Modern Italian Poets

In 1948, the poet Eugenio Montale published his Quaderno di traduzioni and created an entirely new Italian literary genre, the “translation notebook.” The quaderni were the work of some of Italy’s foremost poets, and their translation anthologies proved fundamental for their aesthetic and cultural development. Modern Italian Poets shows how the new genre shaped the poetic practice of the poet-translators who worked within it, including Giorgio Caproni, Giovanni Giudici, Edoardo Sanguineti, Franco Buffoni, and Nobel Prize-winner Eugenio Montale, displaying how the poet-translators used the quaderni to hone their poetic techniques, experiment with new poetic metres, and develop new theories of poetics. In addition to detailed analyses of the work of these five authors, the book covers the development of the quaderno di traduzioni and its relationship to Western theories of translation, such as those of Walter Benjamin and Benedetto Croce. In an appendix, Modern Italian Poets also provides the first complete list of all translations and quaderni di traduzioni published by more than 150 Italian poet-translators.

Focusing on the most recent triad of Italian poetic genius—Umberto Saba, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and Eugenio Montale—Joseph Cary not only presents striking biographical portraits as he facilitates our understanding of their poetry; he also guides us through the first few decades of twentieth-century Italy, a most difficult period in its literary and cultural development.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1871, but his literary reputation really took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which describes the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur in the paint business. His social views were also strongly reflected in the novels Annie Kilburn (1888) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). While known primarily as a novelist, his short story "Editha" (1905) - included in the collection Between the Dark and the Daylight (1907) - appears in many anthologies of American literature. Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Ibsen, Zola, Verga, and, especially, Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of many American writers. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence.

Italian poetry of the last century is far from homogeneous: genres and movements have often been at odds with one another, engaging the economic, political, and social tensions of post-Unification Italy. The thirty-eight poets included in this anthology, some of whose poems are translated here for the first time, represent this literary diversity and competition: there are symbolists (Gabriele D'Annunzio), free-verse satirists (Gian Pietro Lucini), hermetic poets (Salvatore Quasimodo), feminist poets (Sibilla Aleramo), twilight poets (Sergio Corazzini), fragmentists (Camillo Sbarbaro), new lyricists (Eugenio Montale), neo-avant-gardists (Alfredo Giuliani), and neorealists (Pier Paolo Pasolini)—among many others.

Excerpt from Modern Italian Poets: Essays and Versions Possibly I should not offer my book to the public at all if I knew of another work in English studv ing even with my incoherence the Italian poetry of the time mentioned, or giving a due impression of its extraordinary solidarity. It forms part of the great intellectual movement of which the most unmistakable signs were the French revolution, and its numerous brood of revolutions, Of the first, second, and third generations, throughout Europe but this poetry is unique in the history of litera ture for the unswerving singleness of its tendency. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Payne pays particular attention to poets of the fifties and sixties, futurists, and female poets. She notes that the futurists, who have rarely been translated, were particularly important as they were truly original, attempting to develop new notions of word, line, sound, and phrase. Such new notions make translating them particularly challenging. She also offers a large sampling from poets of the fifties and sixties, many of whom have won the Viareggio Prize. Poems by women in this volume reflect diverse schools and directions while maintaining a distinctly female voice.

Discover the unique voices of modern Italian poetry through the lens of William Dean Howells. This seminal work explores the evolution of style in 19th-century Italian poetry, illuminating the contributions of poets both famous and obscure. Lovers of literature and international studies students will appreciate this detailed look at an oft-overlooked aspect of Italian culture. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.