GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI AND WILLIAM BLAKE: THE RELATIONSHIP AND THE TRANSLATION ABSTRACT GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI AND WILLIAM BLAKE: THE RELATIONSHIP AND THE TRANSLATION This thesis is an investigation into the re1ationship between Giuseppe Ungaretti and William Blake and an ana1ysis of Ungaretti's translation, Visioni di William Blake. Chapter One concentrates on Ungaretti's reading of the poetry of Blake in terms of a language which, based on the 1esson of Ma11arm~, can be ca11ed essentia1. The two poets, the first in reaction to the ornamenta1 language of the poets of the 1ate Ottocento, the second in reaction to the genera1izing language of the Augustan poets, share this re1ationship. The chapter then proceeds further to discuss and i11ustrate how such a language 1eads, both for Ungaretti and Blake, to the transformation of poetry into theo10gy. Chapter Two, on the other hand, concentrates pure1y on Ungaretti's translation of Blake, giving the reasons for translation, the method used, and, fina11y, an ana1ysis of this method. The Conclusion is a brief rounding up of the main ideas present in the thesis. John Di Pietro M.A. Departments of Eng1ish and Ita1ian March 1971. GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI AND WILLIAM BLAKE: THE RELATIONSHIP AND THE TRANSLATION by John Di Pietro A thesis submitted to the Facu1ty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fu1fi11ment to the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Departments of Eng1ish and Ita1ian McGi11 University Montreal March 1971 (-'J.. , ' ~~; ® John Di Pietro NOTES ON TEXTUAL REFERENCES A L'allegria PD Poesie disperse SDT Il sentimento deI tempo LIU Letteratura dell'Italia unita 1861-1968 FJR Fedra di Jean Racine D Il dolore TP La terra promessa VWB Visioni di William Blake K Geoffrey Keynes, ed., The Complete Writings of William Blake. PS Poetical Sketches CSEL The College Survey of English Literature PA Public Address AR Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' "Discourses". VLJ Description of a Vision of The Last Judgement. L The Laocoon M Milton SI Songs of Innocence SE Songs of Experience MSN Epigrams, Verses, and Fragments from the Note-Book. FZ Vala, or The Four Zoas. PN Poems and Fragments from The Note-Book. ( ) DD Il deserto e dopo TDV Il taccuino deI vecchio. AB Annotations to Berkeley's "Siris" DC A Descriptive Catalogue APW Annotations to "Poems" by William Wordsworth J Jerusalem MHH The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. AL Annotations to Lavater's "Aphorisms on Man" E Europe AS Annotations to Swedenborg's "Wisdom of Angels Concerning Divine Love and Wisdom". FBU The First Book of Urizeri BA The Book of Ahania AW Annotations to Watson's "Apology for the Bible" AM America FR The French Revolution S 40 sonetti di Shakespeare GM Da G6ngora e da Mallarmé (" "')~~, TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface .................................................... i Chapter One: The Poetry of Ungaretti and Blake ••••••••••••• 1 Chapter Two: Ungaretti's VisionL di William Blake ••••••••• 145 Conclusion .................................................. 192 A Select ,~d Bib1iography ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 195 ( i PREFACE When l first began to think about the relationship between Giuseppe Ungaretti and William Blake, a very different thesis from the present was planned. In the process of writing, however, many of the ideas which l had previously held changed. Others, due to lack of materials, could not be substantiated. The result, then, is what l have here. A few remarks about the contents of this thesis must be made, in order to answer some of the question marks which will arise. There is, in the part on Blake's poetry, as it will become apparent, no discussion of Milton and Jerusalem. This resulted from my attempt at keeping the discussion simple. Blake can make things quite complexe My treatment of the poets of the late Ottocento, the Augustans, and Blake's notions on sex or love is limited. It had to be. Although aware that aIl is not negative about them. l emphasized Ungaretti's and '. ' .. .~ '. Blake's biased view of the Decadents, Crepuscolari, and Futurists,. and of the Augustan poets. This, l feel, is closer to the argument of the thesis than wou Id have been otherwise the case. From Blake's notions on sex, l took only, in a sense, the outline. Of course, as his synonym love makes quite clear, there is much more to them. My analysis of Ungaretti's translation is based primarily on his own ideas on the art of translation. ii The various books on translation which l list in the bibliography gave me the needed background for the discussion, but added little to what Ungaretti himself had to say. Finally, the thesis, to be complete, should have contained a chapter on Blake's fortune in Italy. Lack of materials prevented me from writing it. 0', • CHAPT ER ONE THE POETRY OF UNGARETTI AND BLAKE