Limits
So many times I think again
to my school bookstrap,
gray, stained
that kept all of me, my books
tightened in a single knot —
Nor was there then
this breathless transcendence
this trespass without a trace
this getting lost
that is not yet dying —
Many times I cry, thinking
of my school bookstrap —
Milan, 16 April 1932
Limiti
Tante volte ripenso
alla mia cinghia di scuola
grigia, imbratta,
che tutta me coi miei libri serrava
in un unico nodo
sicuro –
Né c’era allora
questo trascendere ansante
questo sconfinamento senza traccia
questo perdersi
che non è ancora morire –
Tante volte piango, pensando
alla mia cinghia di scuola –
Milano, 16 aprile 1932
Noon
In this golden sunlight
I am
a fuzzy flower bud
cruelly tied with a piece of twine
so I can’t open
to bathe in light.
Next to me you are
a calming freshness of grass
in which I‘d like to sink madly
and dissolve myself
in an intoxicating tangle of green—
to cast into subtle roots
my sharpest pangs
and become a part of the earth.
Milan, 19 April 1929
Meriggio
In questa doratura di sole
io sono
una gemma pelosa
legata crudelmente con un filo di refe
perchè non possa sbocciare
a bagnarsi di luce.
Acconto di me tu sei
una freschezza riposante d’erba
in cui vorrei affondare
perdutamente
per sfrangiarmi anch’io
in un ebbro ciuffo di verde—
per gettare in radici sottli
il mio più accuto spasimo
ed immedesimarmi con la terra.
Milano, 19 aprile 1929
Colloquy
Do you remember, my sweet love
(one day I thought
to call you Tristan:
for triste, your sad remote soul.
But that first capital letter
seemed too heavy
for my tenderness
so now I try this other name,
more subdued, more light:
sweet love)
tell me, do you remember,
my sweet love,
the last winter sunset,
our last conversation
on the pink stone bench
in front of the red walls of the Castle?
So many doves! And you whispered to me
that their gray-blue wings
looked a little bit like my eyes.
On the grassy bank
the marguerite daisies
held the last
tired brightness of the sun.
And you wanted
to pluck them all for me,
your masculine fingers
between the stems, uncertain
as the fingers of a child:
and you filled my hands with grass and flowers,
telling me that my soul’s flower
had opened
for all the meadows
of all the countries,
telling me that the whole soul
of the spring yet to come
trembled in my breath.
Sweet love, sweet love, do you remember?
We used to watch the big bright clouds
slip silently
behind the bare branches of the horse chestnuts.
We said: tomorrow will be windy.
You told me, quietly,
in the tone of a fairy tale,
of your last night
spent in your sister’s house,
by the shore of the lake.
I woke up. It was so quiet.
The children were sleeping
in the next room.
And I thought, I thought: I told myself
that beside you I am a child too,
a sweet blossom with the scent of you.
Sweet love, sweet love, do you remember?
The blazing sun was dying
beyond the trees
in a great arc of gold
in a great white arc
over our heads.
And my sadness grew pale,
your anxiety faded
in the simplicity
of pure words.
Everything that was a lie,
everything that was doubt and pain
fell away
and there remained only
a tremor of little things
on top of the purest soul:
wings of a bird, scent of wind,
names of flowers, children’s sleep…
Just as it dissolves,
as the shadows descend,
the deceptive light of day
and the splendor of the sky
sharpens
into a tremor of small things
called stars.
Pasturo, 2 April 1931
Colloquio
Ti ricordi, mio piccolo amore
(un giorno avevo pensato
di chiamarti Tristano:
così triste la tua anima remota.
Ma poi quella maiuscola iniziale
mi parve troppo pesante
per la mia tenerezza
ed ora tento quest’altro nome,
più dimesso, più lieve:
piccolo amore)
di’, ti rammenti,
mio piccolo amore,
l’ultimo tramonto dell’inverno,
l’ultimo nostro colloquio
sul sedile di pietra rosa
di fronte ai muri rossi del Castello?
Quanti colombi! E tu mi sussurravi
che le ali loro grigioazzurre
somigliavano ai miei occhi
un poco.
Sul fondo erboso del fossato
le margheritine
trattenevano l’ultima
chiarità stanca del sole.
E tu volevi
coglierle tutte per me,
con le tue dita d’uomo
incerte fra gli steli
come dita di bimbo:
e m’empivi d’erba e di corolle le mani,
dicendomi che l’anima mia di fiore
era fiorita
per tutti i prati
di tutti i paesi,
dicendomi che tutta l’anima
della primavera non giunta
tremava nel mio respiro.
Piccolo amore, piccolo amore, ti rammenti?
Guardavamo le grandi nuvole accese
scivolare mute
dietro i rami nudi degli ippocastani.
