After the publication of the poetry anthology In rima e senza in 1982 (Mondadori), Italian bookstores had to wait until 2021 to see Giorgio Bassani’s Poesie complete (edited by Anna Dolfi, Feltrinelli), giving deserved attention to his lyrical writing, to which he felt even more connected than to his prose. In the pages of his early stories, his poems, his novels, as well as in his speeches as president of Italia Nostra and in his critical essays, Bassani repeatedly addresses the tension between his natural bond with his homeland and the rupture caused by the violence of historical events. From this fracture emerges a sense of absence, a feeling of disenchantment to which the writer responds by expressing himself through characters, or in a more intimate way, through poetry. According to the writer, “poets always express themselves through what they do, through verses, novels, plays” (Opere, 1347); anyone who expresses themselves deeply is a poet. Bassani places himself beyond distinctions of literary genres, emphasizing the identity of writing as a creative act independent of form: “in the end, I never change my pen. I don’t have one pen for prose, another for poetry, another for critical essays, and another for letters. It’s always me” (Stelio Cro, 126).
The goal of this new translation of the entire corpus of his poetry in English, The Collected Poems, as aptly specified by the two editors in their Translators’ Note, “is to give readers access to the distinctly contrasting styles of poetry that he wrote early and late in life, and to allow readers of Bassani’s fiction to place his prose oeuvre within the framing publications of the early and late collections of poems” (19). In fact, the editors review the chronology of Bassani’s works, noting that his poetry books regularly precede his narrative works: the collections Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi (1945 and 1946), Te lucis ante (1947), and Un’altra libertà (1951) served as the poetic groundwork for Five Stories of Ferrara (1956), The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles (1958), and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962). In 1963, the collection L’alba ai vetri. Poesie 1942-’50 was published, preceding his novels Behind the Door (1964), The Heron (1968), and The Smell of Hay (1972). The last two poetry books, Epitaffio (1974) and In gran segreto (1978), marked the beginning of a definitive stylistic reorganization of Bassani’s work–both in his prose, with The Novel of Ferrara in 1980, and in his poetry, with the anthology In rima e senza in 1982.
The publication of Giorgio Bassani’s Collected Poems in English translation in the United States is a significant event that seals the deep connection the writer from Ferrara had with North America. From 1966 to 1987, Bassani regularly traveled across the Atlantic for book releases, teaching periods at universities in New England, Indiana, California, and Ontario, and various lectures across Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, and Quebec. He also visited as a promoter of photography exhibitions for Italia Nostra, the association dedicated to preserving Italy’s historical, artistic, and natural heritage, for which he served as president.
In North America, Bassani was esteemed and well-known, involved in publishing and journalistic circles as a key reference for both European and American literary culture—reflected in his works—and for the recent history of racial segregation and dictatorships. His insights remain relevant today, as the editors emphasize in their introduction: “Giorgio Bassani’s work in poetry exemplifies an unusually sustained and varied trust in the expressive capacities of distinctive modes for composing verse. In doing so, it tests and extends poetry’s ability to encapsulate lived moments and remembered conditions of both individual and collective lives” (35). The publication of The Collected Poems, with excellent translations and critical apparatus by Roberta Antognini and Peter Robinson, represents, alongside Norton’s 2018 edition of The Novel of Ferrara translated by Jamie McKendrick, the culmination of Bassani’s work now available to the English-speaking public.
In North America, Bassani’s poems have been translated since 1950, beginning with the anthology edited by Marguerite Caetani (An Anthology of New Italian Writers, New Directions). Subsequently, his poetry continued to appear in various publications: in 1975 a few poems are translated by David Rosenthal; in 1977 and 1978 two volumes of «The Canadian Journal of Italian Studies», directed by Stelio Cro, were dedicated to him as special issues. In 1982 an anthology of Bassani’s poetry of the Seventies translated by Francesca Valente, Rolls Royce and Other Poems, was published by Aya Press in Toronto, with an introduction by Northrop Frye. Additionally, in 1984, Italian Culture, the journal of the American Association for Italian Studies, featured some of his poems translated by Mark Musa, along with critical essays on his narrative work. These various translations and studies reflect the growing interest in Giorgio Bassani’s poetry even as he gained recognition in North America primarily as a prose writer.
