Michael Bartholomew-Biggs finds that Danielle Hopeâs translations provide a very accessible introduction to Giovanni Pascoliâs poetry
The Last Walk of Giovanni Pascoli
Translated by Danielle Hope
Rockingham Press
ISBN 978-1-904851-77-6
64pp ÂŁ9.99
For those who know little or nothing about the Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) this book begins with two very helpful biographical sketches â one by Danielle Hope herself and the other by Franco Toscani. This bilingual edition features all sixteen poems from the sequence âThe Last Walkâ and the collection is rounded out by a couple of extra poems, of which âThe Dapple Mareâ is by far the more interesting (and will be discussed later).
Fifteen of the poems in âThe Last Walkâ are ten-liners while the sixteenth has twelve lines. All the poems offer evocative snapshots of scenes or people or places observed during a stroll in the countryside. The same form is used for the first fifteen: a pair of three-line stanzas followed by a quatrain. In the originals there is a strong rhyming scheme: ABA CBC DE DE (and for the record the sixteenth poem adds an extra couplet with rhyme scheme EE). Since rhyming is so much easier in Italian than in English, Hope does not attempt to imitate this aspect of Pascoliâs work and â at best â makes do with half-rhymes.
Given my rather limited knowledge of Italian I do not expect to be able to say much about the accuracy or sensitivity of Hopeâs translations and for the most part I will take her versions at face value and comment on them as pastoral poems written in English. Letâs take the first poem âArano / Ploughingâ as a more detailed case study, however, and see what I can manage to uncover about the relationships between Pascoliâs words and Hopeâs. It will be helpful to quote the middle verse in its English form:
they plough â one urges the slow cows
with slow calls, another sows, another
thwacks clods with sweeps of his patient hoe.
Hope has succeeded in enhancing Pascoliâs repetition of âlente / slowâ and gained a pleasing effect of alliteration and assonance by choosing âcallsâ to match the word âcowsâ. Hope also scores points for picking the unexpected verb âthwacksâ rather than the more obvious rendering of âribatteâ as âbeatsâ. I very much like the âpatient hoeâ â and that is something Pascoli himself can take the credit for. Hopeâs inventiveness selects an even more unusual word in the final verse when a robinâs song âchinkles like gold coins in the hedgesâ; and in the first stanza she chooses a suitably soft-sounding word to replace the more literal and spiky âthicketâ when she tells us that âdawn fog / rises like smoke from the brushwoodâ.
In this first poem we can already see the main ingredients of all the others â an element of scene-setting description followed by the appearance (in varying order and with varying importance) of people and/or animals and/or birds. The cumulative effect of reading the sequence is indeed rather like the experience of recalling particular momentary observations made during a country walk (and why is it that certain specific points on a journey can leave a very clear impression while most of the sights and sounds coalesce into a generalised blur?)
For the rest of the poems I shall not even attempt the mild dissection of Hopeâs translation that I performed with respect to âPloughingâ. Instead I shall simply make comments on some of the English versions which, for one reason or another, particularly stood out for me. It should be assumed however that Hopeâs skilfully creative interpretations of Pascoliâs text are in evidence throughout the sequence.
âFrom Aboveâ describes a skylarkâs view of a landscape in which I particularly like the reference to a manor house that âspools out smokeâ. I am not sure however that I really believe Pascoliâs simile which Hope renders as âclumps of turf / glow as bright as sunshine in a mirrorâ. From where I usually stand, turf seems pretty light absorbing!
âHensâ presents a useful lesson on living in the present. A housewife â âunlike us glum foolsâ (which presumably refers to the too-cerebral attitude of poets) â is made content when she âhears the sound of her useful hensâ cluckingâ and reflects that her household is well-resourced. But I find an interesting ambiguity when the last verse says âgirls with wistful eyes croon dittiesâ. This echoes the earlier mention of useful hens and, for me, brings back a childhood memory of the gentle and questioning noises that chickens make to themselves as they potter round the yard. But does the poet actually mean us to picture chickens again? Or is he now describing the household servant girls at their work?
