Letter to Constance Dowling: April 17, 1950

“Dearest, I no longer have the heart to write poetry.

“Poems came with you and they leave with you.

“I wrote this a few afternoons ago, during the long hours spent waiting for you in the hotel, uncertain whether to call you or not. Forgive the sadness it contains, but in your company, I was sad too. You see, I started with a poem in English and finish with another. Found in them is the breadth of emotions I have felt in this month: the horror and the wonder. Dearest, don’t be mad at me if I am always talking about feelings that you cannot share. But at least you can understand them. I want you to know that I thank you with all my heart. The few days of wonder that I snatched from your life were almost too much for me―well, they are gone, and now the horror begins, the naked horror, and I am ready for this. The door of the prison has slammed shut again…You will have the time to receive La luna e il falò. Maybe it will already be waiting for you on North Vista Avenue when you arrive there. I’m so happy that your name is in it.

“I remember writing the book―entirely―before meeting you, and yet in a certain sense I knew while writing the book that you were coming. It was not wonderful, face of spring, I loved everything about you, not just your beauty, which is fairly easy, but also your ugliness, your ugly moments, your tache noire, your closed face. And yet I’m sorry for you. Don’t forget this.”

Cesare Pavese

The cats will know Cesare Pavese   Ancora cadrà la pioggia sui tuoi dolci selciati, una pioggia leggera come un alito o un passo. Ancora la brezza e l’alba fioriranno leggere come sotto il tuo passo, quando tu rientrerai. Tra fiori e davanzali i gatti lo sapranno. Ci saranno altri giorni, ci saranno altre voci. Sorriderai da sola. I gatti lo sapranno. Udrai parole antiche, parole stanche e vane come i costumi smessi delle feste di ieri. Farai gesti anche tu. Risponderai parole, viso di primavera, farai gesti anche tu. I gatti lo sapranno, viso di primavera; e la pioggia leggera, l’alba color giacinto, che dilaniano il cuore di chi più non ti spera, sono il triste sorriso che sorridi da sola. Ci saranno altri giorni, altre voci e risvegli. Soffriremo nell’alba, viso di primavera.

The cats will know   Cesare Pavese   And still rain will fall on your sweet cobblestones, a gentle shower like a breath or a step. And still the breeze and the dawn will gently blossom like beneath your step, when you return home. Between flowers and windowsills the cats will know. There will be other days, there will be other voices. You will smile alone. The cats will know. You will hear ancient words, words tired and vain like the discarded costumes of yesterday’s festivities. You too will gesture. You will answer words, face of spring, you too will gesture. The cats will know, face of spring; and the gentle rain, the hyacinth-coloured dawn, which rips open the heart of those who hope for you no longer, are the sad smile you smile alone. There will be other days, other voices and awakenings. We will suffer in the dawn, face of spring. Translation ©Matilda Colarossi 2021

Cesare Pavese wrote The cats will know, on April 10, 1950.  It is one of ten poems written for the American actress Connie Dowling, whom he loved but who did not return his love. It is part of the collection Verra la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (Death will come and it will have your eyes). 

It is made up of stanzas of unequal verse; and it is written like a cantilena (a singsong) using heptameter and numerous repetitions. In the first stanza, the poet uses words of languid awaiting: soft, sweet, blossom, dawn. They are words of hope for her return to him, perhaps: the blossoms are new life, the dawn is a new beginning. And the cats, silent witnesses, will know. In the second stanza, days have passed, the situation has degenerated; the words that accompany this section are: tired and vain, ancient and discarded. Here, too, the cats are the only ones who observe. The last stanza is the closing of doors of sorts, on all hope of her returning to him, physically and spiritually, and the presage of a life, hers, alone, forever without him. And thus they will both “suffer in the dawn”.

The cats, between flowers and windowsills, participate silently in the comings and goings; they observe; they alone know what becomes of both the poet and his loved one. This repetition of the cats will know is a sort of refrain; it is positioned differently in the three stanzas: In the first it closes it. In the second, it divides the stanza between the woman’s time spent partying in other places with others, and his tired, vain words to her and their gestures. In the third, it introduces the stanza, a sorrow-filled time of loss and loneliness.

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Painting: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Sleeping cat