Dicevamo: domani sarà vento.
Tu mi narravi, sommessamente,
in tono di una fiaba,
dell’ultima tua notte
passata nella casa della sorella,
in riva al lago.
“Mi destai. C’era tanto silenzio.
I bambini dormivano
nella stanza vicina.
Ed io pensavo, pensavo: mi dicevo
che accanto a te sono un bambino anch’io,
un bocciolo profumato di te.”
Piccolo amore, piccolo amore, ti rammenti?
Moriva il bruciore del sole
di là dagli alberi
in un grande arco d’oro,
in un grande arco bianco
sul nostro capo.
E impallidiva la mia tristezza,
si spegneva il tuo affanno
nella semplicità
delle parole candide.
Tutto che fu menzogna,
tutto che fu dubbio e dolore
si sfaceva
e rimaneva solo
in cima alla più pura anima
un tremore di piccole cose:
ali d’uccello, sentore di vento,
nomi di fiori, sonno di bambini…
Così come dilegua,
al calare dell’ombra,
l’ingannevole luce del giorno
e lo splendore del cielo
si acuisce
in un tremore di piccole cose
che si chiamano stelle.
Pasturo, 2 aprile 1931
The New Face
That one day in spring
I laughed – that’s true;
and not only did you see it, you mirrored it
in your joy;
Without seeing it,
I also felt my laugh
like a warm light
on my face.
Then it was night
and I had to be outside
in the storm:
the light of my laughter
died.
Dawn found me
like a spent lamp:
astonished things
discovering in their midst
my cold face.
They wanted to give me
a new face.
Just like an old woman
who no longer wants to kneel and pray
in front of a church painting
that’s been replaced
because she doesn’t recognize
the beloved face of the Madonna,
and this one seems to her
almost a lost woman –
so today is my heart,
faced with my unfamiliar mask.
20 August 1933
Il volto nuovo
Che un giorno io avessi
un riso
di primavera – è certo;
e non soltanto lo vedevi tu, lo specchiavi
nella tua gioia:
anch’io, senza vederlo, sentivo
quel riso mio
come un lume caldo
sul volto.
Poi fu la notte
e mi toccò esser fuori
nella bufera:
il lume del mio riso
morì.
Mi trovò l’alba
come una lampada spenta:
stupirono le cose
scoprendo
in mezzo a loro
il mio volto freddato.
Mi vollero donare
un volto nuovo.
Come davanti a un quadro di chiesa
che è stato mutato
nessuna vecchia più vuole
inginocchiarsi a pregare
perché non ravvisa le care
sembianze della Madonna
e questa le pare
quasi una donna
perduta –
così oggi il mio cuore
davanti alla mia maschera
sconosciuta.
20 agosto 1933
Translator’s Note:
When Antonia Pozzi died she left behind notebooks containing over 300 poems. Pozzi’s father Roberto published 91 of her poems in a private edition (Mondadori, 1939), but these poems were his revised versions, which altered her work significantly. For example, in “Odore di Fieno,” he removed the word “impura” from her phrase “impure soul,” so that she would, in her poem and perhaps in her life and reputation, be understood to have had a pure soul. In another poem, “L’allodola,” he removes the opening phrase “Dopo il bacio,” to delete the kiss. In fact, Roberto Pozzi’s revisions removed all evidence of his daughter’s relationship with Antonio Maria Cervi, the important figure in her life whom she met at 15 when he was her Greek and Latin tutor. In time their friendship would develop into love. Although they wished to marry, her father would not allow it, and ultimately forced her to renounce the relationship.
Some of the most egregious revisions made by Roberto Pozzi are his changes to “Saresti Stato,” a 10-poem sequence about her relationship with Cervi. In addition to removing the second stanza entirely, Roberto Pozzi changed the first line of the poem from “Annunzio” (the given name) to “Annuncio” (“Announcement,” or “Herald”). Why did Roberto Pozzi make such an alteration? The letters Antonia Pozzi wrote to Cervi refer to a child they hoped to have; they were planning to name him “Annunzio,” after Cervi’s brother Annunzio who had died in the war.1
In 1955, Nora Wydenbruck’s translations of these posthumously revised poems—translated with the help and under the close surveillance of Roberto Pozzi—reproduce a “bowdlerized” and “sanitized” edition of the original work for English readers. It would not be until 1989 that editors Alessandra Cenni and Onorina Dino restored the poems to their original form in Parole, an authoritative text of Pozzi’s poetry.
