Crying out against war, all wars, through this translation of a poem by Giuseppe Ungaretti
| Non gridate più Giuseppe Ungaretti Cessate d’uccidere i morti, non gridate più, non gridate se li volete ancora udire, se sperate di non perire. Hanno l’impercettibile sussurro, non fanno più rumore del crescere dell’erba, lieta dove non passa l’uomo. | Don’t shout anymore Giuseppe Ungaretti Stop killing the dead, don’t shout anymore, don’t shout if you still want to hear them, if you hope not to pass on. They have the imperceivable murmur, they make no more noise than the grass that grows, content where man does not pass. ©Matilda Colarossi 2023 |
“Non gridate più” is found in the collection “Il dolore”, in the section titled “I ricordi”. Written in 1945, it was inspired by the bombing of the Monumental Cemetery of Verano, Rome, in July 1943. It can be found in the collection “Vita d’un uomo”, Mondadori*.
The protagonists are the interlocutors and the dead of whom the poet speaks. The first are cruel, heartless, and their voices are loud and drum out the lament of the second, who, thus, have died in vain. He uses simple, everyday words which he swathes in meaning. In the first quatrain, he starts with an adynaton, a kind of hyperbole in which the exaggeration is so important it is an impossibility (“killing the dead”); he uses three imperatives (cessate/ non gridate più / non gridate) and two hypotheticals (se/ se). In the quatrain, I hear an urgency, an invitation to change before it’s too late, before we all “pass on”.
In the second quatrain, the verbs are in the present tense, the tone calm: the author is describing a circumstance, a real situation. He begins with a wonderful hendecasyllable, a slow impercettibile, which precedes the sussurro of those who don’t need to shout to express truth.
Ungaretti was a soldier and a witness to the horrific effects of not one but two world wars; he is critical of man who can do nothing but crush, destroy. He tells us in seemingly simple words that by not listening to those who died before us, we are destined to repeat the destruction, to destroy our relationships with other men; he tells us that if only we heeded the “imperceivable murmur”, we would not only save others but ourselves.
Metre in the Italian text: The poem is composed of two quatrains. The first is made up of four nine syllable lines. The second is made up of one eleven syllable line, two seven, and one nine. In v. 2 we find a repetition (non gridate/ non gridate), in vv. 3-4, we find a rhyming couplet (udire/ perire), an anaphora (se li volete/ se sperate), and an internal rhyme (volete/ sperate). In vv. 6-7, we find an enjambment (più rumore/ del crescere), and in v. 4 alliteration (se – spe) and consonance (ra – per – ire).
Obviously not everything can be restored in translation. While repetition, anaphora, and enjambment are possible, oftentimes, alliteration and consonance are not. The infinite number of synonyms a translator can ‘play’ with to recreate these elements may sometimes compromise the meaning. And the meaning is key.
In this regard, I recently read about a forthcoming translation of a famous 16th century Italian epic poem, which will be translated into prose. What most intrigued me were the comments under the post, and one in particular: “I doubt very much that a present-day prose version would be able to enthral in any way a 2023 English reader. Ariosto’s value lies in the form, in the perfectly chiselled octave with its highly refined and witty final couplet […] in the wordplay, in the often-surprising rhymes.”
I wonder if reproducing the ‘chiselled octaves’ etc. would “enthrall” the present-day reader?
Personally, I believe that any studioso of Italian literature would just read Ariosto in Italian, and that a scholar of any other field would find the text, even in prose, extremely interesting. But this is my two cents, nothing more.
I read another interesting exchange which regarded my own translation of a poem by Gozzano. The many comments criticized my use of specific words, stating that they “don’t actually mean the same as the Italian word”. And here, I will quote Magrelli (link below), again – I seem to do this often: “I would say, actually, that the definition of translation that most convinces me is the “minus one rule”. We find ourselves in front of a translation when at least one element of the original version is lost. For this reason, with respect to the line by Ménage about beautiful and unfaithful, I would like to answer with one of the many quotes by Abbé Galiani, a phrase on etiquette, and political and moral precepts, which states: when you bow down to a powerful man, you are always giving your back to someone else; which means that when you are paying homage to one person, there is at least one other person who, at the same time, precisely because you are venerating the first, you will end up offending.” Something is always lost. You bow down to poetic devices and lose the meaning, bow down to the precise meaning of the words (which I call paraphrasing) and you may lose rhyme or alliteration or consonance. Only a translator can decide what will be lost. From experience, I would say that what is lost is what we, as translators, personally believe is least important or just impossible to reproduce.
https://www.mondadoristore.it/Vita-d-un-uomo-Giuseppe-Ungaretti/eai978880466836/
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
parallel texts: words reflected 