This paper does not aspire to originality,[1]
but simply to inform about Chinese presence in a number of Italian poets. My
own information derives from sources cited in the footnotes and references. Omissions,
if any, are unintentional.
A number of Italian poets from the
nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century were
interested in Chinese literature even though the amount of works available in
translation was limited at the time.[2]
Italian intellectual curiosity was perhaps connected to the Orientalist fashion
of that era, yet it shows a cosmopolitan alertness that exceeded the exoticism
of chinoiserie. Some notorious cases of highbrow concern were those of Giosuè
Carducci, Corrado Govoni, and Arturo Onofri. These three poets have a rather
thematic than linguistic relation to the Chinese reference texts, and they find
compatible motifs in Chinese poetry which they integrate in their own poetics.
Carducci’s 1850 “Primavera cinese”, or “Chinese
Spring”, was written under the influence of the Italian poet’s reading of a
French translation from the Chinese of Gao Qi, (1336-1374).[3]
The theme of nature and transiency of life dominate, and the meter translates
the situation into Italian ottonari
(eight syllable lines). Here are two stanzas (lines 21-28), preceded by the
original Chinese text,[4] and
followed a translation into English from Carducci’s Italian:
梅花九首
高启
其四
淡淡霜华湿粉痕，谁施绡帐护春温。诗随十里寻春路，愁在三更挂月村。
飞去只忧云作伴，销来肯信玉为魂。一尊欲访罗浮客，落叶空山正掩门。
La neve ch’empiea rigida
tutto pur dianzi il
cielo,
e i fior che lieti
salgono
dal fuggitivo gelo,
son de la vita imagine
fuggente, e in lei
s’appaga
tra i desiderii l’anima
e le memorie vaga.
The snow which rigidly filled
the whole sky beforehand,
and flowers which come up happily
from fugitive frost,
are a fleeting image
of life, and in it the soul
rests satisfied among desires
and wanders through memories.[5]
Continuing to the beginning of the 20th
century, Andrea Tullio Canobbio has demonstrated how a number of poems
by Corrado Govoni (1884-1965) are linked intertextually to the poetry of Li Po
and other Chinese poets.[6] In
a poem entitled “Dedicata ai poeti cinesi della dinastia dei Tang”, Govoni
builds on what he sees as the Chinese poetry motif of drinking with friends but
realizing at the end that melancholy settles in like “the light rain / fallen
gently in Spring”. In
a poem entitled “Scambio eterno di poesia”, the Italian author appreciates
Chinese poetry as part of a universal literary attention to melancholy and
lyricism. He foresees that in 3,000 years from the moment when he wrote his own
poems, nobody in the West would be capable to appreciate what he calls “the
poetry / of leaves which tremble like waves / and waves which tremble like
leaves / while feeling infinite sadness”. And he hopes to be remembered in that
distant future by the vaguely Chinisized name of “Gon-Co” (derived from the
dialect pronunciation of his surname Govoni and the shortened form of his name
Corrado), among Chinese poets.[7]
In 1916, Arturo Onofri, translated a number
of Chinese poems from French translations by Hervey de Saint-Denis and English
translations by Herbert A. Giles.[8]
This is clearly not a philological approach, given the intermediary of foreign
languages between the original and the Italian translation. Nonetheless, a
relevant intercultural exchange takes place. In his rendering, Onofri
over-imposed his own style on the originals, and in turn absorbed compatible
themes, in particular those linked to the passing of time and nature.
As an example of poems congruous to his
creative work, one fragment might be quoted here. Its title is “Pensiero di una
notte tranquilla”,[9]
by Li Tai Pé:
靜夜思
李白
床前明月光，疑是地上霜。
舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉。
Pensiero di una notte tranquilla
Davanti al mio letto, la
luna getta un chiarore vivissimo;
io dubito un momento se
non sia la gelata bianca che brilla al suolo.
Levo la testa, contemplo
la luna splendente;
abbasso la testa e penso
al mio paese.
A
Tranquil Night
Abed, I see a silver light,
I wonder if it's frost aground.
Looking up, I find the moon bright;
Bowing, in homesickness I'm drowned.
Onofri sets in motion a process of
interdependence with and sympathetic reading of the Orient. It is a process of
appropriation, which implies respect for the foreign source. In Chinese
literature, the Italian author rediscovered something that already belonged to
his existential horizon. Onofri’s fascination with Asia was also due to his
spiritual creed, modelled on Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy and visible in his
later poetry.[10]
Coming up to the 1950s, one should mention Eugenio
Montale. In his Introduction to the anthology Liriche cinesi, translated and edited by Giorgia Valensin,[11]
he professes admiration for, and a
“disorientation” caused by, the vast historical and geographical perspectives
of Chinese culture.