For a translator there is still the matter of understanding the context of the work and of —not as simple as it sounds—choosing the right words. Especially as her work has been altered without her consent, I struggle between the theories of translation, trying to present the work in what I perceive as Pozzi’s true voice. In some ways a translator desires the absolute reproduction of the original in another language. As if that were possible. Then there is the “sacrifice” (to quote William Gass speaking of translating Hölderlin) one must make in moving from one language to another and from one time to another, in order to make the translation real, authentic for our time. “[T]he right sorts of sacrifice are essential,” observes Gass. “We had better lose the poem’s German sounds and German order, because we are trying to achieve the poem Hölderlin would have written had he been English.”2 Working between these two poles of theory, every word can offer unique challenges, but that is also what is exciting about translation.
Among the vexing lines in “Meriggio” are those which essentially open and close the poem: “una gemma pelosa”and “ed immedesimarmi con la terra.” Gemma translates to “gem; jewel” as well as a “bud, of branch, or flower.” In the context of the poem it’s easy to see the speaker is less gem than flower bud, and contextually, I felt that the tenderness of the flower bud is important. Yet the adjective pelosa (“hairy, hirsute; shaggy; rough-haired”) complicates this idea of tenderness. In tone, hairy bud doesn’t convey the vulnerability I see in the poem, and borders on unappealing. Since the nascent flower is also under duress (“cruelly tied with a piece of twine/so I can’t open”) the adjective “hairy” threatened to make the image sound like something closer to a plant in Little Shop of Horrors. Of the possibilities, which word would come closest to offering the image of the bud that I believe Pozzi’s seeing? I considered shaggy, and also tufted, wooly, furry, even pubescent, downy, silky. “Fuzzy” offered me the tenderness and brought with it less potential symbolism that might complicate this introduction to the bud at the start of the poem.
The last line of the poem brought me immedesimarmi, from immedesimare, “to combine, to unite, to make into one”—in the reflexive that Pozzi uses, “to identify (oneself) with.” Though the sense is clear, I didn’t like the sound of it: and identify myself with the earth. There is also the possibility of saying: and become one with the earth, which gets the sense of it as well, but which I felt was neither poetic enough nor singular enough. Both are such familiar phrases in our language that I felt either was in danger of rendering the final line of the poem—which carries so much weight, such importance, in any poem—into a cliché. In typical Pozzi fashion she has given the reader a burgeoning, delicate object that is confined, under duress, and unable to become itself. Whoever or whatever is “next to me” (“Acconto di me tu sei / una freschezza riposante d’erba”) is calm, fresh, a place of freedom in which she wants to plant herself, to find freedom for her roots, and in taking the earth’s qualities of growth into herself, begin to grow, to “become.”
This final line of the poem, expressing a craving and ambition to free herself from constraints, is meaningful for me, having come to love the art of translation after writing poetry for so many years. This is how she inspires me as well. I come to translations for many challenges, and I have found considerable rewards. Perhaps most significant for me has been what I am learning from Pozzi’s work: her a subtle use of of language, a dazzling ability to bring to the page the immediacy of her images., and perhaps most moving, her intense investment, belief in, and devotion to, her art.
1 From Antonia Pozzi: Tutte le opera, edited by Alessandra Cenni, p. 609: “Avrebbe desiderato dare un bambino ad Antonio Maria Cervi per compensarlo dell’inconsolabile lutto per la morte dell fratello Annunzio, poeta, caduto giovanissimo in guerra. Il bambino avrebbe infatti dovuto chiamarsi Annunzio.” ([Antonia Pozzi] would have liked to give a child to Antonio Maria Cervi to make up for the inconsolable loss of the death of Cervi’s brother Annunzio, a poet who died very young during the war. In fact, the child would have been called Annunzio.”
2 William Gass, Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation. Knopf, 1999, p. 52.
The copyright for the poems of Antonia Pozzi belongs to the Carlo Cattaneo and Giulio Preti International Insubric Center for Philosophy, Epistemology, Cognitive Sciences and the History of Science and Technology of the University of Insubria, depositary and owner of the whole Archive and Library of Antonia Pozzi.
Antonia Pozzi lived a brief life, dying by suicide in 1938. She was born 13 February, 1912 in Milan, and studied at the University of Milan with philosopher Antonio Banfi, receiving the degree of D.Litt., having written her thesis on Flaubert. She was a gifted photographer and an avid mountain climber who enjoyed exploring the terrain of the Dolomite Alps, skiing, tennis, and riding horses. In December of 1938, increasingly in despair about the world, she set out for Chiaravalle, where she took poison and fell into unconsciousness in the snow. Her body was discovered the next day, and she died shortly thereafter on 3 December. None of Pozzi’s poetry was published during her lifetime.
Amy Newman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently On This Day in Poetry History (Persea Books). Her translations of the poems and letters of Antonia Pozzi appear or are forthcoming in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Delos, Blackbird, Bennington Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation fro Poetry, and teaches in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University.
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