While the overall tone of the poems is timelessly rural, âThe Iron Roadâ acknowledges the intrusions that railways made into the countryside during Pascoliâs life. The track âstretches away in a straight / burnt-brown stripeâ and alongside it âtelegraph poles stilt in the pearl airâ. I rather like the use of âstiltâ as a verb; but in this case I think the literally translated word âpearlâ is not very helpful. Hope is soon back on form with her word choices, however, in subsequent poems: some distant bells sound âmuffled behind an absent-minded veilâ; we learn of that day when âexasperated swallows squawkedâ; addressing the carter, âtrudging softly through nightfallâ in order to deliver winter fuel , the poet realises that âlater you slept cradled on your coalâ.
The poem âChitchatâ returns to the railway and a level-crossing where a group of waiting women chatter
of thises, thats, the one who could be
so-and soâs twin, ghastly wine that costs
and arm ...
And all this goes on while âblackened carriages rattle past / right before their indifferent eyesâ.
âShe calls youâ is a poem made (too?) complicated by being built around a parenthetical statement which covers seven and a half of the ten lines! It ends however on an evocative image of parents of troublesome children who, when âpraying together, / stifle their heartaches under the sheetsâ.
After this fairly thorough run-through of poems from âThe Last Walkâ we come to the longer, and perhaps innocuous-sounding, poem âThe Dapple Mareâ. This relates to a grim incident in Pascoliâs childhood â the murder of his father! He had left home in his horse and carriage and subsequently encountered some kind of ambush. Thus it was that the same horse and carriage later returned to the house carrying its dead or dying owner. The poem largely consists of Pascoliâs mother talking to the horse some time after this tragic event.
you felt the bit go limp in your mouth
and yet you pressed on in flight
slowly and more slowly tracked home
to make his dying more peaceful.
The narrative continues as a sort of whodunit in which the mother pleads with the horse
You saw the murderer:
his face is fixed behind your stare.
Who is it? Who is he? Iâll say a name,
you give me a sign. May God teach you how.
Pascoliâs poem was used as the basis of a 1953 film Cavallina Storna in which the horse actually avenges its masterâs fate. It is to Danielle Hopeâs credit that she renders this rather melodramatic piece into measured but quietly moving English. Indeed my reading and re-reading of the whole book confirms my feeling that she has worked painstakingly but unobtrusively to do justice to Pascoliâs work while causing it to fall quite naturally on English ears. Congratulations too to Rockingham Press for this well-made volume with its colourful artwork by Frances Wilson.
London Grip Poetry Review – Danielle Hope
September 11, 2019 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • authors, books, poetry reviews, year 2019 • Tags: authors, books, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, poetry • 0 Comments
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs finds that Danielle Hopeâs translations provide a very accessible introduction to Giovanni Pascoliâs poetry
For those who know little or nothing about the Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) this book begins with two very helpful biographical sketches â one by Danielle Hope herself and the other by Franco Toscani. This bilingual edition features all sixteen poems from the sequence âThe Last Walkâ and the collection is rounded out by a couple of extra poems, of which âThe Dapple Mareâ is by far the more interesting (and will be discussed later).
Fifteen of the poems in âThe Last Walkâ are ten-liners while the sixteenth has twelve lines. All the poems offer evocative snapshots of scenes or people or places observed during a stroll in the countryside. The same form is used for the first fifteen: a pair of three-line stanzas followed by a quatrain. In the originals there is a strong rhyming scheme: ABA CBC DE DE (and for the record the sixteenth poem adds an extra couplet with rhyme scheme EE). Since rhyming is so much easier in Italian than in English, Hope does not attempt to imitate this aspect of Pascoliâs work and â at best â makes do with half-rhymes.
Given my rather limited knowledge of Italian I do not expect to be able to say much about the accuracy or sensitivity of Hopeâs translations and for the most part I will take her versions at face value and comment on them as pastoral poems written in English. Letâs take the first poem âArano / Ploughingâ as a more detailed case study, however, and see what I can manage to uncover about the relationships between Pascoliâs words and Hopeâs. It will be helpful to quote the middle verse in its English form:
Hope has succeeded in enhancing Pascoliâs repetition of âlente / slowâ and gained a pleasing effect of alliteration and assonance by choosing âcallsâ to match the word âcowsâ. Hope also scores points for picking the unexpected verb âthwacksâ rather than the more obvious rendering of âribatteâ as âbeatsâ. I very much like the âpatient hoeâ â and that is something Pascoli himself can take the credit for. Hopeâs inventiveness selects an even more unusual word in the final verse when a robinâs song âchinkles like gold coins in the hedgesâ; and in the first stanza she chooses a suitably soft-sounding word to replace the more literal and spiky âthicketâ when she tells us that âdawn fog / rises like smoke from the brushwoodâ.