Liriche
cinesi gave Italian
readers an opportunity to read Chinese poems over a very long-time span (1753
a.C. to 1278 d.C.). The editor, however, writes that some of the Italian
versions were conducted from French translations, the rest of them from English
translation, and only a restricted group of poems could be checked against the
original Chinese.[12]
Chinese studies have developed further in Italy in
recent decades when anthologies including translations from the original
Chinese have been published.[13]
Among Italian poets influenced by Chinese
culture in contemporary Italy, I would like to mention Alessandro Ramberti. He obtained
a degree from Venice University of Oriental Languages and spent two years at
Shanghai Fudan University. His approach to Chinese poetry is different from the
poets mentioned above, because his linguistic medium into Italian is Chinese. He
operates on a two-way intercultural basis – from and into Chinese.
One example is taken from his translation of Du Fu:[14]
野望
西山白雪三城戍
南浦清江万里桥
海内风尘诸弟隔
天涯涕泪一身遥
惟将迟暮供多病
未有涓挨答圣朝
跨马出郊时极目
不堪人事日萧条
Guardando le
praterie
Sui monti a ovest la neve e tre rocche
la riva a sud del fiume e il lungo ponte.
Il mondo[15]
è polvere e ogni amico è via
il cielo un limite da pianger soli.
Ormai al tramonto offro solo pene
niente di utile per l’imperatore.
Cavalco fuori e il mio occhio considera
le cose umane ogni giorno più labili.
An
Outlook of the Fields
Over the
snow-covered West Mountains, soldiers three counties defend,
Over the
clear river to the south of town, straddles the Bridge of Long Mile.
A nation in
war separates me and my younger brothers from one another,
I weep in
solitude in a far corner under a distant sky.
Old and
often bed-ridden, I am a candle in the wind,
Yet I have
done not a thing in contribution to our nation of might.
I take a
ride on a horse to the countryside and look afield as far as I could,
Yet I
cannot bear to see our state affairs continue to deteriorate as days go by.[16]
In Ramberti’s collection Sotto il sole (sopra il cielo),[17]
some of the original Italian texts are presented in two versions, the original
Italian and translations into Chinese by the author with the collaboration of
Pietro Cui Xingang (co-ordinator of the Italian Chinese Catholic community), as
in the poem below:
Vespri
I nostri impulsi
promulgano arcobaleni
assiderati
il suono li decanta
ci forza a superare
il mondo dei riflessi.
晚祈祷
我们的脉搏
凝结了
彩虹
祷声把它净化
远胜过
反思的时间。
Vespers
Our impulses
proclaim frozen
rainbows
sound decants them
it forces us to overcome
the world of reflexes.
The field of Chinese influence on Italian poetry is wider
and deeper than I initially thought and of what I have found out so far. The
purpose of this short paper was simply to give some examples.
References
Bertoni, R., Aspects of
Intercultural Communication between Italy and Asia, Trinity College Dublin and Trauben Turin
(Quaderni italiani di cultura, n. 13), 2016.
Canobbio, A.T., “Fra Li Po e Po Chu-i: Govoni e i poeti cinesi”, Paper
read at the Conference Italy and China, Europe and East Asia: Centuries of
Dialogue, held at the University of Toronto, 7 to 9 April 2016; now
available in the volume Guardiani. F., Zhang, G. and Bancheri S., ed., Italy
and China, Europe and East Asia: Centuries of Dialogue, Florence, Cesati,
2017.
Carle
B. and Smith Dean C., Tra il cielo e la terra – Between Heaven and Earth,
Milan, La Vita Felice, 2017.
Carducci, G. “Primavera cinese”, in Juvenilia.
Du Fu, Paese in pezzi? I
monti e i fiumi reggono, transl. by A. Ramberti, Salerno, L’Arca Felice,
2011.
Hsu, S.-N., Anthologie de
la litérature chinoise. Des
origines à nos jours. Paris, Librairie Delagrave, 1932.
Mancuso, G., ed. and transl.,
Poesie cinesi d’amore e di nostalgia. I versi più significativi di tre
millenni di poesia cinese, Rome, Newton Compton, 1995.
Masini, F. (1994), “Italian Translations of Chinese Literature”, in
Alletton, V., and Lackner, M., ed., De l’un au multiple: Traductions du
chinois vers les langues européennes / Translation from Chinese into European
Languages, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1999, pp.
