Carcanet 1994
Giacomo Leopardi
The Canti
with a selection of his prose.
Translated by JG NICHOLAS
(followed by Leopardi's original and a servile translation by Erminia)
(this is a much better translation of the one I posted by Ronald Gaskell.
In fact it is closer to the original in style and diction)
XIV
To the Moon
O gracious moon, now that I recollect,
It is a year ago I climbed this hill
In terrible distress to gaze on you:
And you were hanging then above the wood
As you do now, suffusing it with light.
But misty then and muddled from the weeping
That clouded both my eyes your face appeared
To me at least, because my life was full
Of anguish then: and is, nor has it changed,
O moon of my delight. Yet I enjoy
Remembrance, and the reckoning of the age
My sorrow grows to. What enormous pleasure
In time of youth, when hope had such great distance
To travel still and memory so little,
In recalling things that now are past,
Though they were sad things and the pain endures.
(Note: Leopardi's language is very aulic with a fashinating use of poetic
diction)
Alla luna
O graziosa luna, io mi rammento
Che, or volge l'anno, sovra questo colle
Io venia pien d'angoscia a rimirarti:
E tu pendevi allor su quella selva
Siccome of fai, che tutta la rischiari.
Ma nebuloso e tremulo dal pianto
Che mi sorgea sul ciglio, alle mie luci
Il tuo volto apparia, che travagliosa
Era la mia vita: ed e' , ne' cangia stile,
O mia diletta luna. E pur mi giova
La ricordanza, e il noverar l'etade
Del mio dolore. Oh come grato occorre
Nel tempo giovanil, quando ancor lungo
Le aspeme e breve ha la memoria il corso,
Il rimembrar delle passate cose,
Ancora che triste, e che l'affanno duri.
To the moon
(servile translation by Erminia Passannanti)
O gracious moon, I recall how,
- A year has just passed - on this hill
I used to come full of anguish, to admire you:
And you were hanging then on that wood
As you do now, lightening it all.
But clouded and tremulous through the tears
rising to my eyelashes, to my eyes
Your face appeared, since troubled
Was my life: still is, nor cdoes it hange its style,
My darling Moon. And yet remebring
does me good, the recalling of the age
of my suffering. Oh, how pleasantly it comes,
at the time of youth when hope still has a long
way to go and memory one short,
the recollecting of past things
which, being sad, make pain endure.
( note, in this idyll ,the self-tormenting sweetness of the recalling of the
(maybe by now trivial) sad things which afflicted the poet's soul in his
young age; the element of pleasure in the remembrance of a suffering which
is the only thing still enduring, warranting in this way the continuation
of the poet's inspiration in the older age, which in the case of Leopardi
was only forty .
He sadly died in a bizarre way, for a lyric poet, having eaten , once
finally on holiday in Naples, (the city he always dreamed of visiting, and
never managed to do, during his youth ) several ice-creams which were made
with contaminated water, causing him dysentery.
Well , mine is a servile translation. From this one might work out a more
faithful English version. Even though I feel that JG Nichols is a very
successful one.)
Cheers, Eminia
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