Journal of Italian Translation

Rina Ferrarelli/Raffaele Carrieri
doppio, sometimes like an ancestral other he’s inherited, but a soldier, street
vendor, ditch digger, ragpicker, rope maker, tax collector, emigrant. At
times, he even identifies with the inanimate. The adolescent search for
identity is given body, substance, voice. And all the personae have something
in common but are also different.
In translating his work, the challenge was in creating a voice that
sounded like the Carrieri in my head: restless, homeless, lonely, in danger.
A man who often looks over his shoulder, and narrowly escapes;
who comes face to face with death and is seriously wounded, his wounded,
damaged hand giving him yet another identity. But also a weary man of
no age, or even old, who expects nothing, wants nothing. The challenge
was to create this voice, but also to preserve the variation in tone from
poem to poem, the simplicity or complexity of narrative, the muted music.
It was important to keep the poems’ slim, hungry look. Their short
takes and sharp images. Their impatient, hurried runs. I decided against
“cerulean,” the cognate of “céruli” because its four syllables are too long
for the line, and it’s not a word sdrúcciola as the original. Also, the shade
and connotations are slightly different in English. I kept the focus on the
one poignant image— “The bowl of milk/Filling with darkness”; “ . . . the
shoes/That watched like dogs,” or scattered it through the verses, preserving
the unpredictable quality of his collages. In poems such as these,
there is no room to move. Like the poet, I put my trust in the image.
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