Translation: Mamma's Cat by Giovanni Arpino, Part 1

Woman with Cat, Kees van Dongen, 1908

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of the short story Il gatto mammone or Mamma's Cat (in English) by the Italian 20th century writer Giovanni Arpino. It's a comically absurd but touching story of the relationship of a cat with her two diametrically opposed owners.

Mamma’s Cat by Giovanni Arpino, Part 1

If they refer to him as Your Excellence at the table, he barely squints, electrically shakes his left whiskers, then leans over his plate with exaggerated caution, grabs a piece of meat, sits up again and chews slowly, staring into the void.

He is huge, neutered, has never left home, and paces between the living room and the hallway like a Chinese Mandarin. He especially likes to look at himself in the mirror, or motionlessly stop before a composition of butterflies trapped under a piece of glass. He winks at the butterflies, shakes his left whiskers, and suavely moves his rich tabby tail. Like this, he waits for five o’clock, when finally they turn on the television for him, and alone, with abandon on the couch, he looks at the black and white movements on the screen, ready to pretend to suspend his interest as soon as the noise level surpasses his limit of tolerance.

He does not respond to being called, but is alert every time the phone rings, every time the intercom makes a sound, every time the doorbell goes off. Because he does not like strangers, people who can take over his couch, turn off the television, steal his place at the table, where he sits to the right of his mistress and never extends even so much as a nail toward his plate if everyone else has not started eating yet.

—One day or another I’ll kill you—mumbles the man at the other side of the table.

—Oh, don’t say these things to him, you know he gets offended—his wife tries to make peace between them.

—One day or another I’ll hang you. You are my brother, but then you’ll see. I will hang you—repeats the man.

Then he pulls his head back into his neck and mutters something, immediately stopping to eat. He knows very well that the man of the house is joking, but he does not like his tone of voice and particularly that he keeps repeating these jokes. What’s more, he can sense how it will all end in the evening. And this annoys him because he does not feel like repeating himself and drawing commentary.

—See? Now he is not eating anymore—the woman complains sweetly.

—Fatty! You’re a fatty. Sooner or later, I will put a bomb under you so you explode—the husband starts up again.

Then he lazily comes down from the chair and walks away, and goes and posts himself in front of the butterflies under the glass in the hallway.

—There—the maid interjects abruptly:—We’re back at it. Then he takes it out on me. Why do you always insult him? Miss, please say something, tell the mister to stop. I always get caught up in the middle of it for hours and hours.

Leaving behind the butterflies, because he is irritated despite his cautious step and long thick fur, he goes to the kitchen, sits in front of the window and starts growling.

It’s a deaf moan, with unexpected dark lows, with a hint of wailing that also contains a threat, contempt, livid hostility toward the gestures, words and attempts of others.

He is capable of going on like this for an entire afternoon. On the other side of the window’s glass frame, there is a small terrace that ends in a yellow wall over which the shadow of a swallow or a dove rarely glides.

But nothing, neither calling out to him nor flying shadows shake up his rigidity, hunkering down with enmity. Not even the sounds coming from the bathroom, where his mistress washes her hands before going back out to return to the office.

Bye—says the wife as she puts on her light coat:—Remember to make that phone call.

—Ok, Ada. Bye. See you later—responds the husband as he looks around his newspaper for a moment.

If they had not mocked him with those assassination threats, he would have started behind Mrs. Ada, would have accompanied her to the door, would have shaken his whiskers in resignation at seeing her go out.

But with everything that had happened at the table, he will not leave the kitchen until dark. He will give up television, the couch, solemn walks in front of the mirror.

—Here we go again—says the maid pouring the man’s coffee as he reads the newspaper:—He is offended to death. Come on, do something. Otherwise he will mope around all day.

—Oh yeah?—the man laughs with the coffee cup in his hand:—Listen here, Your Excellence. Come here. Now! Otherwise I’ll get up and strangle you.

—You know what you are? A headstrong troublemaker—the maid lights up.

