Translation: Excerpt from Zeno's Conscience, Part 1

René Magritte, Le donateur heureux, 1966

This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of an excerpt from the 20th-century novel La Coscienza di Zeno, Zeno's Conscience, by Italo Svevo. The following are actually two excerpts published as one continuous reflection on life, whether it is fair or unfair, good or bad, and all the things in between. The main character, Zeno, is a person full of good resolve, who has lived his life in between the extremes he describes and who eventually comes to the conclusion that he has always lived according to love and that has saved him, despite his many vacillations, distractedness and little jealousies. The novel is a somewhat picaresque journey into Zeno's reflections as he finds himself in quirky and pathos-laden situations which he manages with improvised dexterity.

Excerpt from La Coscienza di Zeno, Part 1,  translated by Bora Mici   

The next day, the obstetrician who was taking care of Ada asked for the help of Dr. Paoli, who immediately pronounced the word that I had not been able to say: Morbus Basedowii. Guido told me about it, describing the illness in a learned fashion and sympathizing with Ada who was suffering a lot. Without any ill will, I thought his compassion and science were not great. He assumed a heartfelt look when he spoke of his wife, but when he dictated letters for Carmen, he displayed all the joy of living and imparting lessons; he also thought that the man that had lent his name to the illness was the Basedow who had been Goethe’s friend, while when I looked up that illness in the encyclopedia, I immediately figured out that it was someone else.

What a greatly important illness that of Basedow! For me it was most important to have learned about it. I studied it in various monographs and thought I had just discovered the secret of our organism. I think that in many people, just as with me, there are periods of time when certain ideas occupy and encumber the whole mind, shutting out other things. But the same thing happens to society too! First it lives on Darwin, after having lived on Robespierre and Napoleon, and then on Liebig or maybe Leopardi, when it’s not Bismarck that rules over the whole cosmos!

But I am the only one who lived on Basedow! It seemed to me that it had brought to the fore the roots of life, which is made in the following way: all organisms can be distributed on a line, on one end of which is the illness of Basedow, which implies the most ample, crazy consumption of the vital force at a precipitous pace, a rapid heartbeat, and at the other end are the organisms who are impoverished because of an organic avarice, destined to perish of an illness that would seem to be exhaustion but in fact is sedentariness. The right balance between the two illnesses is at the center and is improperly designated as good health, which is nothing but a stopover. And between the center and one extremity—that of Basedow—fall all of those who are exasperated and whose lives are consumed by great desires, ambitions, pleasures and work too, and on the other those who only put crumbs on their plate and save in preparation for that abject longevity that would seem a burden to society. It turns out that this burden is also necessary. Society goes forth because the Basedowans push it forward, and it does not fall because the others hold it in place. I am convinced that if we wanted to build a society, we could have done so in a much simpler way, but this is how it’s made, with the goiter at one of its ends and edema at the other, and there’s no fixing it. In the middle are those who are starting to develop either a goiter or an edema and along the whole line, for all of humanity, absolute good health is missing.

…………………………

“Life is hard and unfair!”

It seemed to me that I was not allowed to say a single word that might suggest any kind of judgement on my part about him and Ada. But it seemed to me that I still needed to say something. He had ended up speaking about life and had saddled it with two predicates that were not guilty of excessive originality. I was able to come up with something even better precisely because I had decided to criticize what he had said. So many times we say things following the sound of the words, as they relate to each other by chance. Then, as soon as you try to see if what was being said was worth the breath expended, sometimes you discover that the random association has given birth to an idea. I said, “Life is neither good or bad, but original!”

When I thought about it, it seemed to me like I had said something important. Labeled in such a way, life seemed so new that I began looking at it as if I had seen it for the first time with its gaseous bodies, fluids and solids. If I had described it to someone who was not used to it and therefore lacked our common sense, he would have been breathless before the enormous structure without a purpose. He would have asked me, “But how do you put up with it?” And having been informed about every single detail, from those celestial bodies hanging up there so that they can be seen but not touched all the way to the mystery of death, he would have certainly exclaimed: “Very original!”

