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The Journey to Find My Grandfather

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The Journey to Find My Grandfather REFLECTIONS AND NARRATIVES The Journey to Find My Grandfather J. Richard Ciccone, MD J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 46:212–16, 2018. DOI:10.29158/JAAPL.003749-18 I met my paternal grandfather, but he was a mystery Travels with Charley,1 I searched different parts of the to me. He had a large, locked trunk that I knew material with no clear direction. I wanted to under- nothing about. From my point of view, he was quiet, stand what I was holding, reading, getting into. detached, even distant. When I was a boy of five or Written in his distinctive handwriting, the manu- six, he was the Nonno (Grandfather in Italian) I knew script began in the top margin and went to the bot- existed, but rarely saw. I was told that he was going to tom of the page. I noticed the page numbers, the give me a white horse for Christmas, the kind ridden by comforting precision of numbers, written at the top the Lone Ranger. He never did. My cousin Aurora, who of each page. Ten lines between numbers. Why? Was lived for a time with my grandfather, reported that he this a poem? Was there a rhyming scheme? There kept his bedroom door locked, the same room where he was: ab ab ab ab cc. My grandfather had penned an kept his large, locked trunk. Not a trusting soul. This is epic poem completely filling the notebook, every a description of my voyage and the discovery of my page, every line. This was not a little story but a Nonno, Giuseppe Ciccone (January 31, 1887–March significant effort by a man with probably no more 31, 1975). than a sixth grade education. And a large, locked trunk. What had he been hiding? The Gift We sat reading, translating different passages, In September 2012, I visited my father’s youngest jumping ahead. Where was the saga going? At times sister, Tina Ciccone Sturdevant, at her home in Sil- Tina wept as we read and translated small portions of ver Spring, Maryland. I was sitting at her kitchen the text. It turned out that she did not know much table, in the middle of the afternoon, when she ex- more about him than I did. We exchanged what we cused herself. In a few minutes, she returned with a knew or thought we knew about Nonno. Three small composition notebook. Her father, my grand- hours later, we forced ourselves to stop for dinner. father, had given it to her in June 1972 when she and her family visited her hometown in southern Italy, Translating the Epic Poem Sant’Eufemia d’Aspromonte. Tina was in the midst of raising her four children and developing her I was determined to translate the entirety of my career. On returning home, she put the composi- grandfather’s poetic saga. By translating his poem, tion notebook away. Forty years later, handing me we hoped to give Nonno a voice. I also hoped to get the notebook, she said, “I think you will find this to know this distant man. I eagerly jumped into the interesting.” deep end. What hubris. I have limited knowledge of Nonno had written in Italian. With Tina’s help I Italian and no experience as a poet except for some began to read the first few lines and flipped through Billy Collins-like amusement. I was encouraged by the pages. Like Steinbeck exploring his hotel room in Tina’s eagerness to be involved in the project. She proved to be a knowledgeable, thoughtful, patient Dr. Ciccone is Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Psychiatry and collaborator. Law Program, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, How to translate from Italian to English? The NY. Address correspondence to: J. Richard Ciccone, MD, Univer- sity of Rochester Medical Center, 300 Crittenden Boulevard, Roch- rhyme scheme was similar to what Torquato Tasso, ester, NY 14642. E-mail: [email protected] one of Italy’s great poets, used in La Gerusalemme 212 The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Ciccone Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) in 1581,2 the work for of modernity, the inevitability of progress in the stan- which he is best known. He influenced several artists, dard of living, and a more humane society. At first, I poets, and composers. In the constellation of great was not aware of where Nonno had seen combat. I Italian poets, Tasso is second only to Dante. learned it was on the eastern front where the war Tasso’s classic was one of only three books that between Italy and Austria was marked by the Twelve Tina remembered Nonno keeping in the large, Battles of the Isonzo.6 Named after the Isonzo River, locked trunk. She recalled two other novels: Victor located between Trieste and Venice, the Twelve Bat- Hugo’s Les Miserables3 and Alessandro