| Spesso il male di vivere ho incontratoEugenio Montale
Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato: era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia, era l’incartocciarsi della foglia riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato. Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio che schiude la divina Indifferenza: era la statua nella sonnolenza del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato. |
Often the burden of life I have metEugenio Montale
Often the burden of life I have met it was the strangled rivulet that gurgles, it was the crumpling of the leaf burnt, it was the horse spent. No other way was there, if not the wonder that bears divine Indifference: it was the statue in the indolence of the afternoon, and the cloud, and the hawk’s ascent. Translation ©MatildaColarossi 2023 |
The poem is from the collection Ossi di sepia, by Eugenio Montale (poet, writer, editor, translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature).
“I wanted to wring the eloquence of our noble ancient tongue” said Eugenio Montale: and he went on to invent a new language, essential, simple and austere, a language which expressed the desire for truth. Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato [Often the burden of life I have met] is one of the most famous poems in the collection, and representative of the main theme: the male di vivere, the burden of life, the suffering that reigns over the universe.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
parallel texts: words reflected 
Bellissima sfida, per una delle poesie più importanti del XX secolo
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Più importante di sempre, aggiungerei. That overwhelming mal de vivre, untranslatable, intangible, ever-present.
That blessed indifference behind the static immobility of the statue, the darkness of the clouds, the distant flight of the hawk.
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Reblogged this on parallel texts: words reflected.
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Thank you Matilda, really.
Shouldn’t it be “gorgoglia” on the second line? I really feel myself at home here, sorry for the pedantic message.
Ale
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Not pedantic! Thank you!
533 views for this poem alone, and you’re the first to notice!!! Many thanks for reading so carefully! (Unfortunately, I still can’t here the difference between “glia” and “lia”!)
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You mean “Hear” the difference? Well but surely you see the difference between “foglia” and “folia”. I am just jocking Matilda. I was just lucky to “hear” that gap.
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😂 yes, hear! Sorry.
I suppose I could change the here to hear in the comment now, but I have come to accept my sbadatezza! As per see, yes, I see fairly well still (😎), but I don’t actually “see” spelling mistakes in Italian. For example, I wrote “un millione” for years.
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