Goliarda Sapienza, born on May 10, 1924, would have been 100 years old last month, but remains ever young, spirited, and determined to win the hearts of her readers. A plaque on the façade of a building at 20 Via Pistone in Catania, where Goliarda lived on the second floor, reads: “Questa casa, la strada, i vicoli, Catania, la terra di Sicilia hanno nutrito il genio narrativo di Goliarda Sapienza” (This house, the street, the passageways, Catania, the land of Sicily nurtured the narrative genius of Goliarda Sapienza.)
I owe L’arte della gioia primarily to Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Though the translation was actually commissioned by Alexis Kirschbaum at Penguin UK, Galassi had been interested in it for some time, thanks to a scout who warmly promoted it to him. In an interview he explained: “I actually have a scout in Italy. It’s the only country where we have a scout. She’s a really smart woman named Caterina Zaccaroni. I don’t necessarily hear about the books from her, but I’ll say to her, ‘What about this one? What about that one?’ and she has opinions about them. She saves me a lot of work. And she has books that she pushes on me herself—books that she has decided are important. There’s one book that she’s been trying to get me to publish for several years now, and I may just cave in and do it because she’s so passionate about it” (Published on Poets & Writers Agents & Editors: A Q&A With Jonathan Galassi). The translation was ultimately published by Penguin UK and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2013.
At the time I submitted my translation I sent a cover note to my editor, outlining some of the strategies I followed. In particular, since she had read the book in French, I wanted to point out some comparisons with the French translation (L’Art de la joie, translated by Nathalie Castagné and published by Viviane Hamy, 2005):
- dialect – the French doesn’t keep much of it – I felt it was important to keep the Sicilian for essential flavor, and to show the relationships, formal and informal, between characters;
- shifts between first and third persons – the French seems to follow the original shifts, as did I for the most part;
- syntax – the French follows the Italian closely (not surprising since the structures are so similar) – I, of course, used English syntax, though to render the feel of the Sicilian phrasing – the framing as well as the rhythms – I sometimes resorted to “Englished” Sicilian syntax – as with the use of dialect words, I wanted to evoke mood or setting;
- nicknames – the French translates them – e.g. Cavallina becomes ‘Pouliche’ and Argentovivo, ‘Vif-argent’ – I chose to keep the Italian;
- footnotes – the French added a number of them – I preferred a Translator’s Note as less disruptive – more of an afterword which readers can consult or not.
One of the most striking quirks of the novel is the way the voice alternates from the first to the third person, sometimes even within the space of the same sentence. For example, this passage on p. 18 shifts from the first, to the third, then back to the first person:
Before, I was a child, but now I’m a woman, and I have to be careful: he’s already moving. I have to get away. But where? It’s dark outside. The toilet? All I had to do was turn the key and take refuge in Mama’s arms. But no sound came from that door, plus Mama had never hugged me; she only hugged Tina. Even now, pressing an ear to the wood, I could hear them sleeping in each other’s arms. I could hear Tina’s heavy breathing and Mama’s lighter breath, just like every night in the big bed: me at the foot of the bed and those two clasped together up there. No, she [Modesta] wouldn’t open the door; she just wanted to know if even there on the floor they were hugging. Maybe she could see through the cracks with the lamp. Nothing, you couldn’t see anything … I have to wake them up, I have to wake them with the lamplight …
One reviewer (Lauren Elkin in The Daily Beast) suggested: “This shifting makes sense if we understand it as a kind of splitting, a symptom of the trauma Modesta experiences within the early pages of the novel,” referring to the transformation of physical pleasure following rape. She notes that “the result is an almost Cubist-like depiction of the different sides of Modesta, as she sees herself and as the world sees her, and as she thinks the world sees her.”
For me, translating this book, in which dialect plays such an integral role, was a continuation of my ongoing nurturing of my Sicilian roots. From the time I first visited Sicily, slept in the room where my maternal nonna Biagina did as a girl, and delighted in the fragrance of jasmine wafting from the terrazza outside her window, Sicily, its scents, flavors, rituals and ways have been formative. So it was not surprising that one of the first choices I made when I began translating the book, was to leave as much of the dialect in there as I could without rendering the text illegible to English readers. Footnotes were not an option, there would be too many of them cluttering up the pages and the reader’s attention, so I resorted to brief descriptions in apposition or relied on the context to convey the meaning.
