ABSTRACT an English Translation of La Sonrisa Etrusca: the Etruscan
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ABSTRACT An English Translation of La sonrisa etrusca: The Etruscan Smile Peter Ferretter Director: Moisés Park, Ph.D. La sonrisa etrusca is José Luis Sampedro’s seventh novel and most successful work. This 1985 bestseller is listed in El Mundo’s 100 best Spanish novels of the 20th century, and in 2018 received a film adaptation. These two achievements alone make it a worthy book to translate, and currently it is available in French, German, Dutch, Italian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese. Currently however, there is no English translation. To address this omission, this thesis presents the first thirty chapters of the novel in English. APPROVED BY DIRECTOR OF HONORS THESIS: Dr. Moisés Park, Department of Modern Foreign Languages APPROVED BY THE HONORS COLLEGE: Dr. Andrew Wisely, Interim Director DATE: AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF LA SONRISA ETRUSCA: THE ETRUSCAN SMILE A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Baylor University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Program By Peter Ferretter Waco, Texas May 2021 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Biography of José Luis Sampedro ................................................................................. 1 About the Novel ............................................................................................................. 4 Translators Notes ........................................................................................................... 7 La sonrisa etrusca: The Etruscan Smile ...................................................................... 13 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 191 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to my thesis advisor, Dr. Moisés Park. Thank you for joining me on this endeavour, and for providing me with guidance every step of the way. All your comments and considerations and words of encouragement made me realize how lucky I was to have you as a mentor; I could not have asked for a better one. Thank you for believing in me. To my parents, thank you for also believing in me. To my roommates, Harrison Rennie, Ryan Harris, and Josh McFarland. Apartment 358 would be a pretty boring place to work without you all. Thanks for keeping it lively friends. iii BIOGRAPHY OF JOSÉ LUIS SAMPEDRO "To write is to be a miner of oneself, to become an archaeologist, to delve into oneself, to go ‘deeper into the thicket'." -J.L.S. José Luis Sampedro (1917-2013) was born in Barcelona but spent the first thirteen years of his life in Tangier, Morocco. During the early twentieth century, Tangier was under the condominium of many countries. Sampedro himself acknowledged this when he said, “We spoke different languages at school, we bought sweets in different currencies and our weekly days of rest were split between the holy days of three different religions” (Fotheringham). This unique upbringing convinced Sampedro that such a cosmopolitan society ought to extend throughout the entire world. Sampedro spent the rest of his adolescence moving around Spain, picking up an insatiable appetite for reading and writing. When he entered the workforce, he became a customs officer in Santander, but this ended quickly when civil war broke out. After the war, Sampedro self-published his first work La estatua de Adolfo Espejo, and moved to Madrid to study economics. For the next two decades, Sampedro taught as an Economics professor at the University of Madrid and other institutions abroad. In the seventies, he became a member of Spain’s Senate, but it was not until the eighties that his popularity started to rise. Sampedro’s Octubre, octubre (1981) got him noticed as a writer and La sonrisa etrusca (1985) cemented Sampedro as one of Spain’s leading writers. In 1990 Sampedro was appointed to the Royal Spanish Academy, and in 2011 he was awarded Spain's Orden de las Artes y de las Letras for his “thought committed to the problems of our time” and the 1 Premio Nacional de las Letras in recognition of his career as a whole (The Local). His portfolio listed below is a testimony to his prolificness as a writer: Novels Congreso en Estocolmo (1951) El río que nos lleva (1961) El caballo desnudo (1970) Octubre, octubre (1981) La sonrisa etrusca (1985) La vieja sirena (1990) Real sitio (1993) La estatua de Adolfo Espejo (1994) La sombra de los días (1994) El amante lesbiano (2000) La senda del drago (2006) Cuarteto para un solista (2011) Economic works Principios prácticos de localización industrial (1957) Realidad económica y análisis estructural (1959) Conciencia del subdesarrollo (1973) Las fuerzas económicas de nuestro tiempo (1967) Inflación: una versión completa (1976) El mercado y la globalización (2002) 2 Los mongoles en Bagdad (2003) Sobre política, mercado y convivencia (2006) Economía humanista. Algo más que cifras (2009) Other Works Mar al fondo (1992) Mientras la tierra gira (1993) Escribir es vivir (2005) La ciencia y la vida (2008) Reacciona (2011) Sampedro once proclaimed: “although death is creeping up on me… it's being nice because it's letting me think.” (Sampedro) He did not take this for granted; he continued writing all the way up to his death at the age of ninety-six. He left behind two children and the grandson who inspired La sonrisa etrusca. 