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Piero Garofalo
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GIACOMO LEOPARDI
LEOPARDI: SELECTED POEMS
Translated by Eamon Grennan.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. 93 pp.
Although this becentennial of Giacomo Leopardi's birth (29 June 1798)
has inaugurated a renewed scholarly interest in all aspects of his work,
a renewed popular interest in Leopardi's poetry has yet to manifest
itself. Considering the appreciation and the esteem with which his
literary and philosophical efforts were received throughout Europe in the
nineteenth century, the lack of recognition which he has suffered outside
of Italy in this century is disconcerting. Eamon Grennan, an
accomplished poet in his own right, seeks to correct this benign neglect
through lyrical translations of selected poems that he hopes will convey
the significance of Leopardi to the Western poetic tradition.
The volume contains two brief introductions: one by John C.
Barnes (xi-xv) on the life of Giacomo Leopardi and the other by the
translator (xvii-xxii) on the motivations that inspired the undertaking.
This edition of Leopardi's Canti, lacking any critical apparatus, is
intended to appeal to a general public interested in poetry for the sake
of poetry. The decision to restrict all commentary to a minimum has the
disadvantage of leaving the neophyte without any explanatory
guideposts that might enhance — rather than distract from — the reading
pleasure. Barnes limits himself to the essentials in detailing Leopardi's
life and in describing the thematic motifs that dominate the poet's work;
however, Eamon Grennan establishes a more personal tone by
describing both his passion for Leopardi's poetry and his regret that
English readers lack a worthy translation. Grennan sees the translator's
task as that of being "faithful and interesting) (xx) and hopes, through
this dual approach, to attract a broader audience than his predecessors.
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Although there have been numerous English-language versions of
Leopardi's poetry (including Geoffrey L. Bickersteth's verse-translation
critical edition of 1923, and most recently, Arturo Vivante's selection
of 1988), according to Grennan, "none of these succeeded in bringing
over the true feel and texture, the true sound of Leopardi into English"
(xviii). While not suggesting that he is establishing definitive
translations, Grennan does make a strong argument for continued poetic
attempts to improve on past efforts; however, this justification for a new
edition is not furthered by Grennan's puzzling ascription of Leopardi's
relative obscurity among the English-reading public to his Romantic
voice. According to the translator, the Canti are permeated by a rhetoric
that is too artificial for the non-Italian ear; therefore his translations
attempt to minimize this aspect of Leopardi's poetry.
Selected Poems contains sixteen poems (fifteen from the Canti plus
"Coro dei [sic] morti" from the "Dialogo di Federico Ruysch e delle sue
mummie," Operette morali) arbitrarily divided into three sections.
Although the facing-page Italian texts is based on the second edition of
Mario Fubini's Giacomo Leopardi: Canti, con introduzione e commento
(Florence: Le Monnier, 1971), the translator has opted to follow a
chronological order in the presentation of the poems rather than respect
the original sequence. While this division facilitates the reading of the
poems, it also suggests a structural coherence that is different from the
one imposed by the author; however, for the general reader for whom
the collection is intended, this distinction is of little consequence.
Despite the limited selection of poems, the volume does offer an
excellent introduction to Leopardi. Part One contains "L'infinito," "La
sera del di di festa," "Alla luna," "Il sogno," "La vita solitaria," "Ultimo
canto di Saffo," and "Coro di morti." Part Two contains "A Silvia," "Il
passero solitaria," "Le ricordanze," "La quiete dopo la tempesta," "Il
sabato del villaggio" and "Canto notturno di un pastore errante
dell'Asia." The final section contains "A se stesso," "Il tramonto della
luna" and "La ginestra ο il fiore del deserto."
From a technical perspective, Grennan judiciously respects the
metre and the rhythm of Leopardi's hendecasyllabic blank verse while
opting for an "idiomatic plainness" (xx) which bestows a simple
elegance to the translation. These are characterized by a general
tendency to downplay the Romantic posturing of Leopardi's rhetoric.
Thus in "La sera del dì di festa" he renders "A te la speme / Negro —
mi disse, — anche la speme" (II. 14-15) as "To you, / She said, I refuse
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even hope," and "Ecco è fuggito / Il dì festivo, ed al festivo il giorno
/ Volgar succede" (11. 30-2) as "Look / How this feast-day is over in a
flash, / The work day comes on" eliminating the repetition of "speme"
in the former case and of "festivo" in the latter. Similarly, in "Canto
notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia" the line "Corre via, corre,
anela" (1. 28) becomes "Hurrying faster, gasping for breath" in which
"corre" is subsumed in the comparative intensifier. Since Italian tends
to be even more sensitive than English to repetition, this postRomanticizing of Leopardi risks at times becoming a misrepresentation
rather than a mistranslation. In "Alla luna," Grennan's poetic restraint
manifests itself in the elimination of the opening address to the moon,
beginning instead with "Now that the year has come full circle."
Although the tone is more in line with modern poetic sensibility, it does
so at the expense of sacrificing the direct engagement of the poetic
voice with the celestial sphere. In "Canto notturno" the address to the
moon is again eliminated ("Dimmi, ο luna" of line 16 becomes "Tell
me") in an effort to make Leopardi more palatable to the modem
public.
Perhaps what is most curious in this entire collectoin (and might
have warranted an explanation) was the decision to translate "L'infinito"
as "Infinitive" when all previous translations of the idyll opted for the
more straightforward "infinite." Given the grammatically dominant
connotations of the term, the use of "infinitive" tends to
obfuscate the suggestivity of the poem's Italian title. Of the two
criteria which Grennan establishes for translations in his
introduction, he has been more successful in being interesting
than in being faithful.
Nevertheless, these minor reservations should not detract from the
elegant, vivid, accurate (in content, at least) and, most of all, enjoyable
versions of Leopardi's poetry provided by Grennan. Since the collection
makes no pretense of appealing to an Italian-literate community.
Selected Poems will serve its intended readership well. This attractive
edition presents an accessible Leopardi to an English-speaking public
and is a welcome addition to the limited corpus of Leopardi's writings
available in translation. What Grennan sets out to do, he does very well;
however, this selection remains a missed opportunity. Given the absence
of an in-print English-language edition of Leopardi's poems and the
obvious poetic capabilities of Grennan, it is disappointing that the entire
Canti could not have been translated. Although Grennan's sixteen
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renditions are excellent, the reader is left both wanting and deserving
more.
PIERO GAROFALO
Trinity College,
Hartford, Connecticut