscolo. Rome: Bulzoni, 1995. —La teoria letteraria delle generazioni, ed. Anna Dolfi. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 1995. —‘Sergio Baldi poeta traduttore e critico’. In Sergio Baldi, I piaceri della fantasia: Versioni con testi originali, ed. Aldo Celli, 7–41. Florence: Olschki, 1996. —La Vita della parola: Studi montaliani. Florence: Le Lettere, 1996. —‘L’eresia cristiana nella poesia occidentale’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), La vita della parola: Studi su Ungaretti e poeti coevi, 51–66. Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. —‘Leone Traverso e l’esperienza ermetica’. In La vita della parola: Da betocchi a tentori, 499–550, ed. Anna Dolfi. Rome: Bulzoni, 2002. —‘Leopardi o della ‘‘belta`’’ pietrificata’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), La vita della parola: Studi su Ungaretti e poeti coevi, 60–6. Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. —‘‘‘Maggiori’’ e ‘‘minori’’ o di una teoria dei valori’. In La vita della parola: Studi su Ungaretti e poeti coevi, ed. Anna Dolfi. Rome: Bulzoni, 1998, 17–49. —Le mie dimore vitali (Maglie – Parma – Firenze), ed. Anna Dolfi. Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. —‘La traduzione poetica negli anni Trenta (e seguenti)’. In La vita della parola: Studi su Ungaretti e poeti coevi, ed. Anna Dolfi. Rome: Bulzoni, 1998, 39–46. —‘La traduzione nella poetica di Port-Royal’. In La vita della parola: Da Betocchi a Tentori. Rome: Bulzoni, 2002, 39–46. —‘La traduzione poetica negli anni Trenta (e seguenti)’. In La vita della parola: Da Betocchi a Tentori. Rome: Bulzoni, 2002, 47–64. — (ed.). Il cimitero marino di Paul Vale´ry. Florence: Le Lettere, 1989.

Bibliography

221

Malcovati, Fausto. ‘Introduzione’. In Anton Chekhov, I racconti, trans. Fausto Malcovati. Milan: Garzanti, 2004, x–xlv. Mallarme´, Ste´phane. ‘Crisis in Poetry’. In Mallarme´: Selected Prose Poems, Essays and Letters, trans. Bradford Cook, 34–43. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956. Mandelstam, Osip. ‘Conversation about Dante (1979)’. In Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff (eds), The Poets’ Dante: Twentieth-Century Responses, 40–93. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1989. Mangoni, Luisa. Pensare i libri: La casa editrice Einaudi dagli anni Trenta agli anni Sessanta. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Manzoni, Alessandro. I promessi sposi. 2 vols, Milan: Mondadori, 2003. Marroni, Sergio. La lingua delle traduzioni di Bel Ami 1887–1979. Rome: Bulzoni, 1989. Masters, Lee Edgard. Antologia di Spoon River, trans. Fernanda Pivano. Turin: Einaudi, 1943. Maupassant, Guy de. Bel Ami, trans. Maria Dell’Isola, revised by A. F. Perri. Milan: Treves, 1931. May, Frederick (ed.). Modern Italian Poetry. Sydney: South Head Press, 1970. (Reprinted in Poetry Australia, 22: 23–5.) McRae, John and Bill Findlay. ‘Varieties of English’. In Peter France (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, 34–8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo (ed.). Poeti italiani del Novecento. Milan: Mondadori, 1978. —‘Premessa’. In Giorgio Caproni, Quaderno di traduzioni, ed. E. Testa. Turin: Einaudi, 1998. —Gli incanti della vita. Padova: Esedra, 2003. Meschonnic, Henri. ‘On appelle cela traduire Celan’. In Pour la poe´tique, 369–405. Paris: Gallimard, 1973. Meyer, Bruce. ‘A Human Balance: An Interview with Charles Tomlinson’. The Hudson Review, 43:3 (1990): 437–48. Miller, J. Hillis. ‘Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth’. In Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (eds), The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, 207– 23. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Modern Italian Poets. San Francisco: Inferno Press, 1961. Moloney, Brian. ‘Montale and Eliot: Affinities and Influences. A Lecture Given at the Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere, University of Lecce’. Ricerca-ResearchRecherche, 1 (1995): 23–32. Montale, Eugenio. ‘Eliot e noi’. L’immagine, I, 5 (Nov.–Dec. 1947): 261–4. —Quaderno di traduzioni (1948). Milan: Mondadori, 1970. —‘Intenzioni – Intervista Immaginaria’. In Marco Forti (ed.), Per Conoscere Montale, 77– 84. Milan: Mondadori, 1976. —L’opera inversi, Gianifranco Contini and Rosanna Betterimi. Turin: Eimardi, 1980. —Tutte le poesie, ed. Giorgio Zampa. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. —Il secondo mestiere: Prose 1920–1979, ed. Giorgio Zampa. Milan: Mondadori, 1996. —Lettere a Valery Larbaud (1924–1937), ed. Marco Sonzogni. Milan: Archinto, 2003. Morrison, Blake. The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Muscetta, Carlo (ed.). Parnaso europeo: L’eta` contemporanea. Rome: Lucarini, 1989. Nabokov, Vladimir. ‘Problems of Translation: Onegin in English’. In Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, 71–83. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

