ITALIAN

Dante Alighieri. Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Volume 3- Purgatory: Italian Text and Verse Translation. Tr. and commentary Mark Musa. Bloomington. Indiana University Press. 2000 [1996]. 352 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-253-33649-X. Volume 4- Purgatory: Commentary. 344 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-253-33651-X. Cloth 2-volume set: $89.95; ISBN 0-253033648-1. Indiana Masterpiece Editions. Bilingual. Volume 3 of Indiana's 6-volume edition of Dante's Divine Comedy is a dual-language version of the Purgatory that provides the opportunity to read Mark Musa's new translation against the original Italian verse. Volume 4 consists of Musa's extensive commentary on the Purgatory, which is informative for the general reader as well as the student of Italian or comparative literature. Musa examines and discusses the critical commentary of other Dante scholars and presents his own ideas and interpretations, shedding light on the text as well as on his own translation.    

 Salvatore Di Giacomo. Love Poems: A Selection. Tr. Frank J. Palescandolo. Toronto. Guernica. 1999. 156 pp. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 1-55071-060-5. Essential Poets Series 79. Salvatore Di Giacomo was born in Naples on 12 March 1860. Early in his career, on the basis of his dialect poems and dramas, he was acclaimed the consummate interpreter of Neapolitan life. He collaborated with the most talented composers of the Piedigrotta festivals, who set many of his poems as lyrics to Neapolitan canzoni. Along with Benedetto Croce, he was founder of the review, Napoli Nobilissima, and became highly esteemed as a journalist, fiction writer, and poet, as well as Naples' leading dramatist until his death in 1934.

 Biagia Marniti. Loneliness Two Thousand: Selected Poems of Biagia Marniti. Ed. and tr. Catherine O'Brien. Stony Brook, NY. Gradiva. 2000. 105 pp. Paper: $13.00; ISBN 1-892021-05-6. Bilingual. Biagia Marniti has played an active role in the field of Italian culture over the last 50 years, working as an editor, translator, literary critic, prose writer, poet, and librarian. This volume—the first full-length English translation of Marniti—contains poems originally published in the following collections: Nero amore rosso [Black Love Red Love] (Milan, 1951); Città, creatura viva [City, Live Creature] (Caltanissetta, 1956); Più forte è la vita [Life is Stronger] (Milan, 1957); Giorni del mondo [Days of the World] (Caltanissetta, 1967); Il cerchio e la parola [The Circle and the Word] (Caltanissetta, 1979); La Ballata del mare [The Ballad of the Sea] (Riccia-Rome, 1984); Il gomitolo di cera [The Ball of Wax] (Caltanissetta, 1990); Piccola sfera [The Small Sphere] (Bari, 1992); and Racconto d'amore [Love Story] (Milan, 1994). Catherine O'Brien has published Italian Women Poets of the Twentieth Century (1996), as well as translations into Italian of the Irish poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and English translations of Mario Luzi and Margherita Guidacci.

 Michelangelo Buonarroti. The Complete Poems of Michelangelo. Tr. John Frederick Nims. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 2000 [1998]. 186 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 0-226-08033-1. Paper: $14.00; ISBN 0-226-08030-7. Michelangelo used poetry to express what was too personal to display in sculpture or painting; what he dared not say directly, he gave voice to in the harmonies and discords of verse. His finest literary efforts are often allied with the masterworks of his visual art. As he labored in the Sistine Chapel with visions of the Last Judgment, he composed a series of passionate love sonnets. And near the end of his life, while struggling to complete his final Pietà, Michelangelo worked at religious poems anguished in their fervor. Over 300 verses are arranged into three chronological sections: 1475-1532; 1532-1547; and 1547-1564. Also included is an essay by John Frederick Nims entitled, "Translating Poetry." Among Nims's many other translations is The Poems of Saint John of the Cross (University of Chicago).

 Valerio Magrelli. The Contagion of Matter [Esercizi di tiptologia]. Tr. Anthony Molino. New York. Holmes & Meier. 2000 [Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 1992]. 171 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8419-1399-4. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-8419-1400-1. Bilingual. Valerio Magrelli, a scholar of French literature and an experienced translator, is obsessed by the "translation" involved in all writing, and thus by language games that reveal the complex inner life of words—anagrams of his own name, for instance—necessarily elude his own dedicated translator, Anthony Molino. The most obvious translation challenges are to replicate the authority and precision of Magrelli's multiple languages across genres, and to find equivalents for both the classical rhythms and for the often confounding plays on words employed by the poet. But perhaps the most intriguing challenge is "the prospect of being engaged by Magrelli in his own guise as translator." In fact, an entire section of the book is devoted to translation and comprises Magrelli's versions of some of his favorite authors, mostly French, with translation itself a central theme. By helping "another person's words change houses" and handling unfamiliar things without always knowing what is being moved, Molino has tried to preserve Magrelli's "pages or crates marked 'fragile' . . . in spite of the corrupting and relentless effects of the contagion of matter."

