Journal of Italian Translation

26 Journal of Italian Translation
nal” segment (vv. 6-13) describing the “sommersi” that the poem’s survivor
“persona” will soon address. By then admonishing the “gente sommersa”
in verses 14-20, this persona ostensibly places himself in the diametrically
opposed category of the “salvati,” who must defensively account for their
survival to both the “sommersi”—the audience to which the quoted segment
is addressed—and to the poem’s broader audience of outsiders who, privy
to both sides of the dialogue, are placed in the position of judge. As such, the
author sets up a seemingly neat distinction between survivors and their
dead companions, complete with an implied dialogue within the survivor
persona’s monologue that presents both points of view: “ ‘Indietro, via di
qui, gente sommersa,/ Andate. Non ho soppiantato nessuno,/ Non ho
usurpato il pane di nessuno,/ Nessuno è morto in vece mia. Nessuno./
Ritornate alla vostra nebbia./ Non è mia colpa se vivo e respiro/ E mangio e
bevo e dormo e vesto panni’ “ (vvs. 14-20).
This segment, enclosed entirely in quotation marks, is characterized by
a repetition of negative clauses containing “Non” and “Nessuno.” Not only
is this negational structure an example of Freud’s affirming negations, 7 but
its repetitive cadence constitutes, in microcosmic form, the sort of traumatic
repetition that Levi’s use of Coleridge’s “Rime” and his testimonial work
represent on more global levels. 8 It is precisely this combination of repetition
and negation that aids Levi in portraying the dialogue within a monologue
between the two parts of a divided survivor self. The affirming negations, in
this context, have the striking effect of validating the accusations of the
“sommersi,” even while presenting the “salvati”’s opposing—and seemingly
dominant—point of view. Furthermore, the rhetorical strategy of redundancy
suggests that this implicit “dialogue” is a repeating one that the
surviving subject must enact over and over again. In the recent opinion of
Giorgio Agamben, Levi’s poem is indicative of his refusal to accept “fino in
fondo le conseguenze” of individual survivor guilt, and its poetic persona
representative of one who “lotta tenacemente contro di esso” (83).
But Levi makes two significant changes to Coleridge’s original in his
own loose translation (vv. 4-5) that displace him with regard to this neatly
divided dichotomy of the “drowned” and the “saved.” This transitional
segment that bridges the two introductory verses of faithful translation and
the original verses beginning at v. 6 in effect creates a space of many ambiguities:
between faithful and unfaithful translation, between the giving and the
receiving of testimony, between survival and death. First, the focus on the
Mariner’s first-person tale in Coleridge’s v. 584 (“And till my ghastly tale is
told”) has been shifted in Levi’s rewriting to the search for an active listener:
“E se non trova chi lo ascolti”. By emphasizing the necessity of finding an
interlocutor (through the addition of the active verb ascoltare), a witness to
the survivor’s testimony, Levi establishes an interactive model of narrative
responsibility. In this model, the living must speak for those who did not
survive. As Levi will later explain in the “La vergogna” chapter of I sommersi
e i salvati, “[n]oi toccati dalla sorte abbiamo cercato, con maggiore o minore