But poetry always presents a challenge for translators, and capturing in another language the subtlety of Bassani’s early verses–the deep, somber lines of the immediate postwar period–is as complex as rendering the disenchanted self-irony and sense of derision in his later poetic period of the 1970s. The fortunate collaboration between Roberta Antognini, a skilled philologist and scholar of Bassani’s own translations from English to Italian, and Peter Robinson, a British academic and poet himself, has resulted in In Rhyme and Without evoking an atmosphere true to that of the original Italian. The parallel text allows readers to appreciate the quality of these translations, which stems not only from the translators’ linguistic skills but also from their dedicated focus on refined writing that embodies a cultivated literary sensibility, in line with the tenets of Ars Poetica, as in this poem: “E non resti di me che un grido, un grido lento / senza parole. Nessuna mai parola: ché premio / m’eri, o frana celeste ed intima, tu sola. / Nel cielo senza tremito, quest’onda, questo accento…” (Ars Poetica, from Storie dei poveri amanti).
Reading the translation, we can see that while a language conversion inevitably involves a silent interpretation of the text, in this case, it does not take the form of an expansion or a commentary explaining the verses. Instead, it resembles more a mirror reflecting the original’s intensity and harmony: “And let nothing remain of me but a cry, no word / but a slow cry. Never a single word more: since reward / to me you were, o celestial and intimate flood, you alone. / In the sky without a tremor, this wave, this tone…” (111). The translation process consistently followed in this volume offers an experience of engaging with the original text, not merely transforming it into another language, but recreating it through the translators’ immersion in the unique poetics of each poem.
In addition to the “Foreword” by Paola Bassani, president of the Giorgio Bassani Foundation which co-sponsored with Vassar College the publication of the volume, The Collected Poems includes photographs of the writer with lifelong friends (such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Niccolò Gallo, and Mario Soldati), original covers of his poetry collections, and manuscript pages that reveal his creative process. The Chronology provided by the editors gives readers a clear view of Bassani’s life, highlighting key events and collaborations, from his involvement in the antifascist movement to his editorial work, cinematic partnerships, and travels abroad. The volume concludes with the addition of the Postscriptum that Bassani placed at the end of L’alba ai vetri, which serves as a testament to his poetics. Detailed notes on many of the poems offer insights into its composition and essential contextual information, along with a critical bibliography. The publication of Bassani’s Collected Poems by Agincourt Press is a significant literary event. Not only does it bring the writer’s lifelong poetry to a place he cherished and visited frequently, but it also provides a comprehensive image of the writer in a language he himself translated.
Bassani, Giorgio. The Collected Poems. Translated with an introduction and notes by Roberta Antognini and Peter Robinson. Agincourt Press, 2023.
Valerio Cappozzo is an Associate Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Mississippi, a member of the scientific committee of the Giorgio Bassani Foundation, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal Annali d’Italianistica. His recent publications include Dizionario dei Sogni nel Medioevo (Olschki, 2018); Dal particolare all’universale: I libri di poesia di Giorgio Bassani (Giorgio Pozzi, 2020); A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy: The Life of Clare of Rimini (co-authored with Jacques Dalarun and Sean Field, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023); and Giorgio Bassani poète (Cahiers de l’Hôtel de Galliffet, 2024). His forthcoming monograph on Bassani’s journeys to North America will be published by Olschki in 2025.
Works Cited
Bassani, Giorgio. Opere, Mondadori, 1998, 1347
Cro, Stelio. Interview with Bassani, in Lezioni americane di Giorgio Bassani, edited by Valerio Cappozzo, Giorgio Pozzi Editore, 2016, 125-134