Percorsi di poesia Dall’Italia agli Stati Uniti (e viceversa) Antonello Borra Bergamo, 5 maggio 2015
Per corsi di poesia Dall‟Italia agli Stati Uniti (e viceversa)
Cos‟è la poesia?
Cos’è la poesia? Pluralità di risposte
• Risposte italiane
• Risposte americane (statunitensi)
• Risposte diacroniche
• Risposte sincroniche
Risposte Diacroniche e Sincroniche Risposte di poeti
Risposte di critici Risposte di filosofi Risposte di scienziati
Altre domande… A cosa / chi serve la poesia?
Come si fa la poesia?
Paul Valéry (1871-1945)
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)
Edgar Degas
Paul Valéry Le grand peintre Degas m'a souvent rapporté� ce mot de Mallarm�é qui est si juste et si simple. Degas faisait parfois des vers, et il en a laissé� de dé�licieux. Mais il trouvait souvent de grands difficult�és dans ce travail accessoire de sa peinture. ... Il dit un jour a Mallarmé�: 'Votre m�étier est infernal. Je n'arrive pas �à faire ce que je veux et pourtant, je suis plein d'id�eés...' Et Mallarmé� lui r�épondit: ' Ce n'est point avec des idé�es, mon cher Degas, que l'on fait des vers. C'est avec
Polarit�à Proprietà di corpi o dispositivi di presentare proprietà fisiche opposte in punti opposti o una direzione privilegiata
Polarizzare
Concentrare forze, energie in punti particolari
Polo Punti di una sfera equidistanti, punti estremi, posizione antitetica, punti di un sistema nei quali sono concentrate qualità fisiche opposte Dal latino polum, dal greco pólos „perno, asse (della terra)‟, da pélesthai „girare‟ di origine indoeuropea
Polarità • Tecniche
• Culturali
Incarnazioni di polarità italiane • Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
• Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
• Plurilinguismo dantesco
Commedia
• Monolinguismo petrarchesco
Canzoniere
Polo plurilinguistico • Giovanni Pascoli
• Gabriele D‟Annunzio •… • Edoardo Sanguineti
Polo monolinguistico • Umberto Saba •…
• Patrizia Cavalli • Milo De Angelis
Incarnazioni di polarità americane • Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
• Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
• Continuità del flusso ritmico / sintattico
• Discontinuità del flusso ritmico / sintattico
Song of Myself (16) I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine, One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live, A Yankee bound by my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, a Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn, in my deerskin leggins, a Louisian or a Georgian…
632 The Brain - is wider than the Sky For - put them side by side The one the other will contain with ease - and You - beside The Brain is deeper than the sea For - hold them - Blue to Blue The one the other will absorbAs Sponges - Buckets - do The Brain is just the weight of God For - Heft them - Pound for Pound And they will differ - if they do As Syllable from Sound -
The Brain is wider than the Sky For put them side by side The one the other will contain with ease and You beside The Brain is deeper than the sea For hold them Blue to Blue The one the other will absorbAs Sponges Buckets do The Brain is just the weight of God For Heft them Pound for Pound And they will differ if they do As Syllable from Sound -
Polo whitmaniano • Ezra Pound (The Cantos) • William Carlos Williams (Paterson) • …
• Allen Ginsberg • John Ashbery
Polo dickinsoniano • Ezra Pound (Ripostes) • Williams Carlos Williams (Spring and all) •… • Adrienne Rich
Polarità • Continuità
• Discontinuità
Continuità formale / Discontinuità culturale • Ann Bradstreet (16121672)
• Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
From The Prologue To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings, Of cities founded, commonwealths begun, For my mean pen are too superior things; Or how they all, or each their dates have run Let poets and historians set these forth, My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.
From On Being Brought from
Africa to America “Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land Taught my benighted soul to understand That there‟s a God, that there‟s a Savior too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye. “Their color is a diabolical dye.” Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refined, and join the angelic
Discontinuità formale / Continuità culturale • Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
• T.S. Eliot (1888-1963)
From The Cantos … And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus “Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, “Lose all companions.” And then Anticlea came. Lie quiet Divus. I mean that is Andreas Divus, In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer. And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away And unto Circe. Venerandam, In the Cretan‟s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri munimenta sortita est, myrthful, orichalchi, with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:
From The Waste Land I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel fuoco che gli affina Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine �à la tour abolie These fragment I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih
T.S. Eliot • Tradition and the Individual Talent
• Dante
Ezra Pound A Pact I make a pact with you, Walt WhitmanI have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends, It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one rootLet there be commerce between us.
Eliot e Pound • Impatto della poesia italiana
• Impatto sulla poesia italiana
Giovanni Raboni (1932-2004) • Frammenti di un saggio su Ezra Pound (1958)
• La tomba di Ezra Pound (1972)
Insegnamenti poundiani • Make it new (?!)
• Tradurre
Traduzione Atto del tradurre, trasportare da una lingua all‟altra (1565)
Dal latino traducere „condurre (ducere) oltre (tra)
Tradurre poesia? • Bella ma infedele?
• Brutta ma fedele?
John Dryden (1631-1700) • Metaphrase • Paraphrase
• Imitation
Altre possibilità? • Metaphrase
• Paraphrase • Imitation • “Betterphrase”
Commedia in lingua inglese • Charles Rogers (1711-1784) • Henry Boyd (?-1832)
1782 1802
• Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892) 1843 • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) 1867
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Inferno I (1-9) Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura Ché la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura, Esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte Che nel pensier rinova la paura! Tant‟è amara che poco è più morte, Ma per trattar del ben ch‟i‟ vi trovai Dirò e l‟altre cose ch‟i‟ vi ho scorte.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is a little more; But of the good to treat, which there I found, Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
John Ciardi (1916-1986) Midway in our life‟s journey, I went astray From the straight road and woke to find myself Alone in a dark wood. How shall I say What wood that was! I never saw so drear, So rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear. Death would scarse be more bitter than that place! But since it came to good, I will recount All that I found revealed there by God‟s grace.
Robert Pinsky (1940) Midway on our life‟s journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell About those woods is hard - so tangled and rough And savage that thinking of it now, I feel The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter. And yet, to treat of the good I found there as well I‟ll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter I cannot well say, being so full of sleep Whatever moment it was I began to blunder Off the true path.
Mary Jo Bang (1946) Stopped mid-motion in the middle Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no skyOnly a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost. It‟s difficult to describe a forest: Savage arduous, extreme in its extremity. I think And the facts come back, then the fear comes back. Death, I believe, can only be slightly more bitter. I can‟t address the good I found there Until I describe in detail what else I saw.
Espatriare Lasciare il territorio della patria, anche solo temporaneamente.
Dal latino expatriare, derivato di patria, da patrius “che appartiene al padre”
Poeti espatriati negli USA • Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838)
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