222

Bibliography

Neill, William. A Hantle o Romanesco Sonnets bi Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli 1791–1863, set ower intil Scots bi William Neill. Burnside Press, 1995. — (ed. and trans.). Seventeen Sonnets by G. G. Belli. Akros Press, 1998. Nerval, Gerard. Le figlie del fuoco, trans. Oreste Macrı`. Milan: Guanda, 1979. Niall, Lucy. A Derrida Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Niccolai, Giulia. Harry’s bar e alter poesie 1969–1980. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981. Nichols, Don W. ‘Belli Up To Date: Scots and English Sonnet Translations by Robert Garioch and Anthony Burgess’. Chapman, 39 (Autumn 1984): 34–41. Niculescu, Alexandru. Strutture allocutive, pronominali, reverenziali in italiano. Florence: Olschki, 1974. Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Norse, Harold. Memoirs of a Bastard Angel. London: Bloomsbury, 1990. Oliva, Renato. ‘Introduzione alla poesia di Philip Larkin’. In Philip Larkin, Le nozze di Pentecoste, trans. Renato Oliva and Camillo Pennati. Turin: Einaudi, 1969. Olson, Charles. Le distanze, trans. Elio Pagliarani. Milan: Rizzoli, 1967. Orelli, Giorgio. ‘Sulla ‘‘fedelta` alla poesia’’ nel tradurre’. In Franco Buffoni (ed.), La traduzione del testo poetico. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1989. Pagano, Vittorio, (ed.). Antologia dei poeti maledetti. Lucugnano: Edizioni dell’Albero, 1957. Parronchi, Sergio. Quaderno francese: Poesie tradotte con alcuni commenti. Florence: Vallecchi, 1989. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Poems, trans. Norman MacAfee with Luciano Martinengo. New York: Random House, 1982. —Roman Poems, trans. Lawrence Ferlinghetti with Francesca Valente. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1984. —‘La poesia dialettale del Novecento’. In Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte, 746–857. Milan: Mondadori, 1999. Paterson, Don. The Eyes: A Version of Antonio Machado. London and New York: Faber and Faber, 1999. Pavese, Cesare. Verra` la morte e avra` i tuoi occhi. Turin: Einaudi, 1962 (1951). —Lettere 1922–44, ed. Lorenzo Mondo. Turin: Einaudi, 1966. Pennati, Camillo. Poems, trans. Peter Russell. London: Keepsake Press, 1964. —‘Note sulla poetica di Larkin’. In Philip Larkin, Le nozze di Pentecoste, trans. Renato Oliva and Camillo Pennati. Turin: Einaudi, 1969. Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere, trans. J. G. Nichols, Manchester: Carcanet, 2000. Piccolo, Lucio. Collected Poems of Lucio Piccolo, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. Plath, Sylvia. Lady Lazarus e altre poesie, trans. Giovanni Giudici. Milan: Mondadori, 1976. —Poesie, trans. Raffaella Morisco and Amelia Rosselli. Milan: Mondadori, 1985. —Opere, ed. A. Ravano. Milan: Mondadori, 2002. Poggioli, Renato (ed.). A Little Anthology of Italian Poetry. New York: New Directions in Prose and Poetry, 1948. —‘The Added Artificer’. In Reuben A. Brower (ed.), On Translation, 141–50. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1959. Polidori, Francesca, (ed.). Ruggero Jacobbi / Bibliografia degli scritti di Ruggero Jacobbi. / Inventario del Fondo Ruggero Jacobbi presso l’Archivio contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’ / Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario ‘G. P. Vieusseux’, including the facsimile edition of Jacobbi’s Rondini di Spoleto. Trento: La Finestra, 2001.

Bibliography

223

Porta, Antonio. As If I Were a Rhythm, trans. Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1978 —Invasions and Other Poems, trans. Paul Vangelisti, Anthony Baldry and Pasquale Verdicchio. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1986. —Melusine: A Ballad and a Diary, trans. Anthony Molino Montreal: Guernica, 1992. Posner, Rebecca. The Romance Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pound, Ezra. ‘How to Read’. In T. S. Eliot (ed.), Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, 15–40. London: Faber and Faber, 1954. —Cantos, trans. Mary De Rachelwitz. Milan: Mondadori, 1970. —‘How I Began’. In Lea Baechler et al. (eds), Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, Vol. 1, 141. New York and London: Garland, 1991. Pozzi, Antonia. Poems, trans. Nora Wydenbruck. London: Calder, 1955. —Breath: Poems and Letters, trans. Lawrence Venuti. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Praz, Mario. Secentismo e Marinismo in Inghilterra: John Donne, Richard Crashaw. Florence: La Voce, 1925. —‘Cronache inglesi’. In Cronache letterarie anglosassoni. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950. —La casa della vita. Milan: Mondadori, 1958. Prete, Antonio. ‘Il ritmo dell’eccesso: Sulle traduzioni baudelairiane di Vittorio Pagano’. Pensionante de’ Saraceni (special issue on Vittorio Pagano), 1 (Nov. 1985– June 1986). Pritoni, Valerio (ed.). Catalogo del Fondo Montale. Milan: Biblioteca Comunale, 1996. Pym, Antony. ‘Venuti’s Visibility’. Target, 8:1 (1996): 165–77. Quasimodo, Lirici greci. Milan: Corrente, 1940. —Fiore dell’antologia Palatina. Parma: Guanda, 1958. Quasimodo, Salvatore. Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1960. Queneau, Raymond. ‘E´crit en 1937’. In Baˆtons, chiffres et lettres, 11–26. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Re, Lucia. ‘(De)Constructing the Canon: The Agon of the Anthologies on the Scene of Modern Italian Poetry’. The Modern Language Review, 87:3 (July 1992): 585–602. Rebay, Luciano. ‘Un cestello di Montale: Le gambe di Dora Markus e una lettera di Roberto Balzen’. Italica, 61:2 (1984): 160–9. Rebonato, A. ‘La ‘‘pianola’’ di Montale: Irma Brandeis e la traduzione dei mottetti’. In Franco Nasi (ed.), Sulla traduzione letteraria: Figure del traduttore-Studi sulla traduzioneModi del tradurre, 113–34. Ravenna: Longo, 2001. Reynolds, Barbara. ‘Dante’. In Peter France (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, 469–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. —Review of The Poet’s Dante edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff; The Vision of Dante: Cary’s Translation of ‘The Divine Comedy’ by Edoardo Crisafulli; Inferno: A New Verse Translation by Michael Palma; The Inferno of Dante Alighieri by Ciaran Carson. Translation and Literature 14:1 (Spring 2005): 97–104. Reynolds, Matthew. ‘Browning and Translationese’. Essays in Criticism, 53:2 (Apr. 2003): 97–128. —‘Jamming up the Flax Machine’. Review of Ciaran Carson, Inferno of Dante. London Review of Books, 25:9 (8 May 2003): 31–2. Rich, Adrienne. The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.

