gente mia e altre poesie - Rivista di Studi Italiani

J O S E P H TUSIANI
GENTE MIA E ALTRE POESIE
San Marco in Lamis: G r u p p o Cittadella Est, 1982. 104 pp.
Traduzione dall'inglese di Maria C. Pastore Passaro
When one has become accustomed to a poet's thought patterns, to his
linguistic idiosyncracies, to his peculiar musicality, and even to his choice of
words, it is extremely difficult to read his work in a language that is different
from the one in which one has learned to recognize it. In the worst case, the
translations bear little resemblance to it, and even at best, there often remains
a measure of strangeness, a feeling that something is amiss, like an act of
mimickry in which a gesture betrays itself as inauthentic, or like an impersonator whose voice rings untrue at a certain moment. This feeling of strangeness that all translators attempt to overcome — and few succeed — is
almost miraculously absent from Maria Pastore Passaro's translation of
Joseph Tusiani's recent volume of poetry entitled Gente Mia and Other
Poems, which was published originally by the Italian Cultural Center of
Stone Park, Illinois in 1978. Mrs. Passaro's translation into Italian was
published with an introduction by Ennio Bonea by the G r u p p o Cittadella Est
of San Marco in Lamis (the poet's home town) in 1982.
Gente mia, which was well received by critics at the time of its release,
confirming Tusiani as one of the more luminous stars in the firmament of
Italian-American poetry, is a collection of 30 poems of various lengths,
divided into two parts: Part I deals roughly with the poet's response to the
ethnic component of his soul; Part II opens onto wider vistas not limited by
any one aspect of the poet's life.
Maria Passaro's task was not an easy one. The technical skills, indeed,
the poetic virtuosity displayed by Tusiani in this volume would have driven to
distraction even the most seasoned translator if he or she had attempted to
reproduce them in the new medium. The rhyme scheme alone — for instance,
"Ellis Island, 1976" consists of eight stanzas of ten lines each, divided, in turn
in two cinquains of three pentameters and two trimeters rhyming as follows
ABCde, ABCde;" Analysis in late November" has an even more bewildering
scheme, ABaaB, B D b b D , D C d d C , which constitutes a prosodic novelty, as
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far as I know, since it is actually an example of "Quinta rima" — represents a
task of nearly insurmountable difficulty. Maria Passaro wisely chose not to
attempt to reproduce the rhyme scheme — excepting the "Ballad of Father
Kelly" in which the A A A A rhyming scheme of the quatrain is kept in Italian
with the help of some false rhymes and assonances — preferring to retain the
length of the verse and to work in some rhymes whenever the opportunity
presented itself. Naturally, a good deal of the magic musicality that Tusiani
was able to weave through external as well as internal rhymes, and through a
discrete system of echoes and returning sounds, is lost, even though the
translator has done very well to reproduce the meters of the originals.
Passaro's renderings, however, are very much in the style that Tusiani
himself would have adopted had he chosen to utilize his other well-known
talent and translated his own poems. It seems to me that the translator has
made an extraordinary effort to remain faithful to the spirit of the poems as
well as to her knowledge and understanding of Tusiani. Her linguistic choices
are uncannily Tusianesque, that is, they reflect a deep knowledge of the man
and his work which allows her to choose, given two terms, the one that
Tusiani would have chosen had he written the poems in Italian. A few
examples will suffice: In "The Italian G o a t " the line "delightful breeze on this
wet greenness playing" has become "deliziosa brezza che su questo rorido
verde scherzi". The prosaic adjective "wet" and the poetic noun "greenness"
have been rendered with a poetic adjective " r o r i d o " and a prosaic noun
"verde". In addition, however, the adjective " r o r i d o " is more archaic-poetic
than its counterpart. Tusiani, I am sure, would agree that Passaro's choice
was a good one, since he believes, like Leopardi, that certain words are more
poetic than others. This tendency to select terms that seem more archaicpoetic can be observed frequently in the translation. Thus, "every woe"
("Ellis Island, 1976") becomes "ogni procella"; "in that one fragrance,"
("The First poem") becomes "in quell'unico olezzo,"; and "hungry like its
owner," ("The Italian G o a t " ) "famelica come il padrone".
It is because of Maria Passaro's reliance on a highly selective vocabulary
rich in tradition which is a distinctive mark of Tusiani's poetry, whether he
expresses himself in English or in Italian, that no feeling of strangeness
accompanied my reading of her Italian renditions. They seem like poems that
Tusiani might have written had he chosen to write in Italian. In fact, in "Ode
to an Illiterate Poet," in which Tusiani recollects poignantly the lessons and
the influence that his Italian grandmother has had on his life, we are faced
with an ironic twist: parts of the original poem are a translation of a memory
that lives in Italian. When Maria Passaro retranslated those parts, she
probably came closer to the actual memory than was done in the original. Let
the reader compare an excerpt from both poems:
I'd not yet seen a shepherd or a sheep
and yet I knew them both, for, when the thunder
suddenly spoke of anger in the sky,
I always heard this prayer from her lips:
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" R u n , little orphan shepherd, run, little sheep:
the coldest cave can be a mother's a r m s . "
She was so sad and wise, I wonder now
what really made her soul so wise and sad.
For there is nothing that I hear or do
that does not link me with some ancient loss
or make me part of anguish not my own.
I was fourteen when G r a n d m a died: but now,
at forty, I know well she is not dead.
N o n avevo ancor visto né pastore né pecora
e già li conoscevo: q u a n d o il tuono
con improvvisa rabbia empiva il cielo,
era questa la sua solita preghiera:
"Orfano pastorello, corri, corri!
E corri, corri, pecoruccia bella!
La più fredda caverna p u ò farvi da m a m m a . "
Era si triste e saggia che mi chiedo
perché mai fosse cosi triste e saggia.
Q u a l u n q u e cosa ch'io ascolti o faccia
mi fa parte di qualche antica perdita
o mi lega a un dolore ancor non mio.
Q u a n d o la n o n n a mi m o r ì , avevo
quattordici anni; or che ne ho q u a r a n t a ,
son più che certo ch'ella vive ancora.
Mrs. Passaro's translation is very accurate and reflects the attention and
the care she brought to her task. Some expressions and some words, for one
reason or another, are occasionally deleted from the Italian, without damaging either the fluidity or the contents of the poems. There are a few debatable
interpretations, such as the following: in "The Italian G o a t " "faultless gun"
was translated with 'l'infallibile canna." It seems to me that the context
required "incolpevole," especially since the man who was to be shot with it
was deemed "colpevole"; In "The Ballad of the Coliseum" the lines "Never
to miss a work-day/never to be in need or, worse, in debt —" are condensed
into " N o n perdere ora lavorativa/ non dover nulla a nessuno" leaving out the
immigrant's dread of debts; Finally, in "The Difficult W o r d " the lines," for
your healthy seed/ grew in the loving beauty of her y o u t h / until it blossomed . . . " are translated as "ché il tuo seme/ crebbe robusto nel virgineo
grembo/finché sbocciò . . . " Since the poet was describing his own birth, to
introduce the expression "virgineo g r e m b o " which makes an association with the
M a d o n n a ' s virgin birth inevitable, was perhaps u n w a r r a n t e d .
These are, however, very minor points c o m p a r e d with the steady excellence of
the Italian text.
GAETANO CIPOLLA
St. J o h n ' s University,
New York City
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