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Classics Revisited
Joseph Tusiani
Traduzione inglese di “L’America libera” di Vittorio
Alfieri
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
Alfieri’s America the Free is the first official recognition of the
United States of America on the part of a country that was soon to
imitate the same Revolution for the achievement of her own independence
and freedom. And no one was more qualified than Vittorio
Alfieri to salute the new free nation in the name of all Italians.
J.T.