Riccardo Duranti is a translator, poet and writer of fiction. He has translated the whole of Raymond Carver and works by many other authors, among whom Roald Dahl, Ted Hughes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tibor Fischer, Philip K. Dick, Michael Ondaatje, John Berger, Olive Schreiner, Isaac B.Singer, Elizabeth Bishop, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry David Thoreau and Peter Orner. In 1996 he received the National Prize for Translation awarded by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

 

In one of the paradoxical twists that permeate everything that has to do with this author, the best part of Belli’s literary legacy risks masking its stature as a classic masterpiece on account of its own strengths: a new language, very different from the accepted standards, is impertinently (and impeccably) set in an alien formal structure, the Petrarchan sonnet; the extent of themes, modes, and variations that he managed to fit within such a narrow, stiff frame verges on the encyclopaedic temptation, Joyce-style; the sheer quantity of tesserae that compose the huge mosaic the poet wanted to leave as a “monument to… the plebs of Rome” defies any reader’s power of overall vision.

 

The very originality of design and execution of this masterpiece puts severe limits to its fruition. Luckily, in spite of the fact that the corpus of 2,279 sonnets was unpublished in his lifetime and circulated mostly orally in small circles in Rome, several people were able to appreciate his poetic genius. These few includes foreigners such as Gogol, who was struck by the force and wit of Belli’s sonnets when he heard him recite them in Princess Volkonsky's salon. And later, after remaining virtually unknown for well over half a century, they were re-discovered and brought to the attention of a wide audience as a unique literary phenomenon.

 

In his novel Abba Abba (1977), Anthony Burgess imagines John Keats in his last months of life meeting Belli in Rome, in the winter of 1820-21. (http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351647067l/230130.jpg) The two poets can understand each other only through the classical rhyme scheme of the sonnet (hence the title). At the end of the novel, a fictional character, John Wilson (a transparent alter ego of the author) tries his hand at translating some of the sonnets and even manages to smuggle a couple of (weak – little more than bawdy jokes camouflaged as sonnets) imitations of his own into the appendix. Of course, the fictional ruse barely hides Burgess’ own interest in the achievements of Belli’s work. Understandably, Burgess concentrates on the fantastic treatment of Bible stories that Belli’s plebeian voices re-tell, often with comical overtones, but never with the same scathing sarcasm Belli reserves for other, more mundane aspects of the Christian faith as lived in a Rome heavily conditioned by the temporal power of the pope.

 

Whereas Burgess concentrates on the cultural contour lines that surprisingly link, via the Old Testament, Roman and English sonnets (the form is kept to in his versions, although the impact of the original vernacular is considerably toned down by the diluted Manchester working-class accent one may surmise in his diction), Robert Garioch chose a different level of analogy to infuse life into the numerous versions in Scots that he published over the years. Establishing a sociological equation between the people of Trastevere Belli takes as models for his characters and certain inhabitants of Edinburgh, Garioch finds the same human types, the same pathos, the same irony vis-à-vis very similar stories. These analogies and a very lively Scots language make the transfer of form and content from one cultural context to another not only possible but exhilarating.

 

Garioch also attests a counterintuitive principle always at work in these kinds of translations: the shortest distance between original and version is sometimes achieved by taking the longest route around. By substituting the “yill (ale) from Craigmillar” for the “vino dei Castelli” one of Belli’s characters mentions, or by having Noah’s Ark sail out of a firth rather than from the port of Civitavecchia, he manages to convey and underscore the same effect through functional rather than literal fidelity. [On the latter, see “Breaking a lance in the wordlists - a defence of ‘illiteral’ translation”, elsewhere on this site]

 

It is exactly this lesson that Michael Sullivan seems to have learned and admirably applied in his rendition of over 400 by Belli (to this date, an unsurpassed record among interpreters of the Roman poet). Sullivan translates very faithfully, but he is ready and able to take liberties whenever the circumstances require a cultural, topological or even chronological deviation from the original. It is a very subtle balance that he has needed to keep in order to convey very much the same effect in the English versions as in Belli’s own sonnets. And the translating strategies he applies have to juggle with several planes of reference: not just the complex linguistic material Belli uses to fashion his poems with, but also the social, political and religious issues that make up the portrait of a people and an epoch seen from a fresh perspective.

 

Belli’s choice of Romanesco as the vehicle of his work must be understood in all its revolutionary potential within the context of Italian literary tradition where a starched conventional and formal language was the order of the day. By selecting a spoken, every day, extremely expressive language, set moreover within the frame of the most formal structure Italian literature could boast, Belli consciously blows up an edifice that had been accruing for seven centuries. And the sparks that are generated are indeed spectacular. One has but to examine Belli’s own production in Italian (more massive than his vernacular work, but also considerably duller) to get a measure of the almost schizophrenic split between two worlds that coexisted within the same personality.

 

Belli’s vernacular is moreover extremely rich for a language that had no or very little previous written corpora. It is not just a functional language spoken by the lower strata of society; in Belli’s hands Romanesco becomes an extremely flexible tool in dialectical tension not only with the official language of power, i.e. Italian, but also with Church Latin and, marginally, even with French. Deformations, idioms, malapropisms and wordplay considerably broaden the creative potential of Belli’s diction.

