Essay Writing, Lyric Diction and Poetic Translation in the Work of Franco Fortini
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Essay writing, lyric diction and poetic translation in the work of Franco Fortini by Erminia Passannanti A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD University College London 2003 ProQuest Number: U642559 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U642559 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Index of content Acknowledgements ; ..................................................................................... 3 Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ 4 Abstract .......................................................................................................................5 Chapter 1 ....................................................................................................................7 1. Essay writing ..................................................................................................................................... 7 1.1. The politics of literary theory......................................................................................................... 8 1.2. Intellectuals and hegemony: alliances and clashes................................................................... 38 1.3. 'Perché si scrivono poesie ’......................................................................................................... 57 Chapter 2 ..................................................................................................................71 2. The poetry........................................................................................................................................ 71 2.1. The question of form................................................................................................................... 73 2.2. The ‘otherness ' ofpoetry: the theme of sight............................................................................ 87 2.3. La poesia delle rose, pamphlet, 1962..................................................................................... 112 2.4. Poetry and dissidence.............................................................................................................. 138 2.5. Towards Expressionism........................................................................................................... 145 2.6. Poetry versus translation......................................................................................................... 163 Chapter 3 ................................................................................................................174 3. Poetic translation........................................................................................................................ 174 3.1. Searching for a language between Self and Other. ............................................................... 174 3.2. Realtà e paradosso della traduzione poetica......................................................................... 181 3.3. Poet to poet: Fortini’s translation o f Milton’s Lycidas........................................................ 185 3.4. Towards the Other: ‘Traducendo Brecht’............................................................................. 199 3.5. II ladro di ciliegie (1983)......................................................................................................... 2 1 0 Conclusions........................................................................................................................................ 213 Select Bibliography..........................................................................................................216 Appendix:Paradosso e realtà della traduzione poetica ..........................................................226 Dedicated to the memory o f my dear Mother and Father Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank the Istituto di Studi Filosofici in Naples, and especially Professor Gargano, for a scholarship awarded to her in 1989. This made it possible to attend the series of seminars, Realtà e paradosso della traduzione poetica, given by Professor Franco Fortini, and to edit the text of the seminar.^ The author is much indebted to Professor Fortini himself, who supported her scholarship application for this course, and, of course, to theCentro Studi Franco Fortini (University of Siena) for having incorporatedRealtà e paradosso della traduzione poetica in their Archives. Sincere thanks go to Brian and Anna Cole and to Dr Gillian Ania, whose collaboration with me on the translation and revision of my manuscript has been invaluable. Finally, the author wishes to thank Professor David Forgacs, Head of Department at UCL, who has been a precious source of information and advice. I also thank Romano Luperini for his willingness to read and comment on an earlier version of this thesis. E.P., Oxford, July 2003 ' Franco Fortini, Realtà e paradosso della traduzione poetica, Erminia Passannanti (ed.), Siena: Archivio Fortini, 2003. Also included in the archives of the Istituto di Studi Filosofici, via Monte di Dio, Naples. Abbreviations In the notes I have used the following abbreviations for works by Franco Fortini cited in the main body of this text. The edition ofVerijîca dei poteri referred to in the footnotes is the one republished in 1974. AP Attraverso Pasolini BSN Breve seconda Novecento CS Composita solvantur D Disobbedienze (I, II) DCP Dei confini della poesia FDV Foglio di via FLS Fortini: Leggere e scrivere IN Insistenze LDC II ladro di ciliegie LOI L ’ospite ingrato NSI Nuovi saggi italiani PCS Paesaggio con serpente PE Poesia e errore PI Poesie inedite PN Penultime PS Poesie scelte QF Questioni di frontiera QM Questo muro RPTP Realtà e paradosso della traduzione poetica SI Saggi italiani SINA Summer is not all VDP Verifica dei poteri UVPS Una volta per sempre UFA Una facile allegoria VS Versi scelti Abstract ‘Essay writing, lyric diction and poetic translation in the work of Franco Fortini’ by Erminia Passannanti Franco Fortini was an outstanding scholar and polemicist who exercised a very significant influence over the post-war generations of Italian writers and intellectuals. Although much has been made of Fortini's sharp analytical ability as a literary critic, political essayist and opinion-maker, he was fully appreciated as a lyric poet in his own country only later in his life. The magnitude of the revival of interest in Italy is demonstrated by the existence of a foundation, theCentro Studi Franco Fortini in Siena, which brings together a rich variety of the author’s writings and numerous monographs on his work. However, a preliminary survey of available studies in English showed that, with the sole exception of Thomas E. Peterson’s The Ethical Muse o f Franco Fortini, little attention had been paid to Fortinioeuvre s in English-speaking countries. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to be the first comprehensive study to explore all three of the principal modes of writing practiced by Fortini - essays, original poetry and translation - treating these individually in following chapters. Because Fortini’s political ideology matched theory to creative writing, attention is paid to the links between criticism, poetry and translation both from a theoretical point of view, as genres, and from the particular standpoint of Fortini as an author who exploited this relationship as an hermeneutic and a poetic practice. My investigation into these interrelated languages then continues with an analysis of those intertextual components activated by Fortini's practice of translation, which greatly influenced and stimulated his own poetry. The relationship between poetry and poetic translation is a fundamental aspect of this research. In the first chapter, attention is focussed on a wide selection of critical works by Fortini himself, which range fi"om Verifica dei poteri (1965; 2nd ed. 1974) andSaggi italiani (1974), to Nuovi Saggi Italiani, published in 1987, and the two volumes of political journalistic writings, Disobbedienze (1997), edited by Rossana Rossanda. The second chapter analyses poetry collections including con Serpente (1984) andComposita solvantur (1994) in order to highlight constants that mark Fortini’s strength not only as an ethical writer but as a poet. The third chapter displaces the theory of translation from the world of the sign to that of political and aesthetic discourse, and puts the practice of translation at the centre of Fortini's work. In order to prove how translation can resolve the difference, indeed antagonism, between translator and poet, fragments of Fortini’sII ladro di ciliegie and Lycidas are analysed and the original texts are compared with the translations. Finally, the intertextual connections between Fortini's translations and his original writings are considered, not only his later poetry but also his criticism. Although permeated by an ethical sense of intellectual responsibility, on a purely artistic