Reading Stevens in Italian

This article was commissioned by Bart Eeckhout of the University of Antwerp for a survey of Wallace Stevens’s reception in Europe. It provides an account of Italian translations of Stevens over half a century, Italian having been one of the first languages in which Stevens was translated. (An important selection by the Harvard comparatist Renato Poggioli was issued during the poet’s lifetime). These translations are used as guides to changing approaches and strategies when dealing with a major American Modernist. Translations are shown to be extremely useful tools in determining the uniqueness of a writer’s style, his peculiar syntax and even neologisms, often unremarked by native speakers. A notable instance was discussed by Bacigalupo in an earlier paper, “Wallace Strevens and the Firecat” (Wallace Stevens Journal 21.1, 1997: 94-98; see also Bacigalupo, “Stevens, Poggioli and the Making of ‘Mattino domenicale’”, ibid., 25.2, 2001: 254-70). The present paper is principally concerned with the later poems and considers, besides examples from the main Italian translations, a recent version of Stevens in French.