In a series of enjambments set in rhyme, Giorgio Caproni recalls his past love who died much too young of blood poisoning just before their wedding. The poem was written in 1940, on the night of the Epiphany. The festivities awaken in the poet the memory of that love, of her “content expression − lost in this tranquility of the dawn”, her laughter at the shouting women in the markets, but she fades with “the mists that the breeze has dispersed”..

The poem is set in Livorno, the poet’s place of birth, and it is from the collection “Finzioni”, 1941.

As always, the rhyming verses have forced me to choose certain words over others. I could have ignored the rhyme altogether, I suppose, but I find it essential to the poetic expression, the poet’s voice and his own choices: he too, chose one word over another for the rhyme, and I feel I owe it to him to try my best to restore as many poetic devices as I can, where I can. These are: rhyme (ABAB ABAB CDC DCD), enjambement (vv. 1-2-3, vv. 3 through 14…), assonance (suoi lumi in tumult fu), consonance (rapito ora ritorna; nel cuore che ti cerca la tua cera), oxymoron (dolce tempesta), anastrophe (ora torna a quella fiera / […]la tua cera) etc.… Some were easier to recreate than others, some forced me to choose specific words and phrases.

And with regards to the poet’s choice of words and phrases, I found an interesting article on some of these, for example, dolce tempesta; in tumult fu la sera; effegie; echi febbrili and their connection to poems by other famous poets (D’Annunzio, Montale, Quasimodo, Luzi), but I have not included it here, because I believe individual language is the expression of words one has heard or read over a lifetime. Caproni chose his words because they called to his mind something or someone − a poet, a poem, a song, a book − but we can never be totally sure which poem, which book, which poet. And anyway, there is always the risk of not seeing the forest for the trees, which seems to be a job hazard…for example, in my choice of the word rapito (but not only).

In Italian rapito means seized, snatched, kidnapped, and it also means enraptured. In English today “rapt” is mainly used to mean enraptured. Therefore, rapt (from the Latin “raptus, meaning to “seize”) is not used to mean carried off if not with the exception of “with emotion, pleasure”, as defined in the dictionaries Merriam Webster, (“lifted up and carried away; transported with emotion”) and Collins (“carried away in body or spirit, to heaven, etc.; carried away with joy, love, etc.”). In the Cambridge and Oxford Dictionaries, meanwhile, rapt is very simply: “giving complete attention, or showing complete involvement” (in the first), and “so interested in one particular thing that you are not aware of anything else” (in the second). Was the fire of the fest enraptured or carried away?  In Italian it can be both. I had to choose.  After numerous changes, I took a risk and decided to translate the word rapito with the word “rapt”. I would like to add something I found very interesting about the evolution of the word in the Oxford Dictionary here https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=rapt and here https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Meanings?textTermText0=rapt&textTermOpt0=WordPhrase  

It is needless to say that the word rapito was not the only one I changed tens of times… but that’s all for now. – M.C.

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