Journal of Italian Translation

English Translations of Poems by
Raffaele Carrieri and Italian Translation of Poems by the
Translator
di Rina Ferrarelli
Rina Ferrarelli taught English and translation theory at the University
of Pittsburgh for many years. She has published a chapbook and a
book of original poetry, Dreamsearch (malafemmina, 1992) and Home is a
Foreign Country (Eadmer, 1996) respectively, and two collections of translation,
Light Without Motion (Owl Creek Press, 1989), poesie-racconti of
Giorgio Chiesura, which received the Italo Calvino Prize from the Columbia
University Translation Center; and I Saw the Muses (Guernica, 1997),
lyrics from the Italian of Leonardo Sinisgalli, which was mentioned as one
of five “outstanding” finalists in the Landon Translation Prize. She was
also awarded an NEA in translation. Winter Fragments: Selected Poems of
Bartolo Cattafi is being published in the spring by Chelsea Editions.
Raffaele Carrieri (1905-1984) was born in Taranto, and lived a vagabond
life in his teens and early twenties. He quit school at 14 and sailed to
Albania, from where he went first to Montenegro and then to Fiume to
fight with D’Annunzio. He was only 15 when he was wounded, a serious
injury to his left hand. He went back to Taranto, but after a brief stay, he
sailed again around the Mediterranean visiting various ports including
those along the coast of Africa. He worked at many jobs to support himself,
and on his return to Italy, worked as tax collector for two years. It
was during these two years that he started writing poetry, the poems that
were collected in Lamento del gabelliere (1945). In 1923 he went to Paris
where he lived for several years among the poets and painters of the time,
and where he started writing articles about his travels. He settled for good
in Milan 1930, and worked as art critic. In addition to several books of
poetry, some of which won awards, including the Premio Viareggio, he
wrote many books of art criticism, and biographies and studies of poets,
sculptors and painters. Some of his other collections are La civetta (1949),
Il trovatore (1953), Canzoniere amoroso (1958), La giornata è finita (1963), Io
sono cicala (1967) and Le ombre dispettose (1974) among others.
Translating Carrieri
In the poems that I translated Carrieri uses many of his briefly inhabited
identities as masks, creating a multiplicity of selves: not only a