Journal of Italian Translation

Classics Revisited
English Translation of Ugo Foscolo’s “Le Grazie” /
Traduzione inglese di “Le Grazie” di Ugo Foscolo
by Joseph Tusiani
Joseph Tusiani, professor emeritus, Lehman College, City University
of New York, came to the US in 1947, when he was 23. Naturalized in 1956,
he is the translator of classics of Italian of poetry into English verse, and a
poet in his own right. The great bulk of his translations includes
Michelangelo’s Complete Poems, Boccaccio’s Nymphs of Fiesole, Luigi Pulci’s
Morgante, all of Machiavelli’s verses, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered and Creation
of the World, Leopardi’s Canti. He is the author of collections of verse in
English (Rind and All, 1962; The Fifth Season, 1964; Gente Mia and Other Poems,
1978; Collected Poems 1983-2004, 2004), in Latin (Carmina latina, 1994; Carmina
latina II, 1998), in Italian (among others, Il ritorno, 1992), and in his Gargano
dialect (sixteen titles between 1955 and 2004), and of an autobiography in
three volumes, La parola difficile (1988), La parola nuova (1991), La parola antica
(1992).
Note on Translation
Of the two hundred and more Italian poets I rendered into English, no
one posed problems that no translator - so I thought - would ever solve. Pulci,
Michelangelo, Tasso, and Leopardi seemed at first so untranslatable to me
that even the most felicitous approximation would diminish them. Ugo
Foscolo’s case is unique in that Le Grazie is the most polished and elegant
Italian poem written in blank verse. Its haunting musicality, in which the
subtly shifting dactyls and spondees recreate the magic of the Homeric hexameter,
is at times so ethereal, so rarefied, so hypnotic as to make the boldest
translator utterly afraid of any attempt at a possible rendering of its enchantment.
Lines such as “il vel fuggente biancheggiar fra i mirti,” “scoppian
dall’inquiete aeree fila, quasi raggi di sol rotti dal nembo,” and “agile come
in cielo Ebe succinta” present no syntactical obscurity but are so charged
with inner grace and melody as to defy description. Yet it is this grace and
melody that (hoc est in votis) must be maintained if we want to keep Foscolo’s
poem as pure and singular as it is. Le Grazie has also been compared to a
spellbinding tapestry with a texture of multicolored threads woven by goddesses’
hands. One thing is certain: no other Italian poem is as intimate and
astonishing, as fluent and echoing.
Translator’s Note: I have based this verse translation of Ugo Foscolo’s Le
Grazie on the edition by Mario Puppo: Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis e Poesie
(Milan: Mursïa, 1965). This translation first appeared in Canadian Journal of
Italian Studies: «Hymn One. Venus», Vol. 5, 1-2, Fall-Winter 1981-1982, pp.
101-8; «Hymn Two. Vesta», Vol. 5, 3, Spring 1982, pp. 211-21; «Hymn Three.
Pallas», Vol. 6, N. 4/Vol. 7, N. 1, 1983, pp. 183-88.