“Life is original,” laughed Guido. “Where did you read that?”

I did not think it was important to reassure him that I had not read it anywhere because otherwise my words would have been less significant to him. But the more I thought about it, the more original I found life. And it was not even necessary to look at it from the outside to see that it was put together in such a bizarre way. It was enough to remember all the things us men expect of life in order to see it as so strange as to arrive to the conclusion that maybe man ended up inside of it by mistake and that does not belong there.

Without having colluded about the direction our walk would take, we came to the incline of via Belvedere just like before. Once he had found the short wall on which he had laid down that other night, Guido climbed on it and lay down just like before. He was singling softly, perhaps always oppressed by his thoughts, and he certainly meditated on the inexorable numbers of his accounting. As for me, I remembered that I had wanted to kill him in that very place, and comparing my feelings then with my current ones, I was admiring once again the incomparable originality of life. However, I suddenly remembered that just a little while ago, our of an ambitious whim, I had railed against the poor Guido, and on one of the worst days of his life. I dedicated myself to a search: without great pain I was witnessing the torture that my careful accounting was inflicting on Guido, and a curious doubt came over me after a curious memory. The doubt was whether I was good or bad. The memory was provoked suddenly by the doubt, which was not new: I saw myself as a child and I was dressed (I am certain) in short skirts, and I raised my face to ask my mother who was smiling: “And I good or bad?” At that time, the doubt must have been inspired in the child’s mind by many of those who had called him good and the many others whom, jokingly, had qualified him as bad. There was no reason to wonder why the child had been burdened by that dilemma. Oh, the incomparable originality of life! It was amazing that the doubt that had already been inflicted on the child in such a puerile way had not been resolved by the adult, who had already crossed into midlife.

In the foggy night, exactly in that place where I had wanted to kill him once, that doubt deeply anguished me. Certainly when the child had felt that doubt err in his mind, his head only recently liberated from the bonnet, he had not suffered much because children are told that one can be cured from being bad. In order to free myself from so much anguish, I wanted to believe it again, and I succeeded.

If I had not succeeded, I would have had to cry for Guido and for myself, and for our most sad life. The resolution renewed the illusion! The resolution was to stand by Guido’s side and to collaborate with him in the growth of his business, on which his life and the life of his family depended, and all this without any kind of profit for myself. I glimpsed the possibility of rushing, desiring and studying for him, and I accepted the possibility of becoming, in order to help him, a great, an enterprising, a brilliant negotiator. That’s what I thought on that foggy night of this very original life!

The Man Who Wore the News

Barbara Kruger, We don't need another hero, 1987

This is Bora Mici's original text, written in Italian, which may or may not contain a few minor mistakes, and which will be difficult to translate with an AI translator. It presents a parody of a person who does not exist in real life by employing vocabulary learned while listening to the news in Italian and to Italian-language podcasts. As a result, it might give you the impression that the character the story describes is modeled on real-life characters, since he embodies the spirit of the times, but I assure you he does not exist. The text began as a mere vocabulary-learning exercise and transformed into an endeavor of literary ambition. I had tried this kind of exercise once before using French vocabulary on a French test at the University of Maryland, and I found that it gave me a great amount of playful liberty with words. For this particular piece of writing, I just used the words in the order they appeared in my notes, which also represents a certain kind of underlying logical structure, since the sources I drew the unknown vocabulary from mostly discussed current events from around the world.  