224

Bibliography

—Cartografie del silenzio, trans. L. M. Vezzali. Milan: Crocetti, 2000. Ricks, Christopher. Allusion to The Poets. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Roberts, Michael. The Faber Book of Modern Verse, ed. and revised by Peter Porter. (1st edn: 1936) 4th edn. London: Faber and Faber, 1982. Robinson, Douglas. Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche. Manchester: St Jerome, 1997. Robinson, Peter. ‘Montale and the Muse’. PN Review, 23:3 (1998): 27–9. Rosselli, Amelia. Sleep: Poesie in inglese, trans. Emmanuela Tandello. Milan: Garzanti, 1992. —War Variations, trans. Lucia Re and Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2005. Rovetta, Giuliana. ‘Echi di letteratura italiana nella NRF dal 1909 al 1943’. Resine, 92 (Apr.–June 2002): 21–33. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Sanguineti, Edoardo (ed.). Poesia italiana del Novecento. Turin: Einaudi, 1969. —Quaderno di traduzioni: LucrezioShakespeareGoethe. Turin: Einaudi, 2006. Sansone, Giuseppe. ‘Traduzione ritmica e traduzione metrica’. In Franco Buffoni (ed.), La traduzione del testo poetico. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1989. Savoca, Giuseppe and Andrea Guastella. Concordanza delle traduzioni poetiche di Giuseppe Ungaretti. Florence: Olschki, 2002. Schmidt, Michael and Grevel Lindop (eds). British Poetry since the 1960s. Oxford: Carcanet, 1972. —‘Charles Tomlinson in Conversation’. PN Review, 5:1 (1977): 35–40. Schwarz-Bart, Andre´. L’ultimo dei giusti. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1993. Scotellaro, Rocco. The Sky with its Mouth Wide Open, trans. Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1976. —The Dawn is Always New: Selected Poems of Rocco Scotellaro, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Scott, Clive. Translating Baudelaire. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000. Sereni, Vittorio. Poems, trans. Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1971. —Il musicante di Saint-Merry (1981). Turin: Einaudi, 2001. —Selected Poems, trans. Peter Robinson and Marcus Perryman. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006. Serrao, Achille, Luigi Bonaffini and Justin Vitiello (eds). Via Terra: An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Dialect Poetry. New York, Ottawa and Toronto: Legas, 1999. Sexton, Anne. Poesie d’amore, ed. Rosaria Lo Russo, trans. T. A. Kirk. Florence: Le Lettere, 1996. —Poesie su Dio, ed. Rosaria Lo Russo, trans. T. A. Kirk. Florence: Le Lettere, 2003. Showerman, Grant. Trilussa: Roman Satirical Poems and their Translations. New York: SF Vanni, 1945. Simon, Sherry and Paul St Pierre (eds), Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2000. Singh, Ghan (ed.). Contemporary Italian Verse. London: London Magazine Edition, 1968. Smith, Lawrence R. (ed.). The New Italian Poetry: 1945 to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981. — and John Picchione (eds). Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Smith, Stan. The Origins of Modernism: Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the Rhetoric of Renewal. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Smith, William J. and Dana Gioia (eds). Poems from Italy. St Paul, MN: New Rivers, 1985.

Bibliography

225

Solmi, Sergio. La salute di Montaigne e altri scritti di letteratura francese. Naples: Ricciardi, 1952. —Quaderno di traduzioni, vol. 1. Turin: Einaudi, 1969. —La luna di Laforgue e altri scritti di letteratura francese. Milan: Mondadori, 1976. —Quaderno di traduzioni, vol. 2. Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Sontag, Susan. ‘Notes on ‘‘Camp’’’ (1964). In Against Interpretation, 275–92. London: Vintage: 1994. Sonzogni, Marco. ‘Praz, uno snodo tra T.S. Eliot e Montale (Appunti su Montale traduttore di T.S. Eliot)’. In Franco Buffoni (ed.), Mario Praz: Vent’anni dopo, 244–75. Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 2003. —‘Debiti e doni della traduzione poetica: Montale tra T.S. Eliot e Beckett: Schede su Montale tradotto e traduttore’. The Italianist, 25:2 (2005): 173–207. —‘Minuzie montaliane’. In Laura Incalcaterra McLoughlin (ed.), Spazio e spazialita` poetica nella poesia italiana del Novecento, 189–223. Leicester: Troubador, 2005. Sozzi, Lionello. ‘Da Baudelaire a Valery: Comi e i poeti francesi’. In Patrizia Guida (ed.), Girolamo Comi: Atti del convegno internazionale, Lecce – Tricase – Lucugnano 18–20 Ottobre 2001, 29–45. Lecce: Milella, 2001. Sparth, John. Both Blood and Sheen. Accrington: Wardleworths Bookshop, 1968. —Lancashire Life Just Sithabod. Manchester: Whitethorn Press, 1975. —Cheyp at t’Price. Manchester: Whitethorn Press, 1978. Spatola, Adriano. Various Devices: Selected Poems, trans. Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1978. — and Paul Vangelisti (eds). Italian Poetry: 1960–1980. From Neo to Post-Avanguardia. 1982. —Material, Materials, Recovery of, trans. Paul Vangelisti. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1993. Spiegelman, Willard. ‘Charles Tomlinson: The Art of Poetry LXXVIII’. The Paris Review, 40:149 (1998): 160–88. Spivak, Chakravorty Gayatry. ‘The Politics of Translation’. In Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, 397–416. London: Routledge, 2000. Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Sulis, Gigliola. ‘Ridefinire il canone: I dialettali e le antologie poetiche del Novecento’. The Italianist, 24 (2004): 77–106. Swann, Brian (ed.). Mediterranean Review, 11 (Summer 1972). Swigg, Richard. ‘Tomlinson at Sixty’. In Kathleen O’Gorman (ed.), Charles Tomlinson: Man and Artist, 223–32. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988. —Charles Tomlinson and the Objective Tradition. Lewisburg, PA: University of Bucknell Press, 1994. Talbot, George. Montale’s mestiere vile: The Elective Translations from English of the 1930s and 1940s. Dublin: Irish Academy Press for the Foundation for Italian Studies, University College Dublin, 1995. Tentori, Francesco. ‘Lettere a una voce (con un’appendice epistolare di Oreste Macrı`)’. In Anna Dolfi (ed.), Terza generazione: Ermetismo e oltre, 269–312. Rome: Bulzoni, 1997. Terracini, Benvenuto. Il problema della traduzione, ed. Bice Mortara Garavelli. Milan: Serra e Riva, 1983. Testa, Enrico. Per interposta persona: Lingua e poesia nel secondo Novecento. Rome: Bulzoni, 1999. —Montale. Turin: Einaudi, 2000.

