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

Journal of Italian Translation
at least might herald, could herald – greater literary openness and
inclusiveness at a moment when so many time-weary traditions
all’italiana are being revisited, critiqued, revised. The photograph of
Lakhous on the cover of the magazine thus functions as a statement
of change and promise in itself. Like the issue of Frieze discussed
above, this special issue of World Literature Today could be very
useful for instructors of Italian culture-related courses, now and
for semesters to come. What’s more, some of the written works
discussed and featured in both publications might suggest further
titles to keep an eye out for – for purposes of personal enjoyment,
instruction or translation.
As a closing note, I would like to add that I do not necessarily
think anything good or bad about how certain forms of cultural
products – hailing from Italy or anywhere else, yesterday or today
or tomorrow – might lend themselves, more or less, to greater
or lesser levels of analytical subjectivity, political or otherwise.
Perhaps, with regard to surveys of fine arts, the critical pendulum
sways almost always, at some point, that way. Yet to revisit for
a moment my opening notions of cultural products that tend to
sidestep certain forms of subjectivity, there does exist a particular
form of pasta, strozzapreti, whose moniker is of hardly objective
origin. Building thereupon – and leaving aside dishes alla bandiera,
for they are a bit too easy – it might well be that even cuisine can
be somehow reincorporated into subjective spheres of political
commentary.
As such, my lone suggestion right now is but the butt of an
indirect battuta: strozza-elefanti alla crema, anyone?
Strozzare, that is, by dint of unabated cultural productivity:
unabated, since one such elephant can quite easily give way to another;
and via cultural products, for what better way to counteract
institutionalized asphyxiation thereof?
Well, elections might also do the trick. Sooner or later.
394
Paul D’Agostino
CUNY Brooklyn College