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294 The Translator’s Invisibilityand impose meaning through a scientific representation like X-rays.The formal peculiarities of this text—the shifts from realistic detail toabstract reflection to quoted statement, the scanty amount ofinformation, the fragmented syntax—mimic the identity-shatteringexperience of being-towards-death by destabilizing the signifyingprocess, abandoning any linearity of meaning, and unbalancing thereader’s search for intelligibility.What does become clear, however, is that De Angelis’sdisturbingly engimatic poem carries no suggestion that beingtowards-deathis the prelude to authentic existence. De Angelisresists Heidegger’s idea of authenticity as being which is unified andfree, which is “something of its own” and can “‘choose’ itself andwin itself” (Heidegger 1962:68). In form and theme, “L’ideacentrale” rather suggests Nietzsche’s corrosive notes in The Will toPower, where human agency is described as “no subject but anaction, a positing, creative, no ‘causes and effects’” (Nietzsche1967:331). 3 For Nietzsche, subjectivity can never be authentic,because it can never possess an essential identity: it is always a siteof multiple determinations, whether produced by thegrammaticality of language, the need for a subject in a sentence, orconstructed by some more elaborate conceptual system or socialinstitution, like a psychology, morality, religion, family, or job—the“bosses.” De Angelis’s poem calls attention to the contradictoryconditions of subjectivity, which often remain unacknowledged inthe “careful busying” of everyday life and need a limit-situation inorder to reemerge in consciousness.This interpretation allowed me to solve certain translationproblems even as it created others. In line 3, for example, the Italianword “premuroso” can be translated variously as “thoughtful,” or“attentive,” or “solicitous.” I chose to avoid these more ordinarymeanings in favor of “careful,” an equally ordinary word that hasnonetheless supported a philosophical signficance in English and canbring the text closer to what I take to be its themes: Heidegger’sEnglish translators use “care” to render “Sorge,” the German wordwith which he characterizes the nature of everyday life (Heidegger1962:237). Similarly, in line 5, the Italian verb “si sceglieva” isordinarily an impersonal form which does not require that a subjectbe specified. English sentences must have subjects, and so “sisceglieva” is often translated into English as “one chose,” or thepassive voice is used. Yet since my reading establishes a connectionwith Nietzsche’s concept of human agency as subjectless action, as