This Nothing To Say
by Joshua Wait
I wandered into Libreria Nanni in Bologna, Italy, looking for a book of Italian poetry. A stack of white books sat on the table. Einaudi publishes most of their poetry as plain white books with a single poem on the cover. No photo of the author, no clever typography, no illustration.
I picked up a copy of Mariangela Gualtieri’s Quando Non Morivo (When I Wasn’t Dying). It had the poem “Subito si cuce questo niente da dire” (“Immediately this nothing to say”) on the cover. The rhythm of the poem caught my attention and I bought it subito.
My grasp of Italian isn’t great. I can ask for directions, buy groceries, and discuss familiar subjects. But if I slow down and read a book, I can usually work my way through more complex subjects like art or poetry.
Sometimes I can intuit what an author is saying in Italian, but don’t have a way of saying it in English. My mind has to struggle to find the right words.
Wrestling with a poem in Italian, and trying to live inside of it, sharpens my thinking and improves my writing.
If I’m in a rush, I’ll use Google Translate. It provides a quick answer, but often mangles a poem. Even more, it robs me of that lovely “aha” moment where the poem truly arrives.
I prefer to work with a native speaker and, in particular, one who stays in contact with their culture. I’m thankful to have worked with translator and teacher, Anna Favaro. Collaborating with her has smoothed out my otherwise awkward translations and provided necessary insight.
In many cases, there’s no one right way to translate a particular poem or passage. A translator has to weigh the various options. As I worked through Gualtieri’s poem, I became aware of the many choices that I had to make.
The lines “Subito si cuce questo niente da dire / ad una voce che batte” could be translated:
“Immediately this nothing to say / is stitched onto a beating voice”
“Immediately this nothing to say / is stitched to a voice that beats”
“Immediately this nothing / is sewn to a beating voice”
Do I go with a philosophical statement, “this nothing”? I could do that and focus on the nothing, but to do so would cut out “da dire.”
Is it stitched or sewn? Is it a beating voice or a voice that beats? You see the problem. And perhaps the gift. I had to think through three different ways of communicating an idea.
Translating “Vuole / palpitare ancora” seems simple. It’s only three words, but it presents an important choice: “It wants to beat again”, “It wants to throb again”, or “It wants to palpitate again.”
Beat occurred to me first. We usually say the heart beats, but beat lacks the right feeling for me. Throb makes me think of a wound or headache. I like the “b” on the end of throb, bump-bum like a heart. But no.
Gualtieri used “batte” in the second verse and “palpitare” in the third verse. Using beat in both the second and third verse would lose that distinction.
I went with “palpitate,” because it’s a cognate of “palpitare.” The repetition of “p” in the word sounds a little like a beating heart. It feels a tad unnatural in English, but unnatural in a good way—it leads the reader to become more conscious of what’s being said.
How about “forte, forte forte”, do I translate it “hard, very hard” or “loudly, loudly loudly”?
I kind of liked “loudly.” Hard only has one syllable and loudly has two like forte. The Italian word “forte” is trochaic, meaning that the emphasis is on the first syllable. The English word “loudly” is also trochaic, so its meter would mirror that of the original word. “Loudly” would sound better, but lose the sense of forcefulness. So I went with hard.
This line hooked me: “dire sono-sono qui,” “to say I am—I am here.” In Italian, the accent falls on the first syllable SOno—SOno qui. The “qui” afterwards offers a release, like the movement of a closing heart valve. This line forms a central image of the poem and weaves an observation into its structure: the human pulse echoes the pulse of being itself.
How about “particelle mai assopite, mai morte mai finite”? Is it “particles that never sleep, never die, never end” or “particles never lulled to sleep, never dead, never finished.”
I experimented with a direct, fast-paced version of the line. I liked the repeated rhythm of a two-syllable word “never” followed by a one-syllable word “sleep” or “die.” It gives the line a feeling of movement, as if the mind were chasing an idea.
The pace of the original Italian moves more slowly and doesn’t possess the insistence that I conjured.
“Assopite” really means “lulled to sleep.” It has a gentleness to it. My first translation of it had a quick aphoristic quality, like “never give up, never surrender.” The phrase “never sleep, never die, never end” feels like a product of contemporary American culture. And too much so.
I wanted to translate a poem, not create a slogan, so I went with “particles never lulled to sleep, never dead, never finished.” That, and Anna wisely suggested that I do.
While Gualtieri’s poem is intimate, it’s more than personal. It declares that we are shifting particles, in a dance, changing place and name. For me, it evokes Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, where he says, “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” The poem ends simply “Siamo.” In English, “We are.”
It’s a philosophical poem. Gualtieri doesn’t rehearse her trauma, wax nostalgic, or rant. She invites us into a deeper, richer sense of the nature of being. She asks the questions, "What am I? What am I made out of?"
And she answers: we are ever-shifting particles, changing place and name.
Joshua Wait is a writer and an artist. He founded Blue Rivers to provide a space for poetry, art, and photography.
