italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
University of Sydney
Department of Italian Studies
Research Seminars
Semester 2 2008
Thursday 21 August 2008
Time: 4.15 pm
Venue: Room 724 Building Mungo MacCallum
Vrasidas Karalis
The poetics of bilingualism: Greek poetry in Italian words
(The case of Dionisios Solomos, 1798-1857)
Dionisios Solomos is considered as the national poet of modern Greece and his poetic
idiom defined the way that poetry has been written and appreciated in the country for the
last 200 years. Yet the most paradoxical element of his oeuvre is its bilingual character,
written predominantly in Italian and only partly in Greek.
The paper focuses on the intense conflict of linguistic idioms throughout his mature work
and on the creative process of trans-lingual and intra-lingual translation that we find in
his manuscripts. Solomos wrote everything in Italian first, then translated his initial drafts
into Greek, and finally worked on their poetic form through versification and rime. This
very strange process may be called "the poetics of bilingualism" because in the final text
both stages of articulation co-exist in a functional yet uneasy symbiosis. The ultimate
outcome of the tension in his work is the fragmentary nature of his mature works, his
inability to complete a text (in prose or poetry) and his final abandonment of his Greek
poetry in the ten last years of his life.
Solomos' poetry reflects a major experiment in expression and articulation attempted in a
period before linguistic nationalism established a national canon. The presentation
discusses the creative process of bilingualism and its effects on the act of writing.
**********************
Vrasidas Karalis is Associate Professor and Chair of the Modern Greek Studies
Department at the University of Sydney. For the last twenty years, his main area of
research has been in Modern Greek, Byzantine, Cultural Studies and more recently New
Testament Studies. Prof Karalis has also worked in translation, especially of the
Australian Nobel Laureate Patrick White and translated three of his major novels into
Greek (Voss, The Vivisector, A Cheery Soul).
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/moderngreek/staff/profiles/karalis.shtml
For any information on the Research Seminars, please contact: [log in to unmask]
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join italian-studies YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave italian-studies
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies.html
|