What inspired me to translate this poem by Umberto Saba, found in the collection “Il canzoniere” published in 1921, was the painting “Sun setting over a lake” by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1840). I found the colours of the sun incredibly rich, so rich the heat seemed to radiate from the canvas.  

In Saba’s poem too, the heat escapes the lines, assaulting us, and our only defence is to close the shutters. It is truly an invasion, light and heat capable of silencing the birds, of making man extinct. Only the cicadas resist, a chorus of voices, long and shrill.

The poem is made up of 13 lines of varying length; the rhyme scheme is not fixed, but it is present in vv. 2-3, 7-8, 11-12. We find assonance in the use of words “sole”, “sibilo”, “solo”, “cicale”. We notice devices such as: anastrophes in vv. 1-2 “verdi/persiane” and v. 9, “tanto è ora pace”; enjambments in vv. 1-2, vv. 7-8, vv. 8-9, vv. 9-19; alliterations, for example, “suono” – “s’accorda” – “sibilo” – “assorda” – “solo” vv. 11,12,13.

As always, I sincerely hope the poem in English emanates the same heat and recalls the same silence as the original. – M.C.

Painting: “Sun Setting over a Lake” by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1840), Medium Oil on Canvas, Tate Gallery, London

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0