 Alessandra Montrucchio. Cardiofitness. Tr. Sharon Wood. London. The Toby Press. 1999 [Marsilio Editori, Venice, 1998].  184 pp. Cloth: $29.00; ISBN 1-902881-03-6. No young woman in pursuit of love has had an affair quite like the one experienced by the heroine of Alessandra Montrucchio's moving new novel, Caridofitness, the first edition of her work to be published in English. Set in Turin, the story introduces four young women friends who meet at the gym during the week "to satisfy their natural urge to inflict pain on themselves." One night, Stefania becomes obsessed with an unknown young man and initiates a relationship with him that is complicated by their age difference (he's a 15-year-old), his disapproving parents, and her misunderstanding friends. In the end, Cardiofitness is all about the heart, a subject explored with wit, tenderness, and a refreshing lack of sentimentality. Montrucchio's first collection of short stories, Ondate Di Calore, won the Calvino Prize in 1995.

 Pier Paolo Pasolini. The Savage Father [Il padre selvaggio]. Tr. Pasquale Verdicchio. Tonawanda, NY. Guernica. 1999 [Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino, 1975]. 64 pp. Paper: $10.00; ISBN 1-55071-081-8. Drama Series 18. Writer, filmmaker, and essayist Pier Paolo Pasolini made his debut in 1948 with a small volume of poems written in his mother's Friulian language. This act was the first instance in what would be the author's life-long engagement and interest in subaltern cultures. The apparently contradictory dimensions of his life—homosexuality, Marxism, and Catholicism—colored Pasolini's art and his relationship with Italian society until his assassination/ murder in 1975. He wrote Il padre selvaggio in 1963, during the trial for blasphemy for his film, La ricotta. Because this script was never made into a film, critics refer to it as an "unrealized" screenplay, automatically relegating the work to a secondary status. However, Pasolini provides a justification for its unfilmed status in a short address that follows the text of the screenplay and precedes the poem "And Africa?" This slim volume also contains an informative essay by Pasquale Verdicchio entitlted, "Colonialism as a 'Structure That Wants to Be Another Structure.'"

 Giose Rimanelli. Jazzymood: raps & blues, rags & stomps. Tr. and ed. Luigi Bonaffini. Stony Brook, NY. Gradiva Publications. 2000. 163 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-892021-04-8. Trilingual. The first part of this volume was written by Giose Rimanelli in English and translated into Italian by Luigi Bonaffini; the second was written in Italian by Rimanelli and translated into English by Bonaffini; and the third was written by Rimanelli in the Molisan dialect with a literal (non-poetic) rendition in Italian, which Bonaffini translated into English.  Like Joseph Conrad, Giose Rimanelli is one of those rare writers who turn from their first language to English and in so doing, rejuvenate the language in a unique and remarkable way. Bonaffini has previously translated Rimanelli's Alien Cantica (1995) and Moliseide and Other Poems (1998), as well as works by Giuseppe Jovine, Achille Serrao, Eugenio Cirese, Albino Pierro, and other dialect poets.

 Manlio Santanello. Emergency Exit: A Play in Two Acts [Uscita di emergenza]. Tr. Anthony Molino and Jane House. Riverside, Ca. Xenos Books. 2000. 119 pp. Paper: $13.00; ISBN 1-879378-40-X. The action of Emergency Exit takes place in a place where there should be no action—two squatters in an abandoned house in Naples wage psychological war on one another as the house, shaken by earthquakes, teeters on the brink of collapse. Thus unfolds a play of comic desolation that is reminiscent of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Pinter's The Caretaker, and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the addition of a distinct Neopolitan flavor. Emergency Exit won Italy's IDI Award for Best Play, which is the equivalent of our Tony Award, was named Best Play by the Italian Association of Theater Critics, and is here translated into English for the first time. Anthony Molino has previously translated Antonio Porta's Dreams and Other Infidelities (Xenos, 1999). Jane House has performed in theater, film, and television, and translates from French and Italian.

 Monica Sarsini. Eruptions. Tr. and intro. Maryann De Julio. New York. Italica Press. 1999. 82 pp. Paper: $12.00; ISBN 0-934977-68-2. Eruptions is a collection of short fiction by Monica Sarsini, a contemporary writer and multimedia artist from Florence. The book comprises selected translations from two of Sarsini's works: Crepacuore, her 1985 work on colors, and Crepapelle, her 1988 work on the senses which was the basis for a series of short narrative pieces in New Italian Women that introduced Sarsini to American readers. All of these pieces are sensual explorations in Sarsini's experimental, yet concrete narrative style and important introductions to the wide variety of recent Italian fiction. Maryann De Julio writes in her Introduction that although her aim was to make this translation of Monica Sarsini's work simpatica (à la Lawrence Venuti's 1991 essay), "there remains intact in her narratves an inevitable specificity that the American reader will experience as foreign."