Giovanni è una persona smaccatamente attendista. Il suo attendismo è inviso ai suoi amici che non vogliono più fare da sponda per lui. Hanno cercato di ricompattarsi come gruppo, ma in fin dei conti, Giovanni pensa soltanto a se stesso. Una volta ha fatto costruire uno striscione sul quale era scritto “Giovanni prima di tutti gli altri”, proprio come quei leader populisti che vogliono mettere in avanti la priorità del proprio partito e di conseguenza del proprio paese. Gli amici di Giovanni hanno deciso di fare un piccolo smistamento e provare di toglierlo dal gruppo. Hanno deciso di andare al mare con lui, di metterlo su un gommone col maglioncino giallo che gli aveva confezionato la nonna, molto amata da lui, di dargli alcune zucchine grigliate per poter nutrirsi durante lo smarrimento meritato, ma lui ha capito subito il tranello in cui lo cacciavano ed ha intimato che non fosse coerente con la loro amicizia disinteressata e che non valeva. E poi sarebbe stata una soluzione contingente. Invece di andare al mare, Giovanni ha intrapreso di leggere un testo ostico, ad alta voce, e farne una carrellata per gli amici e mandarli a quel paese perché potessero scovare dalla sabbia della sua coscienza un tesoro facoltoso di cui lui era già prettamente assuefatto. E doveroso menzionare che si rifaceva ai suoi maestri più colti di scienze umane, compresa la psicologia e la letteratura. I suoi amici avevano pensato di proporgli così un capestro da cui non poteva più slegarsi, ma lui si dimostrò propositivo, al netto, dobbiamo aggiungere, di voler sempre ribaltare le carte in tavola. Non si sapeva più dove lo avesse celato quel gruzzolo di sapienza che aveva acquisito col tempo adagio adagio, e forse sarebbe stato il caso di fare appello ad un umarell per dare le istruzioni che occorrevano ai ragazzi. Per forza, si trovavano costretti ad edificare il loro baluardo di avanguardia contro la sapienza faticosa e preponderante di Giovanni. Di recente, lo ritenevano piuttosto istrionico e non del tutto canonico, anche se Giovanni gli esortava di appuntare senza barare tutto ciò che cercasse di trasmettere a loro. Perorava che, dopo tutto, la resilienza vuol dire piegarsi senza spezzarsi, e Giovanni se ne intendeva di queste cose. Puntava la distensione e la riscossa del gruppetto, anche se era chiaro che allargava le maglie della giustizia a suo compiacimento. Era un furbo che faceva finta di andare alla volta dei suoi addetti, ma forse non se ne accorgeva nemmeno della sua duplicità. Al netto del suo atteggiamento protagonista, li considerava i suoi soci più cari e voleva plasmare la loro amicizia, adibirla, senza però millantare, mi raccomando, in un ateneo. Auspicava la loro adesione, e d’acchito, non sembrava troppo esigente. Purtroppo agiva sempre a scapito degli altri e intasava le loro vie d'uscita. Li faceva intrappolare nel suo gorgo ai prezzi stracciati, che campeggiavano in bella mostra su un affiche con una dicitura sgradevole annunciando la degenza, semmai non gli si fosse dato retta. Brandendo il cartellone dal balcone che dava su un piccolo spiazzo fuori casa sua, invocava i suoi discepoli, cercando come sempre di accreditarsi con loro, intercalando nei suoi discorsi gustosi ed espansivi questioni di atteggiamenti sindacabili da parte dei suoi rivali. Siamo lì, diceva, tutto fiero di sé, dobbiamo accendere un faro su queste velleità raffazzonate di quel tizio che sempre ordisce ai danni della buona giustizia, di cui noi stessi abbiamo fatto le lodi, pensando di aver imbroccato l’argomento anche se tutti sospettavano che non fosse altro che una macchietta bislacca e se la ridevano sotto i baffi. Aveva un’ossessione morbosa col delitto dell’appropriazione indebita, cercava sempre aggravanti, ma siccome non voleva essere percepito nemmeno come un foriero di verità indiscutibili, era chiaro o no, che si trattasse di un fifone che incollava la