Journal of Italian Translation

Giovanni Raboni
The more I have read, thought about, and translated the poetry of
Giovanni Raboni, the more convinced have I become that he is
one of the great poets, and perhaps the single greatest Italian
poet, of our time. This judgment was confirmed by Mondadori’s decision to
include him in its Meridiani series of standard Italian writers while he was
still alive, a fact about which he seemed a bit shy but justifiably quite proud,
when I met with him for the second (and last) time in Milan in February
2004—although, sadly, he did not live to see its realization.
W. H. Auden, the English-language writer that in some ways Raboni
most resembles, famously set out five criteria for a major poet, which can be
summarized here as copiousness, “wide range in subject matter and treatment,”
“originality of vision and style,” mastery of technique, and development.
Raboni, I believe, more than fulfills all of these expectations, and it is
this depth and variety in his work that I have tried to communicate, both in
the book-length selection I am preparing and in the cross-section of that
manuscript presented here.
From the terse lyrics of his earliest phase to the experiments with widely
varying line lengths and mixtures of colloquial and arcane diction, from the
scores of sonnets written in his forties and fifties (a trend toward formalism
that reversed the movement of so many of his American contemporaries) to
the reminiscent poems of his last collection (itself reminiscent of Lowell’s
Day by Day), his work is a rich blend of constancy and change. In keeping
pace with it, I have tried also to keep pace with the smaller effects on which
the larger ones often depend—not just the hendecasyllabic undercarriage
and the rhymes (where they occur), but also the parallelisms, the alliteration,
the abrupt tonal shifts, the restless enjambment that characterizes so many
of the sonnets, and so on.
Technique, of course, is merely a means to an end, and it is the ends
that I have tried most to reflect—the striking and often quirky angle of insight
peculiar to his vision (and now and then simply peculiar); the passionate
moral, social, and political concern; the preoccupation, at times almost an
obsession, with illness and death; the tenderness of late love. These are the
things that impress us most forcefully and remain with us most deeply as we
watch Raboni bear witness to the private pains and joys of his life and to the
public shames and outrages of his times.