A few words on "An Old Man's Winter Night," by Robert Frost, and a version in Italian

U.S stamp celebrating Robert Frost's Centennial birth anniversary, 1974

There is more than solitude and dejection to "An Old Man's Winter Night," as Frost forces the reader to look inwardly; the way the poem is construed, there's no apparent possibility to establish a connection of empathy, or companionship, with the old guy's workings of the mind. Is it more, other than tenacity and sheer willingness of survival, what is conjured before our eyes? Arguably, more than the burden of death and absolute loneliness, what is being questioned is the human inability of let go of oneself, even when there's little, if anything at all, to be let go of; it is the probe into the missing alliteration: obliviousness and obliteration. In Frost's words "One aged man -- one man --" (this repetition is, perhaps, the key) "can't keep a house, a farm, a countryside," (keep going, maintain, certainly, yet most notably "keep") "or if he can, it's thus he does it of a winter night." Yet, it is some of the initial lines that struck most: "What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze/Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand." The human's lamp itself, the fire of sheer existence, these are possibly the barriers to our reconnection with  the powerful forces of nature, and the beyond world, that of ancestry. 

Original English Version, by Robert Frost, from the collection Mountain Interval, 1916. 

 An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; —and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one man—can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

by Robert Frost, from the collection "Mountain Interval," 1916

A version in Italian, by LiteraryJoint:

Notte d'inverno di un vecchio

Quel che stava fuori oscuramente lo guardava
Attraverso il sottile ghiaccio, quasi in stelle separate,
Che si forma sul vetro in stanze vuote.
Quel che impediva ai suoi occhi di ricambiare lo sguardo
Era la lampada che nella sua mano si piegava vicino a loro.
Quel che gli impediva di ricordare cosa fu
Che lo condusse in quella stanza scricchiolante era l'età.
Stava in piedi con barili attorno a lui -- perso.
E spaventata la cantina che stava di sotto
Battendovi il piede, la spaventò un'altra volta
Con quel suo battere; —e spavantò la notte là fuori.
Che ha i suoi suoni, familiari, come il ruggito
Di alberi e lo spezzarsi di rami, cose comuni.
Ma niente simile al battere su una scatola.
Una luce che era a non altri che sé stesso
Dove ora sedeva, preoccupato con ciò che sapeva,
Una luce quieta, e poi nemmeno quello.
Si consegnò alla luna, cosí com'era,
Sorta cosí tardi, alla luna spezzata
Sempre meglio del sole in ogni caso
Poiché un tal peso, la sua neve sul tetto,
Le sue lingue di ghiaccio teneva lungo il muro;
E dormí. Il ceppo che si rimosse con un sobbalzo
nella stufa, disturbandolo, lo fece rigirare,
E ne alleviò il respiro pesante, ma senza destarlo.
Un vecchio uomo—un uomo—non può badare a una casa,
Una fattoria, una campagna, o se può,
E' questo che ne fa di una notte d'inverno. 

Robert Frost, dalla raccolta "Mountain Interval", 1916. 
Traduzione in italiano a cura di LiteraryJoint.  Copyright © LiteraryJoint by Alessandro Baruffi