propria immagine di sé, come uomo da bene, sulla realtà poco gradevole. Così, si era ritagliato un posticino sicuro in mezzo al caos quotidiano della sua città e badava sempre ad appropriarsi una quota di mercato che andava sempre incrementando, accolta in sottintese scoppiettate di riso. Seppure la sua casa si trovasse vicino alla Borsa e potesse essere informato da subito di potenziali flessioni, lasciava intendere di collocarsi dall’altra parte della barricata per far sì che fosse caldeggiato da quelli che curiosavano nei suoi affari. Spesso con i suoi soci intavolava discorsi a far tremare i polsi, scattenandosi delirante come se fosse in procinto di vedersi costretto a firmare un accordo svantaggioso. Che stramboide, diceva la gente. Altri ammiravano il suo impeto dilagante e dicevano sottovoce, ma che figo, ammazza! La calca si faceva sempre più fitta quando saliva in cattedra anche se non gli riusciva mai di fare altro che scalfire la superficie dell’argomento prescelto, conseguendo così di trovarsi conciato male davanti alla ciurma, che comunque si beveva le sue parole come vino sfuso. Si era messo in testa di debellare la reputazione dei suoi nemici, inalberandosi e squadernandosi, spalancando le braccia per far intravedere le sue ascelle sfrangiate e sbiadite dal tanto sudore che ci metteva per confutare le menzogne sulla sua persona, tra cui si potevano annoverare quelle sul afflato fatiscente dei rivali. Perorava spesso della sua impresa, che beninteso, non mirasse il tornaconto, bensì si impegnasse a non lasciare le cose andare in tilt, che si desse per spacciato lo sforzo quotidiano della gente per edificare quel tempio alla sapienza. Dal suo leggio che fungeva da posto investito dell’autorità suprema, quasi quasi si potrebbe dire che avesse raggiunto il prestigio del papa quando professava la carità e l’umiltà dal balcone della San Pietro, rivolgendosi alle masse nel suo discorso famosissimo dell’urbi et orbi. Insomma, Giovanni non cercava di tirare le somme di quanto fossero divenuti colti i suoi coetanei, bensì raccomandava loro un cambio di marcia per ottenere quella margine risicata in più, che avrebbe permesso loro di bollarsi gente di cultura. A questo proposito faceva aleggiare una nube florida di speranza che somigliava, se esaminata da vicino, ad una spocchiosa avvampata che sbaciucchiava in aria, che col passare del tempo, sarebbe poi divenuta una rimbambita bitorzoluta che nessuno avrebbe più adorato, ma che tuttora sbottava di scatto i suoi rincari e sbuffava di non essere riconosciuta a pieno titolo come la guida suprema per antonomasia. Non si sapeva a chi dovesse questa sua convinzione, quale mutuato nascondesse nel cassone della sua macchina con una marcia in più. Tuttavia era calzante la sua passione senza fronzoli, come lui credesse, che riusciva comunque a gasare la folla. Però come ve lo potete immaginare, si diceva intorno, che fosse un bacchettone, che avesse un pallino per la mistificazione, che esercitava tramite grossolani strafalcioni sui propri pargoli, costringendoli a farsi il mazzo. Siccome nessuno voleva che si riprendesse dallo smacco cagionato dalla loro andatura a rilento, si stipulava il conclamato divieto di impicciarsi platealmente nei affari del capo, che tra l’atro, si deve riconoscere una volta per tutto, portava i vestiti nuovi del re. In ultima istanza siamo costretti anche a dargli retta, tirando un grandissimo fiatone di sollievo, perché il suo indole non era del tutto congeniale al coinvolgimento in malefatta. Si vedeva chiaramente che aveva soltanto bisogno di convincersi che poteva portare a termine le sue illusioni, frutto di un farneticare sfizioso, per poi defilarsi con un’umiltà sentitissima e dare spago allo stuolo ferale che gli pareva dignitoso e bonario, quando invece si trattava di arraffoni disillusi, che ormai si potevano perfino vantarsi di essere colti come lui.