3 ABOUT THE NOVEL According to Sampedro, La sonrisa etrusca came into existence one morning when he was visiting his daughter and son-in-law. He heard his newborn grandson, Miguel, crying in his crib, and being the only one awake, Sampedro got up to calm him. With the baby cradled in his arms, Sampedro felt a peace that he had never imagined and knew La sonrisa etrusca had to be written. The title of this masterful Sampedrian work references the Etruscan sarcophagus The Spouses. The terracotta husband’s and wife’s smiles are a symbol of how one can face death freely when one knows that one has lived a full life. The contented smile is a recurring element of the book, mentioned in the beginning chapter all the way through to the last sentence of the novel: La sonrisa etrusca. Sampedro’s quick, vigorous, and clear prose tells the story of Salvatore, an elderly ex-partisan, who grudgingly leaves behind his beloved Calabria in the south of Italy to seek medical treatment in Milan for cancer. He moves in with his son and daughter-in-law, thinking that it will just be the three of them alone. But then his thirteen-month grandson, Brunettino appears in the picture. The two quickly form an unbreakable bond, and Salvatore dedicates the rest of his life to teaching Brunettino everything he knows. Spending time with his grandson, the old man reflects on his own life as it is about to end: “Something soft and tender grows inside me you see… before I laughed at such things” (155). Although Salvatore is a complex protagonist, it perhaps doesn’t seem like this at first; he just seems like an old-fashioned, leave-me-alone, macho character. Sampedro explained that the bristly Salvatore readers are introduced to in the beginning represents a 4 “falla tremenda de nuestra cultura / tremendous failure of our culture”; Salvatore is a man who has been with many women but has never known a single one, and he hasn’t been much of a father to his kids. As the book develops, however, Salvatore's relationship with his grandson Brunettino flourishes, and the man we first met begins to transform as he wrestles with what one should truly value in life. Salvatore starts to reflect on his life in the last moments of it; he realizes how much he missed out on by being standoffish. Memories become unearthed, and Salvatore compares his past with his present. The loving relationship that he comes to enjoy with his grandson allows Salvatore to finally see how one should treat others. Salvatore recognizes that his new understanding is due to Brunettino and he is grateful to him for this call to reflection. In return for this new awareness, the old man does more than just give his grandson presents and life advice, he genuinely and selflessly cares for him. Salvatore’s love is readily apparent. Salvatore sneaks out of his room at night to guard Brunettino from any dangers, and to make sure the baby does not feel like he is alone. Salvatore also switches his name to Bruno, a nickname given to him in his WWII party, to be even closer to his grandson. Sampedro’s protagonist overcomes his prejudice and accepts, even embraces tenderness and weakness - characteristics that he once deemed as unmanly. He accepts a different form of life “on the brink of [his] death” (131), and therefore Salvatore is reborn in the last moments of his life. In the end, the child has done what Salvatore’s many years and experiences have failed to do; he has made his grandfather human. In illuminating the transformation of Salvatore, Sampedro has highlighted for readers what matters most in life: pain, sacrifice, growth and, most 5 importantly, love. It is perhaps these weighty and universal themes that most make this piece worthy of translation. Sampedro’s novel embraces juxtaposition; the city is contrasted with the country, the old generation with the new, the internal battles with the external, life with death. These numerous contrasts set the foundation for La sonrisa etrusca, and I would like to explore some of them in more detail. The novel opens with a clash of culture. Salvatore, a deep-rooted southerner who has lived in the Calabrian countryside his entire life, is, because of cancer, plucked out of his home and placed into ‘the trap’ (his moniker for Milan, Italy). Salvatore moves in with his adult son and daughter-in-law who are accustomed to urban life, and Salvatore’s old traditional ways of doing things will inevitably come into conflict with the new. How to live, how to love, how to raise a baby - everything comes into question when Salvatore leaves his beloved Roccasera.