 

Belli’s departure from tradition does not apply only to his language, but also to the broad gamut of variations he manages to introduce within the narrow lyrical frame of the sonnet. His compositions are based upon mainly comical themes, biting political and social satire, dramatic monologues and dialogues, lists and anecdotes.

 

To respond to the dynamic expressive articulation of this language, Sullivan forges a composite and diffuse working class, urban English vernacular that presents many more regional variations than the territorially limited Romanesco of the original or of Garioch’s localised Scots dialect. Not just Cockney, then, but also different dialects from all over the UK plus some Irish accents are summoned to render the oral dimension of the compositions. This might seem a major departure from the purpose of faithful rendition of the linguistic coherence of the original. But when we consider how this flexibility allows the translator to characterise each sonnet as a sociolinguistic commentary on the subject and to respond better to the constraints of rhyme and verse, we may well get reconciled to this choice. For instance, the fact that most sonnets dealing with every day moral dilemmas originating from the contrast between instinct and Catholic teachings are to be read with an Irish accent adds an edge of authenticity that might otherwise be lost if the speaker were an East Ender. And if in order to have the English reader relate as much as possible to the spirit of Belli’s poems, Sullivan does not hesitate to transpose spatial and chronological coordinates by moving what is supposed to have happened in Trastevere or in the Vatican in the first half of the 19th century to the East End or to Westminster now.

 

It is clear that Sullivan is not just interested in the transfer of meaning, but also in the recreation of the energy of the original in his versions. That is how he manages to match the variety of traits of the voices in the sonnets with the corresponding human types that can be found in most parallel classes and situations, with a preference for the cynical, tongue-in-cheek, saucy, mocking, coarse characters Belli chooses as his favourite spokepersons.

It is this ability to get on the same wavelength with the author and find the right idioms and tones that mimic down to the tiniest detail and allusion the original that sets apart these versions as successful vehicles to convey that elusive and lively sense of humour that pervades the sonnets. A case in point of how minutely Sullivan stalks and tries to capture the slightest nuances of Belli’s verbal ingenuity is in the title of sonnet 362, “Li soprani der monno vecchio”. Here the translator not only understands the subtle deformation introduced by Belli in writing “soprani” instead of the standard “sovrani” (sovereigns), suggesting a sexual impairment (through the semantic chain soprano > sopranisticastrati) and therefore setting the tone for the hysterical and falsetto-like voice of the autocratic power figure that is the protagonist of the sonnet. How to transfer this nuance in an English version? Sullivan finds the solution in slightly deforming the word monarchs in monorchs. Granted, the etymological calembour (it means “endowed with just one testicle”) is even subtler than in Belli’s title, and very few readers can catch and appreciate it, yet it is there and plays the same function as in the original text.

 

Throughout his broad selection of sonnets, Sullivan acrobatically manages to match Belli’s verbal prowess and wit. I suspect that behind this philological affinity between poet and translator lies a deeper sympathy for the philosophical outlook of someone who is ill at ease in the daily contradictions of being trapped in a world of arbitrary power and pervasive corruption, who cannot stand the rampant hypocrisy permeating at every level the society he lives in and yet has no choice but to try to survive in it. This predicament may generate an inherent antagonistic vision as a survival strategy to convey an alternative vision of the world and of society. Even if the conditions for changing that world and that society are not historically present, it is always possible to observe them carefully and record one’s own observations for future reference, especially if the evidence is gathered from an unusual perspective and couched in an entertaining medium.

 

This might well be the spring from which Belli drew his daily inspiration for years, recording,with an articulated realism mellowed by a sense of humour, the panorama stretching from daily life to current affairs, from politics to philosophical considerations bordering on the visionary, a running commentary on any facet of the reality in Rome that struck his fancy, no holds barred. Even though this activity clashed with his public function as a clerk of the papal administration where he paradoxically ended his career as a public censor.

 

A careful and extensive reading of his sonnets certainly testifies to a robust heretical strain in him; counter to the repressive atmosphere he grew up in, he had absorbed the basic principles of the Enlightenment which shaped his libertarian instincts towards a radical criticism of power structures. As far as his literary tastes are concerned, there is a strong distinction to be made between his works in Italian and the vernacular sonnets: as much as he was a versatile (and conventional) classicist in the former, in the latter he was a sanguine realist who appreciated the liberating and expressive effects of bawdy language, of frank reference to bodily functions, and of disenchanted treatment of taboos, challenging any limitation as regards subjects and themes. It might look like an excessive split to fit in one person, but evidently in this field there are no preset boundaries: all we can say is that the vernacular acted as a successful outlet valve for the social pressures Belli had to confront and ultimately reflects better the complexity of the man. Looking back, while his Italian poetry (to which he entrusted his claims to fame) is virtually never read, his equally well-crafted vernacular production, closer to his inner needs and inspiration, is just as fresh and innovative today as it was in his times and increasingly enjoys appreciation abroad...

 

Riccardo Duranti