The translation of Coleridge's poetry and his influence on Twentieth-century Italian poetry

Abstract

The reception of Coleridge’s poetry in Italy is a twentieth-century story with an interesting nineteenth-century prologue. The first relevant translations were those by Enrico Nencioni (in flat prose) and Emilio Teza (in lively rhyming verse). They were isolated episodes, followed by Mario Praz’s Poeti inglesi dell’Ottocento (1925), the first comprehensive anthology of its kind, which had a relevant impact on the Italian image of Coleridge. Mario Luzi brought out the first significant poetic translation of Coleridge’s masterpieces in 1949, a turning-point that made Coleridge a permanent presence in Italian culture. Luzi had a special interest in Coleridge’s philosophy of literature as part of the symbolist tradition. Beppe Fenoglio’s translation of The Ancient Mariner was part of a deep interest in English-language literature that he shared with other Piedmontese novelists, like Calvino and Primo Levi, who also interacted with Coleridge. Levi described himself after Auschwitz as an “ancient mariner” who felt obliged to tell his story to everyone. The title of his collection of poems, Ad ora incerta, is a phrase he found in Coleridge’s ballad. About a dozen new translations of Coleridge’s poetry have been published since 1970. Giovanni Giudici used a sort of accentual line based on northern models for his Ancient Mariner, whereas Franco Buffoni focussed on Coleridge’s fragments rather than the best-known poems. Umberto Fiori wrote the libretto for Luca Francesconi’s opera Ballata, an adaptation of the Ancient Mariner performed with success in Brussels in 2002. Such interest on the part of some significant poets shows that Coleridge remains a live presence in Italian culture