226

Bibliography

—‘Appendice’. In Philip Larkin, Finestre alte, trans. Enrico Testa, 77–8. Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Thomas, Harry (ed.). Montale in English. New York: Handsel Books, 2005. Tomlinson, Charles. The Poem as Initiation. New York: Colgate University Press, 1967. —Poetry and Metamorphosis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. —Translations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. —Collected Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. —The Return. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. —‘Some Presences on the Scene: A Vista of Postwar Poetry’. In Vereen Bell and Laurence Lerner (eds), On Modern Poetry: Essays Presented to Donald Davie. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1988. —‘A Poet and his Muses’. Arion: a Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 9:2 (2001): 173–9. —Metamorphoses: Poetry and Translation. Manchester: Carcanet, 2003. Tondo, Michele. Salvatore Quasimodo. Milan: Mursia, 1971. Trentini, Nives. Lettere dalla Spagna: Dagli epistolari a Oreste Macrı`. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2004. Trevelyan, Raleigh (ed.). Italian Writing Today. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Triana-Toribio, Nu´ria. Spanish National Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Trilussa [Carlo Alberto Salustri]. Le favole. Milan: Mondadori, 1922. —Tutte le poesie. Milan: Mondadori, 1955. Trudgill, Peter. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1983. Turi, Gabriele. Storia dell’editoria nell’Italia contemporanea. Florence: Giunti, 1997. Turoldo, David Maria. Poems, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Milan: Scheiwiller, 1993. Ungaretti, Giuseppe. La guerre. Paris: Lux, 1919. —Quaderno di traduzioni. Rome: Norissima, 1936. —Life of Man, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Novissima, 1958. Va`rvaro, Alberto. Linguistica romanza. Naples: Liguori, 2001. Vegliante, Jean-Charles. Ungaretti entre les langues. Paris: PNS, 1987. Venuti, Lawrence (ed.). Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. —The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. —The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. —‘Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry’. In Peter France (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, 494–7. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. —The Translation Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. —‘Translating Humour: Equivalence, Compensation, Discourse’. Performance Research, 7:2 (June 2002): 6–16. —‘Translating Derrida on Translation: Relevance and Disciplinary Resistance’. The Yale Journal of Criticism, 16:2 (2003): 237–67. —‘Retranslations: The Creation of Value’. Bucknell Review, 47 (2004): 25–38. Vermeer, Hans J. ‘Skopos and Commission in Translational Action’. In Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, 221–32. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Vighi, Roberto. ‘I sonetti oltre frontiera’. In Damiano Abeni, Raffaella Bertazzoli,

