Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Journal of Italian Translation
is a woman, but at times it is a man.
Thus there are essentially two types of prose, a poetic one
of places and a narrative of people, sorts of letters to vanished
persons from the past. Yet each form shapes and affects the other.
Toward the end there is a suite of seven epistolary pieces. Memories
of adolescence are filtered through topographical perspectives in
letter like fragments. Most of these segments recount episodes from
adolescence and contrast events and feelings from then with now.
The sensation of time is consistently rendered through the contrast
between the conditions of youth and the weathered present. The
final piece is a poem, which could refer to the watercolor on the
cover or those in the original Italian edition.
In closing I would like to quote Bonnefoy’s preface to the
French edition. He aptly perceives Scotto’s lakes as entities that
unify different nationalities and peoples and at the same time mark
the space between them, perpetual symbols of otherness, the other
shore:
Qu’est-ce qu’un lac, dès qu’il a quelque étendue,
sinon, un centre autour duquel des populations diverses
s’avoisinent, à la fois proches, communicantes, et tout de
même diverses, ce que métaphorise le fait, à chaque instant
évident, et nuit comme jour, de l’autre rive? 2
Notes
136
B. C.
1 Fabio Scotto, A riva, NEM Nuova Editrice Magenta, 2009, pp. 90.
2 Yves Bonnefoy Lumières et ombres des rives in Sur cette rive, Fabio
Scotto, p. 18, L’Amourier éditions, 2011, translated into French by Patrice
Dyerval Angelini.