35-58.
Onofri, A., Lune di giada:
Poesie cinesi tradotte da Arturo Onofri, ed. D’Alessio, C., Rome, Salerno,
1994.
Onofri, A., Poesie scelte,
ed. Floreanini, F., Parma, Guanda, 1960.
Ramberti, A., Sotto il sole
(sopra il cielo), Rimini, Fara Editore, 2012.
Valensin, G., ed. and transl., Liriche cinesi (1753 a.C. - 1278 d.C.),
Introduction by Montale, E., Turin, Einaudi, 1952.
Waley, A., transl. and ed., One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems,
London, Constable, 1918.
Waley, A., transl. and ed., More Translations from the Chinese,
London, Allen and Unwin, 1919.
[Roberto Bertoni]
[1] This article derives from a speech given at “Chinese Poetry into the
West” (Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, 20-3-2018).
[2] The information included in this paper is
partly based on a previous essay from Chaper 5 of Bertoni, R., Aspects of
Intercultural Communication between Italy and Asia, Trinity College Dublin
and Trauben Turin (Quaderni italiani di cultura, n. 13), 2016.
[3] Carducci’s
poem in Italian (Juvenilia, II.32) is available from: https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Juvenilia/Libro_II/Primavera_cinese.
[4] Most of the Chinese and some of the English translation
from Chinese quoted in this paper were provided by Xun Liu (Asian Studies,
Trinity College Dublin) whom I wish to thank here.
[5] My translation into English.
[6] Canobbio,
A.T., “Fra Li Po e Po Chu-i: Govoni e i poeti cinesi”, Paper read at the
Conference Italy and China, Europe and East Asia:
Centuries of Dialogue,
held at the University of Toronto, 7 to 9 April 2016; now available in the
volume Guardiani. F., Zhang, G. and Bancheri S., ed., Italy and China, Europe and East Asia: Centuries of Dialogue,
Florence, Cesati, 2017.
[7] The lines quoted here are my translations
from the Italian texts included in the handout distributed to participants at
the Toronto Conference mentioned above.
[8] P. 40 of Masini, F. (1994), “Italian
Translations of Chinese Literature”, in Alletton, V., and Lackner, M., ed., De l’un au multiple: Traductions du chinois
vers les langues européennes / Translation from Chinese into European Languages,
Paris, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1999, pp. 35-58.
[9] P. 62 of Onofri, A., Lune di
giada: Poesie cinesi tradotte da Arturo Onofri, ed. D’Alessio, C., Rome, Salerno, 1994. It is to D’Alessio’s
excellent introduction that I owe the discovery of so many Italian references
to Chinese poetry. The English translation, by Albert A. Giles, is available from: https://prezi.com/ayqlaldtl5to/translation/.
[10] Ibidem,
pp. 34-35.
[11] Valensin, G., ed. and transl., Liriche cinesi (1753 a.C. - 1278 d.C.), Introduction by Montale, E., Turin, Einaudi, 1952.
[12] “Le poesie che nell’indice sono precedute da un asterisco provengono dall’Anthologie de la litérature chinoise di Sung Nien-su; tutte le altre da 170 Chinese Poems e da More Translations from the Chinese di Arthur Waley. Alcune hanno potuto essere confrontate con testi originali”, ibidem, p. XVI.
[11] Valensin, G., ed. and transl., Liriche cinesi (1753 a.C. - 1278 d.C.), Introduction by Montale, E., Turin, Einaudi, 1952.
[12] “Le poesie che nell’indice sono precedute da un asterisco provengono dall’Anthologie de la litérature chinoise di Sung Nien-su; tutte le altre da 170 Chinese Poems e da More Translations from the Chinese di Arthur Waley. Alcune hanno potuto essere confrontate con testi originali”, ibidem, p. XVI.
[13] For example Carle B. and Smith
Dean C., Tra il cielo e la terra –
Between Heaven and Earth, Milan, La Vita Felice, 2017; and Mancuso, G., ed.
and transl., Poesie cinesi d’amore e di
nostalgia. I versi più significativi di tre millenni di poesia cinese, Rome,
Newton Compton, 1995.
[14] Du Fu, Paese in pezzi? I monti e i fiumi reggono, transl. by A. Ramberti,
Salerno, L’Arca Felice, 2011.
[16] English translation from
https://28utscprojects.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/184/.
[17] Rimini, Fara Editore,
2012.