Bibliography

227

Cesare G. De Michelis and Pietro Gibellini (eds), Belli oltre frontiera: La fortuna di G. G. Belli nei saggi e nelle versioni di autori stranieri, 373–83. Rome: Bonacci, 1983. Vignuzzi, Ugo. ‘Lazio, Umbria and the Marche’. In Martin Maiden and Mair Parry (eds.), The Dialects of Italy, 311–20. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Villa Emilio, Giulia Niccolai and Luciano Caruso. Foresta ultra naturam, trans. Paul Vangelisti, Ippolita Rostagno and Pasquale Verdicchio. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1989. VV. AA. Gli studi francesi in Italia tra le due guerre. Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1987. Wardle, Mary Louise. Avviamento alla traduzione. Naples: Liguori, 1996. Weissbort, Daniel, Brian Swann and Ruth Feldman (eds). Modern Poetry in Translation, 26 (Winter 1975). Special Issue on Italian Poetry. Whyte, Christopher. ‘Robert Garioch and Giuseppe Belli’. In Bill Findlay (ed.), Frae Ither Tongues: Essays on Modern Translations into Scots, 188–214. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2004. — (ed.). Modern Scottish Poetry. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Willans, Geoffrey and Ronald Searle. How to be Topp. London: Pavilion Books, 1992. Williams, Carlos William. ‘Preface’. The Roman Sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, trans. Harold Norse. Highlands, NC: Jargon, 1960. Williams, Miller. ‘Some Notes on the Translations’. In Sonnets of Giuseppe Belli, trans. Miller Williams, pp. xxi–xxiii. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. — (ed.). Sonnets of Giuseppe Belli. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Xie, Ming. Ezra Pound and the Appropriation of Chinese Poetry: Cathay, Translation and Imagism. New York and London: Garland, 1999. —‘Pound as Translator’. In Ira B. Nadel (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, 204–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Zanzotto, Andrea. Selected Poetry of Andrea Zanzotto, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. —Wake for Fellini’s Casanova and Other Poems, trans. Ruth Feldman and John Welle. Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1997. —The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto. A bilingual edition. Trans. Ruth Feldman, Thomas J. Harrison, Brian Swann, John P. Welle and Elizabeth A. Wilkins, ed. and trans. Patrick Baron. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007. Zoico, Silvia. ‘Come e` fatto il Musicante di Saint-Merry’. In Tina Matarrese and Marco Praloran (eds), Stilistica, Metrica e Storia della lingua: Studi offerti dagli allievi a Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, 369–86. Padua: Antenore, 1997.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Abeni, Damiano 85, 89, 92 Abraham 93–4 Adams, Le´onie 18, 115, 118–26 Aeschylus 32 Algarotti, Francesco 28 Alighieri, Dante see Dante Allen, Beverly 8, 64 Althusser, Louis 1 Anceschi, Luciano 52, 62, 64 Anderson, Benedict 1 Angioletti, G. B. 11 Apel, Friedmar 21 Apollinaire, Guillaume 40, 41, 47, 53 Apter, Emily 16 Ariosto, Ludovico 10, 43 Arrowsmoth, William 11, 59 Assmann, Aleida 168 Bachmann, Ingeborg 132–3 Baker, Mona 21 Baldi, Sergio 47, 48 Baldry, Anthony 15 Baldung Grien, Hans 33 Balestrini, Nanni 58, 63, 64, 65 Ballerini, Luigi 15, 20, 60, 62, 67 Ballo, Guido 61 Bally, Charles 21 Balzac, Honore´ de 27, 29 Barthes, Roland 167 Bartolini, Luigi 61 Bassani, Giorgio 52 Bassnett, Susan 21, 166, 172–4 Bataille, George 167 Baudelaire, Charles 16, 21, 150 Bazlen, Roberto 125 Beckett, Samuel 5, 18 Bellezza, Dario 62

Belli, Giuseppe Gioacchino 9, 85–98, 100 Beltrametti, Franco 15 Benjamin, Walter 2, 21, 97, 158 Benn, Gottfried 49 Be´quer, Adolfo 49, 51, 53 Bergin, Thomas G. 14 Berman, Antoine 3, 21, 154 Bertolani, Paolo 9, 145–50 Bertolucci, Attilio 10, 11, 48, 61 Bettini, Filippo 62 Betocchi, Carlo 11, 61 Biagini, Elisa 20 Bigongiari, Piero 16, 48, 49, 50, 51 Bisutti, Donatella 117 Blanchot, Maurice 158, 163 Bleek, W. H. I. 79 Bloch, Marc 28 Bo, Carlo 38, 46, 48 Boccaccio, Giovanni 80 Bodini, Vittorio 14, 47, 48, 61 Bonaffini, Luigi 9, 86 Bonnefoy, Yves 136 Bono, Elena 63 Borges, Jorge Louis 161–2 Borgese, Giuseppe Antonio 28 Bradley, Dick 15 Bradley, F. H. 127 Bradshaw, Vittoria 64, 67 Brandeis, Irma 18, 119–25, 130, 131 Breton, Andre´ 49 Briggs, Kate 7, 21, 22, 153 Browning, Robert 76, 77, 80 Budick, Sanford 169 Burgess, Anthony 9, 86–90, 92–4, 96 Burnshaw, Stanley 159 Busch, Fritz 34 Byron, George Gordon 80

230

Index

Cacciatore, Giuseppe 62 Cadioli, Alberto 21 Cagnone, Nanni 11, 62 Caine, Michael 109 Cairncross, John 60 Calastri, Giovanna 120, 124 Calogero, Lorenzo 59 Calvino (John Calvin 1509–64) 27–8 Calvino, Italo 12, 13, 60, 64 Calzecchi Onesti, Rosa 39 Cambon, Glauco 11, 12, 61–2 Camilla (Volscian maid warrior)74, 80 Campana, Dino 11, 60, 61 Campo, Cristina 64 Campra, Andre´ 36 Caproni, Giorgio 11, 19, 27, 30, 41, 42, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 144 Cardarelli, Vincenzo 11, 60, 61 Carducci, Giosue´ 28, 37, 51 Carena, Carlo 25 Caretti, Lanfranco 117 Caro, Annibal 36, 39 Carson, Ciaran 10, 71–84, 97 Caruso, Luciano 15 Caselli, Daniela 7, 8, 55 Cassavetes, John 27 Cassola, Giuseppe 26 Cattafi, 60, 61, 64, 65 Cavalcanti, Guido 5, 6, 80 Cecchi, Emilio 125 Ce´line, Louis-Ferdinand 47 Cepollaro, Biagio 62 Chamisso, Adalbert von 37 Chaplin, Charlie 29 Char, Rene´ 47 Charpentier, Gustave 35 Chaucer, Geoffrey 80, 105 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich 30, 31, 32 Chinol, Elio 41 Chipman, Warwick 78 Cicero 173 Clark, Eleanor 85, 89 Classe, Olive 96 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 19, 51 Colquhoun, Archibald 59 Comand, Sebastiana 62 Comi, Girolamo 47 Conquest, Robert 58–9

