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

Joseph Tusiani / Giosuè Carducci
The present hour is in vain; it only can strike and then vanish:
beauty is in the past, truth is in death alone.
Bright Clio sets her agile foot on the centuries’ summit,
and, singing, there unfolds her lofty wings to the sky.
Beneath her, as she flies, the world’s immense cemetery
appears resplendent, and on her face shines the sun
of the new age. O strophes, O thought of my youthful existence,
oh, fly secure today towards men’s ancient loves;
fly through the skies, through all the limpid skies, to the lovely
isle of my fancy, fair and lustrous in the seas.
There, golden-haired and tall, and singing, Achilles and Siegfried,
resting upon their spears, tread the resounding shore:
Fleeing her pallid lover, Ophelia to one gives her flowers,
and to the other comes from her sacrifice the sweet
Iphigenia. Beneath a green oak Roland converses with Hector,
and Durendala shines with gems and gold in the sun,
while to her blossoming breast Andromache summons her infant,
and Aida, fair, immobile, looks at her ruthless sire.
Long-haired, King Lear recounts his sorrows to Oedipus,
and he with dubious gaze questions again the Sphinx,
while good Cordelia calls, “O candid Antigone, come, Oh,
come, Grecian sister! Let’s sing to our fathers peace!”
Helen and Iseult, pensive, pass through the shade of the myrtles,
the crimson sunset smiles upon their locks of gold:
Helen watches the sea; King Mark gives his arms and his paroon
to Iseult, his long beard falling on her blond head.
There, on the shore, with the Queen of Scots in the moonlit
[whiteness
stands Clytemnestra: they both dip their white arms in the sea,
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