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

Charles Sant’Elia / Luciano Somma
Somma’s use of language is so accessible and yet creatively challenging
at the same time. Somma is an expert well versed in the last
five centuries of Neapolitan poetry and his vocabulary is classical
and traditional and avoids many Italianizing contaminations that
some contemporary poets have recourse to, yet he is not lost in the
past. He bridges the past and present of the Neapolitan people.
His writing can be deceptively straightforward and when I began
to translate it I found myself wanting to include many footnotes
to explain his complex word play and cultural allusions. Somma
takes what may seem like the idyllic commonplaces of picturesque
old Naples and delves into them, taking the reader into the darkest
alleys and recesses of the city’s ancient neighborhoods. His poetry
shows us the hearts and minds of real people, with the ironic and
melancholy notes of Neapolitan humor, bringing the real living
Naples to the reader through the brooding reflections of the truly
eternal city. I had perhaps a double advantage as both a member
of the same culture and dealing with an accessible living poet, but
also a double challenge in that I felt an urgency to do his verse
justice in another language while keeping the tone of his narrative
voice and making his local urban references clear. Somma gives
a voice to the many men and women who struggle in their daily
lives in a great urban space to earn a living and make sense of
their world and its joys and sorrows. Somma makes me proud to
be a Neapolitan. I think his universal themes will make his work
appeal to anyone, whether they be from great cities like Naples,
New York or Mumbai, or the many small towns inland from them.
He encourages us all to share our stories, perhaps even in verse.
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