The comments that comprise the Translator’s Note, “In Modesta’s World,” are an entirely different type of aside, providing background or other information. For example, on p. 110 we find the first occurrence of the term gabellotto: ‘No, the gabellotto, the estate manager.* Don’t you see the shotgun he’s carrying?’ The asterisk alerts the reader to a note in the afterword (p. 673) that reads:
The gabellotto was a figure somewhere between an administrator and an overseer, a man of considerable authority and power, quite different from a gardener or an armed guard (il campiere) of an estate. The gabellotto always carried his shotgun (lo schioppo) with him, a symbol not only of authority, but also of distinction. The campieri constituted a kind of private police force for the feudal estate and reported directly to the gabellotto and indirectly to the latifondista, or feudal landowner. These armed field guards and the sovrastanti or soprastanti, the gabellotto’s trusted men, are mentioned throughout the book. According to information provided in Storie di Sicilia di Fara Misuraca: I Fasci Siciliani, the figure of the gabellotto dates back to the nineteenth century, when the Sicilian aristocracy began moving away from the interior to the city of Palermo, leaving their lands in the care of tenants, who paid a tax, a gabella, and were therefore called gabellotti. The gabella trade in west-central Sicily was largely controlled and run by mafia organizations, and many gabellotti were affiliated with these organizations, as were the aforementioned soprastanti and campieri. The gabellotti, in turn, would sublet the lands to the contadini, peasants, for a fee much higher than the gabella which they were required to pay to the landowners. During periods of work, braccianti, farm hands or labourers, offered themselves each morning in the piazzas of their villages, hoping to be hired by the feuds’ campieri or soprastanti. (http://www.ilportaledelsud.org/fasci_siciliani.htm)
The asterisk was the result of some lengthy debate during the editing process. The issue was a thorny one – how would the reader know the explanations were there? In the end Penguin decided to use an asterisk in the text to show where a word is referenced in the afterword. Though far from a perfect solution, it was a compromise between the off-putting effect of footnotes and the need to indicate where a word or term is explained. A brief notification was placed at the beginning of the book to account for the unusual presence of the markers within the text.
One of the great satisfactions of translating the book was coming to know Goliarda herself as an incarnation of her creation, Modesta, who in turn embodies the title’s art of joy. A girl who early on comes to know joy and sorrow, Modesta is raised in a convent of nuns, then in a noble household ruled by a powerful elderly lady. The result of growing up in a tradition-bound world slowly slouching toward modernity is a fiercely independent woman, determined to be the author of her own destiny and not surrender to prejudices of what a woman should or shouldn’t do or be. Much like Goliarda.
In a letter to another independent woman, Luce D’Eramo, written in Rome, April 5, 1979 (Lettere e biglietti, La nave di Teseo, 2021), Goliarda expresses her admiration for D’Eramo’s Deviazione (Deviation, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018; my translation): “Every line of your Deviazione is art…. And, as we know, a work of art is only such when it becomes a mirror of the time of someone who was able to experience it. As Italy changes around her, Goliarda and Modesta are mirrors of their time; both retain a powerful thirst for life, relying on arrangiarsi, the ability to get by, as they intensely savor every experience life throws at them.
In his Preface to The Art of Joy, Angelo Pellegrino, Goliarda’s husband and curator, suggests that “the countless characters in The Art of Joy are Goliarda herself manifested in numerous offspring, Modesta first of all.” He reinforces this in a later preface to Lettere e biglietti, suggesting that the “voice” in The Art of Joy is that of Goliarda’s fictional alter ego, Modesta. Though the book was initially passed over in silence, Pellegrino firmly believed that over time critics would end up confirming that Modesta is one of the most vivid female protagonists in twentieth century literature. I would say that time has been proving him right.