Connolly, David 155, 159 Contini, Gianfranco 43, 53 Conrad, Joseph 49 Corman, Cid 14 Corneille, Pierre 36 Crane, Hart 19 Crashaw, Richard 5 Cre´billon, Claude-Prosper Jolyot 36 Croce, Benedetto 21, 44 Cruz, Juan de la 50 Crystal, David 100 Dacier, Anne 159 Danchet, Antoine 36 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 11, 28, 30, 38 Dante 5, 10, 12, 13, 35, 37, 38, 71–84, 88, 122, 133, 148–9, 154 Davie, Donald 58, 150 Day, Thomas 7, 9, 10, 145 De Angelis, Milo 9, 11 De Caro, Paolo 122 Deidier, Roberto 20, 136, 141–2 Della Casa, Giovanni 50 de Man, Paul 3, 21 de Palchi, Alfredo 60, 61 de Rachelwilzt, Walter 62 de Rachelwiltz, Mary 19, 62 Derrida, Jacques, 3, 21, 22, 80, 82, 153–64, 169–70, 173, 175 Dho´mhnail, Nuala Nı` 125 Dickinson, Emily 15, 18, 19, 20 Diderot, Denis 154 di Nola, Laura 8 Dolci, Danilo 61 Donne, John 5, 19, 50, 92 Dolfi, Anna 7, 16 D’Orazio, Sarah H. 7, 11, 127 Dryden, John 80 Du Bellay 154 Duggan, Christopher 102 Dunn, Denis 96–7, 141 Durling, Robert M. 78 Du¨rer, Albrecht (Durero) 28 Du Val, John 9, 104–7 Easthope, Antony 58, 67 Eco, Umberto 12, 13, 169 Edwards, Michael 149

Index Eliot, T.S. 2, 5, 11, 17, 18, 19, 47, 59, 77, 80, 82, 115, 117, 119, 121–3, 148–50 Ellis, Steve 10, 90 Eluard, Paul 49, 50 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 127 Empson, William 76–7 Erba, Luciano 19, 42, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65 Evans, Paul 15 Even-Zohar, Itamar 3, Ewart, Gavin 59 Fantoni, Giovanni 28 Farnsworth, Edith 11 Faulkner, William 31 Fazzini, Marco 20, 136, 141–2 Feldman, Ruth 12, 13, 14, 16, 61, 67 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence 13 Ferri, David 80 Flaubert, Gustave 27, 29 Findlay, Bill 9, 97 Finzi, Gilberto 11, 61 Folena, Gianfranco 21, 28 Ford, John 27 Forrest-Thomson, Veronica 58 Fortini, Franco 11, 19, 37, 42, 52, 64, 65 Foscolo, Ugo 33 Foucault, Michel 1 Frabotta, Biancamaria 8 France, Anatole 35 France, Peter 96 Frasca, Gabriele 6 Freud, Sigmund 157 Friedrich, Hugo 172–3 Fromentin, Euge`ne 28 Frost, Robert 19, 155, 160 Fubini, Mario 37 Fulton, Robin 56, 57, 67, 87 Furst, Henry 125 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 171 Galassi, Jonathan 11, 16 Gallet, Luis 35 Gardini, Nicola 136 Garioch, Robert 9, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98 Gatto, Alfonso 61 Genette, Ge´rard 161 Gentili, Vanni 136 George, Stefan 49

231

Gide, Andre´ 117 Gini, Giuseppe 30 Giachetti-Sorteni, Bice 28 Gifford, Henry 145, 146 Ginzburg, Leone 32 Gioia, Dana 66 Giudici, Giovanni 13, 19, 39, 41, 61, 65 Giuliani, Alfredo 18, 20, 61, 62, 63, 65 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 37, 42, 44, 49 Golding, William 80 Golino, Carlo 60, 61 Go`ngora, Luis de 45, 47 Gozzano, Guido 11, 13, 28 Grabher, Carlo 31 Graham, Joseph 3 Gramsci, Antonio 32 Graves, Robert 19 Graziosi, Elisabetta 25 Griffiths, Eric 10 Grillandi, Massimo 105 Gru¨nbein, Durs 80 Guerra, Tonino 11 Guicciardini, Francesco 28 Guidacci, Margherita 11, 14, 20, 63, 64 Gunn, Thom 12, 19 Haller, Herman 9 Hamilton, Ian 96, 97 Hammond, Paul 80 Hardy, Thomas 31, 40, 42 Harrison, Thomas 62, 67 Hawkins, Peter S. 10 Hawkes, Jacquetta 12 Healey, Robin 10, 11, 12 Heaney, Seamus 58, 77, 136 Heidegger, Martin 51, 171 Heine, Heinrich 38 Hermans, Theo 3, 21 Heym, Georg 33, 49 Hesse, Hermann 40 Hill, Geoffrey 11, 58, 80, 127–33 Hitchcock, Alfred 32 Hoffmann, Michael 80 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 49 Hollander, Robert 78 Hollander, Jean 78 Holmes, John 9 Ho¨lderlin, Friedrich 47, 49, 51

232 Homer 13, 39, 71, 159 Hopkins, Gerald Manley 18, 19, 22 Hooper, Laurence 7, 9, 99–112 Horace 44, 72 Howard, Paul 98 Hughes, Ted 12, 19 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 21 Isaac 93–4 Izzo, Carlo 38 Jackson, Denis 80 Jackson, Kevin 85, 96 Jacobbi, Ruggiero 47, 48 Jacoff, Rachel 10 Jakobson, Roman 154, 168 James, Henry 26 Jerome (Saint) 172–3 Jewell, Keala Jane 8, 64 Jolas, Euge`ne 119 Joyce, James 5, 18, 71, 80 Jucker, Ninetta 65 Jull Costa, Margaret 80 Ka`lma`n, Emmerich 35 Kamuf, Peggy 154, 157 Kay, George R. 57, 58, 60, 67 Kelman, James 97 Kemeny, Tomaso 125 Keplero (Johannes Kepler) 27 Kermode, Frank 8 Kirschenbaum, Blossom 9, 102–4 Kittel, Muriel 8, 64 Kleist, Heinrich von 49 Klutainmnestra 76 Kujama¨ki, Pekka 96 Labe´, Louise 42 Labriola, Gina 61 La Bruye`re, Jean de la 28 La Fontaine, Jean de la 100, 106–7 Laforgue, Jules 47 Lanati, Barbara 20 Landini, Alma 120, 124 Landolfi, Tommaso 48 Larkin, Philip 12, 19, 20, 58, 135–44 La Rochefoucauld, Franc¸oise de 25 Lattuada, Alberto 61 Le Brun, Charles 28