 Achille Serrao. Cantalèsia: Poems in the Neapolitan Dialect 1990-1997. Ed. and tr. Luigi Bonaffini. Brooklyn. Legas. 1999. 156 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-881901-19-X. Italian Poetry in Translation 5. Bilingual. Achille Serrao, who writes in the dialect of Caivano, a small town in Campania, deals with his own "anxiety of influence" vis-à-vis the great melodic tradition of Neapolitan poetry, by reclaiming another, anti-melodic, anti-subjective legacy, from Basile to Capurro to Russo. The result is poetry of striking originality and power, in which the incomprehensibility of life is affirmed with a language that can be sharp and refractory, yet subtle and elegant. In addition to writing poetry, Serrao has translated into the Campania dialect poems by Catullus and G. G. Belli and is currently preparing a critical edition of La Tiorba a taccone of the baroque Neapolitan poet Felippo Sgruttendio de Scafato. Luigi Bonaffini has translated works by Eugenio Cirese, Albino Pierro, Dino Campana, Mario Luzi, and Giose Rimanelli.

 Antonio Tabucchi. The Missing Head [Testa perduta di Samasceno Monteiro]. Tr. J. C. Patrick. New York. New Directions. 2000 [Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan, 1997]. 186 pp. Cloth: $23.95; ISBN 0-8112-1393-5. The Missing Head is a literary thriller about a young journalist who takes up the case of a heroin smuggling ring, and a headless corpse found by a gypsy on the outskirts of Oporto, Portugal. The narrator, a reporter for the local tabloid, follows the dead man's trail that eventually leads to drugs, smuggling, and corrupt police. Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi is a champion of Portuguese literature and translator of Fernando Pessoa. Other books by Tabucchi published by New Directions include Pereira Declares (1997), Requiem (1994), The Edge of the Horizon (1990), Indian Nocturne (1989), Little Misunderstandings of No Importance (1987), and Letter from Casablanca (1986).

 Fulvio Tomizza. Materada. Tr. and foreword Russell Scott Valentino. Evanston. Northwestern University Press. 2000 [Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1960. 136 pp. Cloth: $45.95; ISBN 0-8101-1758-4. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8101-1759-2. Writings from an Unbound Europe. Even as the name "Francesco Koslovic" straddles two cultures,  during the spring of 1955 in the village of Materada on the Istrian Peninsula, the two worlds of Francesco Koslovic are coming apart. A novel both lyrical and elegiac, Materada unfolds against the backdrop of the Istrian “exodus,” when hundreds of thousands who had once thrived in the peninsula’s rich ethnic mixture of Italians and Slavs departed from their homeland in the spring and summer of 1955. Complicating and hastening Koslovic’s own departure is his vain attempt to keep the land that he and his brother have worked all their lives. This novel is the first in Fulvio Tomizza’s Istrian Trilogy, the other two being La ragazza di Petrovia (The Girl from Petrovia, 1963) and Il bosco di acacie (The Acacia Woods, 1966)—the first works of his career. 

 Giovanni Verga. Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories. Tr. and intro. G. H. McWilliam. London. Penguin. 1999. 241 pp. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-14-044741-5. Penguin Classics. Born in the 1840s to a well-to-do Sicilian family, Giovanni Verga became an active observer and habitué of Milanese salon society, but eventually found in the everyday lives of Sicilian peasants the inspiration for his finest narratives. Love, adultery, and honor are recurring themes in stories set against the scorched landscapes of the slopes of Mount Etna and the Plain of Catania. G. H. McWilliams's new translation includes Nedda, the ground-breaking narrative of Italian verismo, as well as Jeli the Shepherd and Rosso Malpelo, which D. H. Lawrence considered two of the finest stories ever written. (Lawrence's own translation of Verga's novel Mastro-don Gesualdo was published in New York in 1923.) G. H. McWilliams has translated plays by Italo Svevo, Pirandello, and Ugo Betti, and poems by Salvatore Quasimodo. His Penguin Classics translation of Boccacio's Decameron (1972) was reissued in 1995 with a new introductions, detailed notes, maps, and indices.

 Renata Viganò. Partisan Wedding: Stories by Renata Viganò [Matrimonio in brigata]. Tr. and intro. Suzanne Branciforte. Columbia. University of Missouri Press. 1999. 240 pp. Paper: $19.95; ISBN 0-8262-1288-X. Paperback original. A generation of Italian authors dedicated their lives, their works, and their voices to the primary driving force behind 20^th-century narratives—World War II. Renata Viganò was an active member of the Italian Resistance and like many of her male counterparts, she depicts the actions of the brave people who contributed to and participated in the partisan movement. Unlike them, however, Viganò vividly portrays the experiences of women, notably women on the front line, in her posthumously published collection, here translated for the first time in English. Because of Viganò's own role as a partisan, the stories in Partisan Wedding are based on the writer's personal experiences. "Acquitted" and "My Resistance" are specifically autobiographical, while the remaining seventeen are fictional, though based on Viganò's own memories of Italian women who participated in the war effort.