The nature of the language of the poetry of Ungaretti is that of an essential one. What this means is that it is characterized by the poet's concern to free his language from all excess qualities which tend to detract from a truthful and direct expression of his feelings. These may be a number of qualities, but the most evident are oratorical, rhetorical, sentimental, and sensual. The language of Ungaretti's poetry is basically one which reacts to that of the poets of the late Ottocento: Pascoli and D'Annunzio, the Crepuscolari, and the Futurists. Unlike these poets, Ungaretti, by denying oratory, rhetoric, sentimentalism, and sensualism, is able to give his language a newer power of expression. Ungaretti, o~ course, did not create this essential language on his own. It.i~instead, mainly derivative of the poetics of Mallarm~. Thus it is to Mallarm~ that, throughout this thesis, we shall have to return over and over again. What is, then, the poetics of Mallarm~? The poetics of Mallarm~ revolves around the search for an essential language. Mallarmé, wanting poetry to reveal to man the hidden side of reality or, as Petrucciani calls it, the "regions metafisica", was obsessed by the wish to transform poetry into theology. The poet, he Ci 2 felt, cou1d achieve this transformation on1y through a language which tended a1ways towards essentia1ity. No other language wou1d be able to unlock the "regione metafisica". And, as Petrucciani, again, exp1ains, for Mallarmé this "regione metafisica" is the poet's conquest over the "hazard", the absurd in 1ife. "Per Mallarmé si trattava dunque (come già per Poe e per Baudelaire, ma con ben pià netta vo1ontà di que11i) di assicurarsi, con la poesia e ne11a poesia, il dominio su11'hazard, sul caso, mediante la conquista di una regione metafisica. Con Poe e con Baudelaire si instaurava la nozio~e e l'atto della poesia pura; con Ma11arm~ la 'poesia pura' si fa 'poesia metafisica': siamo di fronte ad una deificazione della poesia."l Ma11armé's need to reach this "regione metafisica" 1eads him, in his poetics, to formu1ate an exp1icit notion of language. What makes a language essentia1 or weighs it down with oratorica1, rhetorica1, senti- mental, and sensua1 qua1ities is, he maintains, the type of word which the poet himse1f chooses. Language, for Mallarmé, contains two types of words: the essentia1 and the immediate. Through the first, the poet communicates his feelings without recourse to ideas and concepts; throug~ the second, he can communicate on1y ideas and concepts. The essentia1 word addresses the heart; the immediate, on the other hand, the mind. "Assegna eg1i [Mallarmé] infatti, alla poesia il compito e la prerogativa di 'siparer comme en vue d'attributions differentes le double etat de la parole, brut ou immediat ici la essentiel'. E, con ci~, eg1i vo11e fissare una distinzione fra ~"~: ". 3 la parola funzionale, comoda mediazione fra due spiriti, strumento di scambio, mera trasmissione di nozioni, e la parola lirica, potentemente carica di suggestive emozioni, capace di tramutare in immagini 0, per meglio dire, in simboli, il mondo scaturito dagli abissi dell' anima~ A questa parola, depurata di ogni scoria di banalit! e materialità, valorizzata in ogni più riposta misteriosa risorsa fonica e musicale, Mallarmé voIle restituire cosl la sua verginità incorrotta, la mitica sostanza originale, la sua innocente vita primigenia."2 Now, the insistence on the part of Mallarmé on this division and purification leads him also to an obsession with form. Consequently the alexandrine, the French traditional verse, i8 taken apart so that each essential word can regain its greatest freedom from the oratorical, rhetorical, sentimental, and sensual qualities acquired from tradition or historical association. The result is that the language becomes obscure or tends to be locked within Mallarmé's own private meanings. There is, of course, a danger in this; one which Mallarmé illustrated with "eoup de dis". It is that, in the constant purification of form so that a truthful and direct expression of feelings can result, the poet's expression be- comes one of mystic silence. "L'esigenza esasperata di liberare la poesia da ogni scoria, da ogni materialità, per alleggerirla, per levigarla, per sempre più rarefarla, indu ce il poeta a limitarsi a pochi segni, e8senzialissimi; e pub addirittura condurlo ad abolire non solo l'oggetto, ma la parola stessa."3 In other words, if essentiality is taken to extremes, language will be '- " 4 ultimately inadequate to express the poet's feelings. Since, from the earliest beginnings of his career, Ungaretti was a great admirer of Mallarm~, thepoetics of the French poet passed into Ungaretti's own poetry. But itdid not do so piece-meal. Instead, it changed in terms and in emphasis because Ungaretti was not so much interested in transplanting Mallarmé's poetics in Italian poetry but rather in extracting from it whatever points could be opposed to the poetry against which he was reacting.