Manzoni’s tles took place between June 1915 and November The Betrothed,4 a historical novel set in the 17th cen- 1917. In May 1917, Nonno fought in the Tenth tury. (Manzoni was the grandson of Cesare Beccaria, Battle of the Isonzo and possibly the Eleventh and the great Italian criminologist and champion of hu- Twelfth. The Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, the Battle manizing the criminal code.) These books each carry of Caporetto, is the backdrop of Ernest Heming- a message of Christian redemption. There were other way’s A Farewell to Arms.7 books in the trunk, the titles of which are lost to us. It I visited Trieste and went to the battlefield, the is not much of a stretch to think that Dante’s Divine Carso, a limestone plateau northwest of Trieste that Comedy was kept there too. in 1916 marked the border between Italy and Aus- We turned to translations of Dante’s Inferno and, tria. It now crosses from Italy into modern-day Slo- selecting at random, studied 11 translations of Canto venia. Dug out of the limestone rock of the Carso, XIII.5 It was clear that the translators, from Longfel- the trenches still have intact walls that I could touch low to Mandelbaum to Ciardi, brought their own a hundred years after WWI. After learning about the voices to the words and music of Dante. Tina and I complex series of trenches and their various functions wanted to make every effort to be faithful to Nonno’s (e.g., front line, supporting, reserve, and communi- poem and chose free verse as our medium. The trans- cation (connecting) trenches), I had a better under- lation of Nonno’s work would not be perfect. No standing of Nonno’s description of being buried matter! Who better to give voice to this silent man alive in a communication trench by an exploding than his daughter and grandson? shell. Our translation efforts began in September 2012. To make our way through the epic, we scheduled The Epic Poem many phone meetings, usually one to two hours in Although we do not know when the poem was length. We discovered that he had a rich, active, vital written, it must have been composed and rewritten inner life. We uncovered several historical, mytho- several times before it was copied as a finished prod- logical, theological, literary, philosophical, and polit- uct into the composition notebook. The cover’s Cor- ical references. It turned out that many of his inter- nell University Logo is believed to predate the 1940s ests overlapped mine. Genetics, cultural influence, (Cornell University’s archivist, personal communi- familial transmission are all powerful intergenera- cation, October 2015). The poem begins in Novem- tional ties. ber 1916 and comes to an abrupt halt in August 1917 on the last line of the last page. We believe that there Context were additional stanzas, probably copied into a sec- After a first draft of the translation, which took us ond composition notebook that has been lost. months to complete, we had a list of more than 70 In his epic poem, Nonno does not dwell on de- words and phrases that we did not understand and scriptions of the landscapes, whether it be his home could not translate. We enlisted the help of someone town of Sant’Eufemia d’Aspromonte or the battle- with knowledge of military terms: to make sense of field of the Carso. The difficulties of the terrain are Nonno’s WWI combat experience, I wanted to learn trivial when compared with the treachery he encoun- more about World War I, the terrain where he fought, tered and his struggle to stay alive: getting enough to and trench warfare. eat and trying to escape bombs, bullets, and incom- I was aware that World War I was a savagely de- petence. He uses simple language to convey complex structive event that slaughtered millions, wounded concepts with glimpses into the inner life of one who millions more, infected the souls of many of the sur- probably read alone and without discussion of the vivors, and wounded the West’s sense of the promise concepts he encountered. Volume 46, Number 2, 2018 213 The Journey to Find My Grandfather This first-hand account of becoming a soldier and a fiery hell, among dead bodies, exploded deposits of going to war represents a microcosm of the universal munitions, dead mules, dead mule drivers, and ex- soldier’s experience. The poem focuses on a searing ploding artillery shells. Miraculously, he found his ember of the hellish fire that was WWI: the battles on way to a field hospital (p 103). the Carso. A historian might provide a prosaic sum- Nonno was evacuated to a hospital behind the mary of the conditions (a blue-green mist covered the front line and was there from May 14 to August 5, battlefield) while Nonno’s account reports from 1917.
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