Translation: Com'è profondo il mare by Lucio Dalla

Lucio Dalla, Com'è profondo il mare, Album Cover, 1977

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of the 1977 Italian song Com'è profondo il mare, How deep is the sea or The sea is so deep by the Italian signer-songwriter Lucio Dalla. This song tells the story of humankind from antiquity to nowadays evoking the sea as the immovable guardian of its secrets. You can listen to the original song here.

Com'è profondo il Mare, Lucio Dalla, translated by Bora Mici

It’s us, we are many beside

We hide at night
Afraid of the motorists, the journalists
We are the black cats, the pessimists
We are the dark cracks
And we have nothing to eat
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

Dad, you once were a great shot
Of quail and pheasant
Drive away these flies
They drive me mad
They won’t let me sleep
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

It’s useless, there’s no more quorum
There’s no more decorum
God or whoever in his name
Is trying to divide us
To hurt us, to make us sink deep
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

Through the power of a bribe
Man became someone
Brought the dead back alive, unlocked prisons
Blocked six trains with their wagons
Uplifted the poor man for a moment
To a role that was hard to maintain
Then he let himself fall again, shout and weep
Alone in the middle of the sea
The sea is so deep.

Then by itself the shout became a drumbeat
And the poor man like lightning in the sky ready to meet
Began a war to conquer
That joke of the land
That his great heart was going to till deep
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

But the land was taken away
Including that still on his britches
He was thrown into houses, into ditches
I don’t really remember
Then a story about manacled members, beatings
And experimental surgery
How deep is the sea
How deep is the sea

In the meantime a mystic, maybe an aviator
Invented sympathy
And everyone got along newly
The beautiful and the ugly
With some damage to ugly
Who on a piece of glass
Were given the opportunity
Themselves to see
How deep is the sea
How deep is the sea

In the meantime the fish
From whom we are all descended
Looked on with curiosity
At the collective drama of this world
Which undoubtedly seemed wicked to them
In their great sea
How deep is the sea
In their great sea
How deep is the sea

It’s obvious that thinking bothers some
Even if who thinks is mute like a fish
Actually a fish
As a fish is hard to seize
Because he is protected by the seas
How deep are the seas

Obviously those who command
Are not inclined to poetic distinctions
Thought like the ocean
Cannot be seized
It cannot be fenced with ease

So they are burning the seas
So they are killing the seas
So they are humiliating the seas
So they are bending the seas

Translation: Michel de Certeau Vocal Citations

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen, by Edvard Eriksen, 1913

This is Bora Mici's original translation from French to English of Vocal Citations from Michel de Certeau's theoretical work, The Invention of Everyday Life, L'invention du quotidien. In this text, Certeau distinguishes strategies from tactics, with strategies belonging to an institutional authoritative and closed framework, while tactics are the unpredictable moves that individuals effect within these prescribed systems, individualizing their experience of them and turning them upside down on their heads. The translated passage discusses the evanescence of vocal interventions within a codified system of language and writing by taking inspiration from Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe and the protagonist's first encounter with Friday. Whose voices are we going to hear? This argument is especially pertinent in the current social-media- commentary-dominated landscape where anyone can create their own glose but an invisible algorithm chooses which ones become prevalent.   

Citations de voix, Michel de Certeau by Bora Mici

Vocal Citations

Robinson Crusoe indicates himself how a fault was introduced into his scriptural empire. In fact, for a period of time, his enterprise was interrupted and haunted by an absence that returns to the island’s shores, a man’s naked footprint on the beach. The border line cedes to the stranger: the instability of the marker. On the margins of the page, the trace of an invisible fantom (an apparition) comes to upset the order built by a capitalizing and methodical labor. It makes Robinson experience “fluttering thoughts, whimsies, and a terror.” The bourgeois conquerer is transformed into a man who is “beside himself,” becoming a savage himself by way of this “wild” index that reveals nothing. He dreams and his dreams are nightmares. He loses his certainty in a world governed by the great clockmaker. His reason abandons him. Ousted from the productive asceticism that stood for meaning, he experiences diabolical days on end, possessed by the cannibalistic desire to devour the stranger or by the fear of being devoured himself.