Index Lefeve`re, Andre´ 21, 173–4 Leonetti, Francesco 59 Leopardi, Giacomo 33, 43, 141 Lonardi, Gilberto 117 Lewis, Philip E. 22, 83–4 Levi, Primo 11, 12, 14, 61 Libero De, Libero 61 Linati, Carlo 125 Lloyd, L. C. 79 Locatelli, Carla 7, 22, 165 Lorca, Federico Garcı`a 53 Lo Russo, Rosaria 20 Lowell, Robert 56, 67 Lucan 72 Lucy, Niall 174 Lumelli, Angelo 62 Lutero (Luther, Martin) 27–8 Luzi, Mario 11, 13, 19, 42, 48, 49, 52, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65 MacAfee, Norman 13 McRae, John 9 Machado, Antonio 53, 71 Macrı`, Oreste 16, 45–54 Majorino, Giancarlo 65 Mallarme´, Ste´phane 16, 45, 149–50 Mangoni, Luisa 21 Manzoni, Alessandro 31, 43, 80 Mann, Thomas 28 Magrelli, Valerio 11 Malcovati, Fausto 30 Mandelbaum, Allen 13, 14, 16 Mandelstam, Osip 77 Maraini, Dacia 11, 61 Markus, Dora 130 Marı´as, Javier 80 Mariconi, Alberto Mario 61 Marinetti, Filippo Tomaso 32 Marmori, Giancarlo 65 Marroni, Sergio 27, 30 Martello, Pier Jacomo 36 Martinengo, Luciano 13 Massenet, Jules 27, 35 Masters, Edgar Lee 18 Maupassant, Guy de 27 May, Fredrick 62, 63 Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo 7, 8, 17, 19, 22 Merini, Alda 11, 63, 64 Meschonnic, Henri 21, 136

Index Meyerbeer, Giacomo 34 Michelangelo 27 Miller, J. Hillis 169 Milton, John 19 Montaigne, Michel de (Montagna) 28, 47, 154 Montale, Eugenio 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 47, 56, 58–61, 62, 63, 67, 80, 115–26, 127–33, 141 Monti, Vittorio 36 Moore, Michael 15 Morante, Elsa 61 Moravia, Alberto 13 Morgan, Edwin 11 Morisco, Raffaella 20 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 34, 36 Musa, Mark 78 Nagra, Daljit 80 Nashe, Thomas 80 Neill, William 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 98 Nerval, Ge´rard de 38, 49, 51 Niccolai, Giulia 6, 15 Nichols, J. G. 16 Niculescu, Alexandru 30 Nievo, Ippolito 38 Niranjana, Tejaswini 3, 21, 65 Norse, Harold 9, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96 O’Brien, Flann 82 Oliva, Renato 135 Olson, Charles 19 Ombres, Rossana 61 Orelli, Giorgio 42, 44, 58, 60, 62, 63 O’Sullivan, Carol 7, 9, 85, 100 Ovid 13, 72 Pagano, Vittorio 48 Pagliarani, Elio 19, 63, 64, 65 Palazzeschi, Aldo 63 Palma, Michael 13, 66 Panarese, Luigi 48 Parker Bowles, Camilla 74 Parronchi, Alessandro 48, 52 Pascal, Blaise 25, 26 Pascoli, Giovanni 11, 38, 39, 58

233

Pasolini, Pier Paolo 11, 12, 13, 32, 38, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 107–8 Paterson, Don 77 Pavese, Cesare 5, 11, 18, 48, 60, 61, 63 Paz, Octavio 56, 145 Penna, Sandro 11, 59, 61, 63 Pennati, Camillo 11, 12, 19, 59, 135, 141 Perryman, Marcus 81 Perse, Saint-John 45 Petrarca, Francesco 10, 43 Petrarch see Petrarca Philippe, Charles L. 28 Phillips, Tom 78 Piave, Francesco Maria 35 Pierro, Albino 11 Piccolo, Lucio 12, 14, 60, 63 Pignotti, Lorenzo 65 Pindemonte, Ippolito 36 Pittalunga, M. 28 Plath, Sylvia 15, 19, 20 Plato 72 Poe, Edgar Allan 150 Poggioli, Renato 13, 48, 58, 117 Pontrandolfo, Luisa 136 Porta, Antonio 11, 15, 18, 61, 62, 63, 65 Posner, Rebecca 100 Pound, Ezra 5, 6, 19, 22, 43, 80, 154, 161–2 Poussin, Nicolas (Pussino) 28 Pozzi, Antonia 8, 9, 11 Prampolini, Giacomo 123 Pratolini, Vasco 28 Praz, Mario 5, 19, 121–2, 125 Pre´vert, Jacques 47 Proust, Marcel 47 Puccini, Giacomo 34 Pulci, Luigi 80 Pushkin, Alexander 39 Pym, Anthony 111 Quasimodo, Salvatore 11, 12, 13, 17, 45, 47, 48, 60, 61 Queneau, Raymond 88 Raboni, Giovanni 61 Racine, Jean 26, 36, 42, 45 Raiziss, Sonia 60, 61 Ransom, John Crowe 19 Raymond, Marcel 51

