Translating Ungaretti.(Book Review)

Selected Poems, by Giuseppe Ungaretti, translated by Andrew Frisardi; Carcanet, 2003, about $50.

THE TASK of a translator is a thankless one; the best that one can hope for is that the criticism will be counterbalanced by an equal measure of praise. Where poetry is concerned, such a balm is as rare as phoenix tears.

Much has been written on translating and the un-translatability of poetry. Among the plethora of material Gerald Hammond's essay "English Translations of the Bible" (in The Literary Guide to the Bible, 1987) stands out as one of the best overviews of the translating process. The insights he offers in comparing modern English translations of the Bible with the Authorised (King James) Version are relevant to a broad spectrum of literary texts in translation, whether in prose or verse, from ancient or modern languages--the key elements that need to be taken into consideration when translating are the same. For the purpose of this review I shall draw freely on Hammond's essay.

Frisardi's introduction to Ungaretti's Selected Poems demonstrates a skilful grasp of Ungaretti albeit with evident awe at the undertaking of rendering into English a language that, as Papini wrote in 1917 (and Montale would paraphrase much later), "wrings the neck of eloquence". In execution, however, the translation of individual poems often smooths out the oddness and ambiguity that is the hallmark of Ungaretti's poetry. The result, when compared with the original on the facing page, is that we do not have a translation of the poem, but an interpretation of it. All translation, it can be argued, is an act of interpretation, but if the original can give an open range of meanings, is it inevitable that a translation must narrow that range? The key to ambiguity often lies in syntax, what Hammond, tongue-in-cheek, calls "the disturbing habit which poets and storytellers have, of giving life to dead metaphors and finding in our flattest phrases a cultural subconscious which they can bring to the surface"--which is an understatement in relation to Ungaretti.

The Italian syntax, wrenched and twisted by Ungaretti, does not have to be slavishly reproduced in English, but nor does it need to be given the familiar rendering of an adjective-noun pattern. In "Dove la luce" ("Where the light") we skip over "To the golden hills" just as we would if the Italian had "alle colline dorate", rather than "Alle colline d'oro". "To the hills of gold" (in Dennis Devlin's translation of the same poem) renders the original more accurately, but more importantly, it gives that fraction of hesitation and leaves the reader to choose between a literal or metaphorical interpretation (ideally it leaves the reader suspended).

The most blaring example of mis- or over-interpretation is in the opening lines of "Levante", to translate "La linea / vaporosa muore" by "The puffy line / dies" is infelicitous on several counts. The adjective "puffy" does not, to this particular ear, stimulate an image of a hazy horizon (in "Memory of Africa" the line "E solo linea vaporosa il mare" Frisardi offers a better rendition with "The sea is only a vaporous line") but the greater error lies in translating the words to the detriment of the syntax, which has been overlooked to the point that the line-break becomes incidental. It is not the line that is vaporous (or puffy), but the dying. Were it not for the variant of "vaporosamente muore" (vaporously dies) in an earlier publication of this poem, one could argue there is ambiguity in these lines, and therefore it is open to interpretation. So it is. Ungaretti's final version is the better for it, and the ambiguity gives the poem a greater tension and anguish, something that Ungaretti took great pains to achieve.

As Hammond points out,