So a stain appears on the written page—like the scribble of a child on the book that represents the authority of a place. A lapsus insinuates itself into language. The appropriated territory is altered by the trace of something that is missing and is placeless (like the myth). Robinson will reassume the power of dominion when he has the ability to see, that is to say to substitute the index of a lack with a tangible being, a visible object, Friday. Then he will find himself within his order again. The disorder is due to the index of a past and passing thing, to the “near nothing” of a passage. The violence that oscillates between the impulse to devour and the fear of being eaten, according to Hadewijch d’Anvers, is born out of our ability to name “the presence of an absence.” Here, the other does not constitute a system that is hidden below the one written by Robinson. The island is not a palimpsest where it is possible to reveal, decrypt or decode a system covered by an order superimposed upon it, but that’s of the same type. The passing trace does not have its own text. We cannot enunciate it other than through the discourse of a proprietor, and it does not live anywhere else but in his space. The only language of difference is Robinson’s own interpretive delirium—dreams and “whimsies.”

The novel dating from 1719 already points to the non-place (a trace that eats away at the edges) and a fantastic modality (an interpretive insanity) of that which will interject as a voice in the field of writing, even though Daniel Defoe deals with the silent marking of the text by a body part (a naked foot), and not the voice itself, which represents language marked by the body. A name is already given to this form and these modalities: they speak, says Robinson, of something “wild.” The naming, here like everywhere else, is not a mere depiction of reality: it’s a performative act that organizes what it pronounces. It means in the same way that we mean for someone to go away. It does what it says, and constitutes the savageness that it declares. Since we excommunicate by naming, the name “savage” simultaneously creates and defines that which the scriptural economy situates outside of itself. And its essential predicate immediately comes to affect it: the savage is evanescent; he is marked (by stains, lapsus, etc.) but he cannot be written. He changes a place (he upsets it), but he does not establish one.

In such a way, the “theoretical fiction” invented by Daniel Defoe points to a form of alterity as it relates to writing, a form that will also impose its identity upon the voice, since, later, when he appears, Friday will be faced with an alternative due to a long history: either cry out (a “wild” outbreak that calls for the interpretation or the corrective action of a pedagogical or psychiatric “treatment”) or turn his body into an instrument of the dominant language (by becoming “his master’s voice,” a docile body that implements the order, embodies a reason and obtains the status of being the substitute of enunciation, no longer the act but the doing of another’s “saying.”) As for the voice, it will also insinuate itself as a trace in the text, as an effect or a metonymy of the body, a fleeting citation like the “nymph” of G. Cossart—Nympha fugax, a passing fugitive, an indiscreet revenant, a “pagan” or “wild” reminiscence in the scriptural economy, an unnerving noise from another tradition, and supplying a reason for the production of interminable interpretations.

We still need to define some of the historic forms imposed upon orality as they relate to its ousting. Because of this exclusion, for reasons relating to neatness and economic efficiency, the voice essentially appears as the figure of citation, which is analogous, in the field of writing to the trace of the naked foot on Robinson’s island. In the scriptural culture, the citation unites effects of interpretation (it allows for the production of a text) with effects of alteration (it disturbs the text). It plays between these two poles that, in turn, characterize these two extreme figures: on the one hand, the pre-text-citation, that serves to produce text (a presumed commentary or analysis) from relics chosen from an oral tradition that functions as an authority; on the other hand, the reminiscence-citation that traces within language the unusual and fragmented return (like a breaking voice) of structuring oral relationships but which are suppressed by writing. It would seem these are borderline cases outside of which we can no longer speak of the voice. In the first case, citations become the means of the proliferation of the discourse; in the second case, they escape it and cut it up.

If we were to only keep in mind these two options, I would call one of them the “science of the fable” (from the name that has so often been attributed to it during the 18th century), and the other “returns and turns of the voice” (since its returns, like swallows in springtime, are accompanied by subtle modalities and procedures, in the same way as the turns and tropes of rhetoric, and can be translated into paths that squat in unoccupied places, into “movies for voices” says Marguerite Duras, into ephemeral tours—“a little walk and then we’ll go.”) The sketch of these two figures can act as an introduction to the examination of oral practices, while specifying some of the aspects of the framework that allows for voices to still speak.