234

Index

Re, Lucia 8, 15 Rebora, Clemente 32 Reed, Jeremy 11 Rembrandt (Rembrante; Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn) 28 Renoir, Jean 31 Reynolds, Barbara 97 Reynolds, Matthew 7, 10, 71 Rich, Adrienne 20, 170, 175 Ricks, Christopher 84 Rilke, Rainer Maria 49, 154 Rimbaud, Arthur 16 Risi, Nelo 60, 61, 64, 65 Roberts, Michael 58 Robinson, Peter 15, 16, 81 Rodocanachi, Lucia 125 Ronsard, Pierre de 50, 51 Roversi, Roberto 65 Rossanda, Rossana 20 Rosselli, Amelia 6, 8, 11, 15, 20, 62, 65 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 80 Rossi, Adriano 18 Rubens, Peter Paul 28 Russell, Peter 12 Saba, Umberto 11, 56, 58, 60, 61 Salomon, I. L. 61 Salustri, Carlo Alberto see Trilussa Sand, George 29 Sanesi, Roberto 11, 61 Sanguineti, Edoardo 8, 11, 18, 19, 61, 63, 65 Santagostino, Mario 37 Sartarelli, Stephen 15 Sautet, Claude 26 Sayers, Dorothy L. 78 Scheiwiller, Vanni 52, 62, 63 Schuchardt, Hugo 21 Shelley, Percy Bissey 80 Schwarz-Bart, Andre´ 26 Sciascia, Leonardo 12 Scotellaro, Rocco 12, 14, 15, 60, 61, 64, 65 Scott, Clive 71, 79 Scott, Walter 80 Searle, Ronald 80, 82 Sereni, Vittorio 12, 15, 19, 42, 48, 52, 60, 61, 81 Sexton, Anne 20

Shakespeare, William 17, 41, 42, 45, 122, 147–8 Showerman, Grant 9, 101–3, 104 Schubert, Franz 33 Siciliano, Enzo 13 Sinclair, Iain 59 Singh, G. 11, 56, 57, 60, 61, 67 Simenon, George 26 Sinisgalli, Leonardo 12, 60, 63 Smith, Ali 80 Smith, Lawrence R. 64–6 Smith, Stan 118 Smith, William J. 66 Solmi, Sergio 19, 40, 42, 52 Sonzogni, Marco 7, 18, 115 Sontag, Susan 74 Sotheby, Hans 85 Spatola, Adriano 12, 15, 62, 63, 65, 67 Spaziani, Maria Luisa 12, 62, 63 Spender, Stephen 40 Spillane, Mickey 27 Spivak, Gayatry Chakravorty 3, 21 Stae¨l, Madame de 16 Steiner, George 21, 166 Stevens, Wallace 19 Sterne, Laurence 80 Stocks, Mike 98 Storm, Theodor 80 Swann, Brian 12, 14, 61, 67 Tacitus 32 Talbot, George 116, 120, 121 Tanzi, Drusilla 131 Tentori, Giuseppe 47, 48 Terracini, Benvenuto 21 Testa, Enrico 7, 19, 20, 131, 135 Tjutcev, Fyodor 51 Thomas, Dylan 18 Thomas, Harry 11 Tolstoy, Leon 32 Tomlinson, Charles 9, 10, 14, 96, 145–50 Toury, Gideon 3, Trackl, Georg 49 Trevelyan, Raleigh 60 Trilussa (Carlo Alberto Salustri) 9, 11, 99–112 Trivedi, Harish 172 Trollope, Eleanor 85 Trudghill, Peter 100

Index Truffaut, Franc¸ois 26, 31 Turge´nev, Ivan 29 Turi, Gabriele 21 Turoldo, David Maria 12, 13, 60 Traverso, Leone 46, 47, 48, 52 Ungaretti, Giuseppe 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 41, 45, 46, 47, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 Valente, Francesca 13 Valeri, Diego 12, 47, 53 Vale´ry, Paul 42, 47, 49, 53, 150 Van Dyk, Paul (Vandicke) 28 Vangelisti, Paul 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 62, 67 Va`rvaro, Alberto 100 Venuti, Lawrence 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 21, 79, 81, 110–12, 171–2 Velasquez, Diego 28 Verdi, Giuseppe 34, 35 Verdicchio, Pasquale 15 Verlaine, Paul 16, 47 Vezzali, Maria Luisa 20 Vico, Gianbattista 25 Vighi, Roberto 98 Vignuzzi, Ugo 100 Vigolo, Giorgio 47 Villa, Agostino 32 Villa, Emilio 12, 15, 62 Virgil 13, 39, 80, 82 Vittorini, Elio 31, 48

235

Vivaldi, Cesare 62, 63, 65 Viviani, Cesare 62 Volponi, Paolo 62, 64, 65 Voltaire (Franc¸ois-Marie Arouet) 36, 154 Wagner, Richard 34 Walter, Bruno 34 Weaver, William F. 59 Welle, John 15 Whyte, Christopher 97 Wilcock, Rodolfo 18, 81, 82 Wilson, J. J. 87, 92, 95 Willans, Geoffrey 80, 82 Williams, Carlos William 15, 88 Williams, Miller 86, 95, 96, 104–5 Wilss, Wolfram 21 Wings, Janet 136 Wordsworth, William 58 Wright, Charles 11 Wo¨lfflin, Heinrich 27 Wydenbruck, Nora 8 Wyler, William 32 Xie, Ming 161, 163 Yeats, William Butler 19 Zanon, Tobia 36 Zanzotto, Andrea 12, 14, 15, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65 Zolla, Ele´mire 125