Tag Archives: Elena Borelli

A Mythographer of Modernity: Giovanni Pascoli’s “Convivial Poems,” Translated from Italian by James Ackhurst and Elena Borelli

Borelli and Ackhurst are faced with the daunting assignment of translating Pascoli’s somewhat paradoxical modernist classicism, written in a literary language that is both simple and sophisticated, archaicizing, and yet fresh and innovative. They succeed admirably in their task, adopting a thoughtful translation strategy that successfully delivers Pascoli’s poetic idiom in all its musical crispness and evocative force.

Translating Silence: Giuseppe Ungaretti’s “Allegria,” translated from Italian by Geoffrey Brock

By Elena Borelli When translating Giuseppe Ungaretti’s first volume of poetry, originally published in 1919 and subsequently reissued in various editions, Geoffrey Brock has chosen to leave the title in the original Italian. The  translation of the word allegria as “merriment” or “mirth” would be misleading for the reader, especially because in the very first […]

Translating the Uncanny: The Eerie Landscape of Giovanni Pascoli’s “Last Dream,” Translated from Italian by Geoff Brock

By Elena Borelli Last Dream is a collection of translations from Giovanni Pascoli’s corpus of poetic works. The choice of poems reflects a personal preference on the part of the translator who handpicked a number of works mostly taken from what he interprets as the pastoral, almost Arcadian side of the Italian poet’s production: lyrics […]