In this first poem we can already see the main ingredients of all the others â an element of scene-setting description followed by the appearance (in varying order and with varying importance) of people and/or animals and/or birds. The cumulative effect of reading the sequence is indeed rather like the experience of recalling particular momentary observations made during a country walk (and why is it that certain specific points on a journey can leave a very clear impression while most of the sights and sounds coalesce into a generalised blur?)
For the rest of the poems I shall not even attempt the mild dissection of Hopeâs translation that I performed with respect to âPloughingâ. Instead I shall simply make comments on some of the English versions which, for one reason or another, particularly stood out for me. It should be assumed however that Hopeâs skilfully creative interpretations of Pascoliâs text are in evidence throughout the sequence.
âFrom Aboveâ describes a skylarkâs view of a landscape in which I particularly like the reference to a manor house that âspools out smokeâ. I am not sure however that I really believe Pascoliâs simile which Hope renders as âclumps of turf / glow as bright as sunshine in a mirrorâ. From where I usually stand, turf seems pretty light absorbing!
âHensâ presents a useful lesson on living in the present. A housewife â âunlike us glum foolsâ (which presumably refers to the too-cerebral attitude of poets) â is made content when she âhears the sound of her useful hensâ cluckingâ and reflects that her household is well-resourced. But I find an interesting ambiguity when the last verse says âgirls with wistful eyes croon dittiesâ. This echoes the earlier mention of useful hens and, for me, brings back a childhood memory of the gentle and questioning noises that chickens make to themselves as they potter round the yard. But does the poet actually mean us to picture chickens again? Or is he now describing the household servant girls at their work?
While the overall tone of the poems is timelessly rural, âThe Iron Roadâ acknowledges the intrusions that railways made into the countryside during Pascoliâs life. The track âstretches away in a straight / burnt-brown stripeâ and alongside it âtelegraph poles stilt in the pearl airâ. I rather like the use of âstiltâ as a verb; but in this case I think the literally translated word âpearlâ is not very helpful. Hope is soon back on form with her word choices, however, in subsequent poems: some distant bells sound âmuffled behind an absent-minded veilâ; we learn of that day when âexasperated swallows squawkedâ; addressing the carter, âtrudging softly through nightfallâ in order to deliver winter fuel , the poet realises that âlater you slept cradled on your coalâ.
The poem âChitchatâ returns to the railway and a level-crossing where a group of waiting women chatter
And all this goes on while âblackened carriages rattle past / right before their indifferent eyesâ.
âShe calls youâ is a poem made (too?) complicated by being built around a parenthetical statement which covers seven and a half of the ten lines! It ends however on an evocative image of parents of troublesome children who, when âpraying together, / stifle their heartaches under the sheetsâ.
After this fairly thorough run-through of poems from âThe Last Walkâ we come to the longer, and perhaps innocuous-sounding, poem âThe Dapple Mareâ. This relates to a grim incident in Pascoliâs childhood â the murder of his father! He had left home in his horse and carriage and subsequently encountered some kind of ambush. Thus it was that the same horse and carriage later returned to the house carrying its dead or dying owner. The poem largely consists of Pascoliâs mother talking to the horse some time after this tragic event.
The narrative continues as a sort of whodunit in which the mother pleads with the horse
Pascoliâs poem was used as the basis of a 1953 film Cavallina Storna in which the horse actually avenges its masterâs fate. It is to Danielle Hopeâs credit that she renders this rather melodramatic piece into measured but quietly moving English. Indeed my reading and re-reading of the whole book confirms my feeling that she has worked painstakingly but unobtrusively to do justice to Pascoliâs work while causing it to fall quite naturally on English ears. Congratulations too to Rockingham Press for this well-made volume with its colourful artwork by Frances Wilson.