Franz Kafka

Monday, June 22, 2020

Giuseppe Ungaretti "The Rivers" (I Fiumi), English translation. Giuseppe Ungaretti, the Master of Hermeticism, Translated in English


Picture of the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 - 1970)


The most comprehensive English translation of the work of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 – 1970,) the leading representative of the experimental literary movement called Hermeticism, or Hermetic poetry. This edition includes poems from all of his major collections: "Porto Sepolto (1916,) “L'allegria di naufragi” (1919,)"L'allegria" (1931,) “Sentimento del tempo” (1933,) and "Il dolore," (1947.)
Available as ebook as Amazon Kindle and Kobo.


The Rivers (I Fiumi)

 
I hold onto this tree that is mutilated
Abandoned in this sinkhole (*)
Which has the languor
Of a circus
Before or after the show
And look
The quite passing
Of the clouds on the moon

This morning I lay down
In an urn of water
And like a relic
I rested

The river Isonzo flowing
Polished me
Like one of its stones
I pulled up my poor bones
And there I went
Like an acrobat
On the water 

I crouched down

Next to my clothes
Filthy with war
And like a Bedouin
I stooped to receive
The sun


This is the Isonzo
And here better
I recognized myself
A docile fiber
Of the universe

My torment
Is when
I feel I’m not
In harmony

But those occult
Hands
That I’m soaked with
Grant me
The rare
Happiness

I observed again
The epochs
Of my life

These are
My rivers

This is the Serchio
From which have drawn water
Over two thousands years perhaps
My own farmer ancestors
And my father and my mother

This is the Nile
Which saw me
Being born and grow
And burn with unawareness
In the expanded plains

This is the Seine
And in its muddiness
I have stirred up
And got to know myself

These are my rivers
Counted in the Isonzo

This is my melancholy
That in each one
Shines through
Now that the night fell
And that my life appears to me
A corolla
Of gloom


(*) In Italian “dolina,” a cavity in the ground, especially in a limestone formation, caused by water erosion and providing a route for surface water to disappear underground.

Cotici, 16th of August 1916, from the collection “L'Allegria,” 1931.

The most comprehensive English translation of the work of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 – 1970,) the leading representative of the experimental literary movement called Hermeticism, or Hermetic poetry. This edition includes poems from all of his major collections: "Porto Sepolto (1916,) “L'allegria di naufragi” (1919,)"L'allegria" (1931,) “Sentimento del tempo” (1933,) and "Il dolore," (1947.)
Available as ebook as Amazon Kindle and Kobo.





 

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Gabriele D’Annunzio's "The Rain in the Pinewood" (La Pioggia nel Pineto, by Gabriele D'Annunzio, from the collection "Alcyone", 1902)




Gabriele D’Annunzio: The Collection of Poems in English. The most comprehensive English translation of the poetry of Gabriele D'Annunzio.   Available as eBook on Amazon Kindle and Kobo, and as printed edition on Amazon and Lulu. 


The Rain in the Pinewood



Be silent. At the edge
of the wood I do not hear
the human words you say;
I hear newer words
spoken by droplets and leaves
far away. 
Listen. It rains
from the scattered clouds.
It rains on the briny, burned
tamarisk,
it rains on the pine trees
scaly and rough,
it rains on the divine
myrtle,
on the bright genista flowers
gathered together,
on the junipers full of
fragrant berries,
it rains on our sylvan faces,
it rains on our bare hands
on our light clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed,
liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled you yesterday,
that beguiles me today,
oh Hermione.
  
Can you hear?
The rain falls
on the solitary vegetation
with a crackling noise that lasts
and varies in the air
according to the thicker,
less thick foliage. 
Listen.
With their singing, the cicadas
are answering this weeping,
this southern wind weeping
that does not frighten them,
and nor does the grey sky.
And the pine tree
has a sound, the myrtle
another one, the juniper
yet another, different
instruments
under countless fingers. 
And we are immersed
in the sylvan spirit,
living the same
sylvan life;
and your inebriated face
is soft from the rain,
like a leaf,
and your hair
is fragrant like the light
genista flowers,
oh terrestrial creature
called Hermione.
  
Listen, listen!
The song of the flying cicadas
becomes fainter and fainter
as the weeping grows stronger;
but a rougher song
rises from afar,
and flows in
from the humid remote shadow.
Softer and softer
gets weaker, fades away.
One lonely note
still trembles, fades away.
No one can hear the voice of the sea.
Now you can hear the silver rain
pouring in
on the foliage,
rain that purifies,
its roar that varies
according to the thicker,
less thick foliage.

Listen.
The child of the air is silent;
but the child
of the miry swamp, the frog,
far away,
sings in the deepest of shadows
who knows where, who knows where!
And it rains on your lashes,
Hermione.

It rains on your black lashes
as if you were weeping,
weeping from joy; not white
but almost green,
you seem to come out of the bark.

And life is in us fresh
and fragrant,
the heart in our chests is like a peach
untouched
under the eyelids our eyes
are like springs in the grass
and the teeth in our mouths
green almonds.
And we go from thicket to thicket,
at a time together, at a time apart
(the vegetation, thick and vigorous,
entwines our ankles
entangles our knees)
who knows where, who knows where!

And it rains on our sylvan faces,
it rains on our bare hands
on our light clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed, liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled me yesterday,
that beguiles you today,
oh Hermione.

Gabriele D’Annunzio: The Collection of Poems in English. The most comprehensive English translation of the poetry of Gabriele D'Annunzio.   Available as eBook on Amazon Kindle and Kobo, and as printed edition on Amazon and Lulu.