The man keeps laughing as he mixes the sugar into his coffee, but he has heard him from the kitchen, and now increases his growling, his tail going from the most stone stiff immobility to shivering brief flicks, and his eyes are angrily palpitating.

—Calm down, come on, calm down. You should not pay attention to that hardhead. He does it on purpose. Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you like this—the maid tries to pacify him in the kitchen.

It’s an impossible undertaking because he won’t give in. Even if they had left him alone at home, he would have still stayed in the kitchen motionless, ignoring the butterflies, the couch, the television, the mirror, waiting for Mrs. Ada to come back and bring with her or invent a little bit of peace.

—Dear young lady, I’m going out—the man notifies her laughing from the hallway:—Have a good afternoon. Tonight we’ll get down to business.

—Did you hear? He left. Come on, stop it. Be nice—says the maid in the kitchen, as soon as the door has closed behind them.

But she would never dare touch him. Perhaps out of fear. Perhaps it’s that more complicated diffidence that certain women feel towards cats. For sure, she would never pick him up in her arms to move him away from the window. She can speak to him, yes. But she also knows that her voice, her opinions and her consolations count for nothing for those tense ears, that spine curved with well-nourished fur.

And he looks out and waits, and sits with his growling that seems to come from faraway muffled bronzes.

Translation: Guido Gozzano Grandmother Hope's Friend, Part 2

Maxfield Parrish, The Sugar-plum Tree, 1904

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of the poem L'amica di Nonna Speranza or Grandmother Hope's Friend by the Italian poet Guido Gozzano. This is Part 2. The poem describes the homecoming from school of a young boy's grandmother Speranza (Hope) and her best friend Carlotta, the romantic center of the boy's eclectic but familiar home life of mismatched objects and savory characters just before Italy's unification. The poem is peppered with literary allusions as well as historical ones. 

Grandmother Hope’s Friend by Guido Gozzano, Part 2

“Radetzki? What say you? The armistice…the peace, the peace that now reigns…
That young king of Sardaigne is a man of great judgment indeed!—

“He is certainly a tireless soul…—he’s strong, he’s vigilant, he’s quick!—
“Is he handsome? — Not handsome not a bit…—He likes women above all…

“Hope!” (slowly leaning forward in a sibylline tone, as if begging your pardon)
“Carlotta! Go down into the garden: go and play badminton, go on!”

So the happy friends with a curtsey, in perfect poise,
respectfully leave the noise, of the uncles and aunts in a frenzy.

Alas! While they were at play, a birdie, that was hit much too hard,
never again came downward, from a nearby chestnut tree!

The friends lean over the balustrade, and look out at the Lake,
they dream of love awake, in lustrious daydreams in the shade.

“…if you only saw what teeth, what a smile! — How old? — Twenty-eight.
— A poet? She frequents of late, the salon of the Maffei countess. Been a while.

It certainly won’t die, the day won’t languish. It lights up the lawn
in velvet; like dawn, with bloody stigmatas of anguish;

finally it goes out, but slow. The mountains darken in a chorus:
the Sun sheds its gold flawless, the Moon dons silver aglow.

Oh Romantic Moon, behind a wispy cloud, you kiss the treetops
of the poplars arched in crops, like a child puzzled, young browed.

An entire past’s dream, settles into your crescent:
you are perhaps reminiscent, of the prints in a literary magazine.

Have you perhaps seen the empty houses, of Parisiana La Bella?
Perhaps in the latest novella, you are that which Young Werther espouses?

“Future dreams to come, sigh. — The lake has become more dense
with stars—…what do you think?…— I cannot dispense…—How would you like to die?

“Yes!—It seems like the sky reveals, more stars in the water, brighter.
Leaning over the rails feeling lighter, we dreamed between two azurine seals…

“It’s like I am floating: I am soaring above!… Do you know Mazzini…
— Do you like him?— What divine terzini… He gave me that book on love,

remember? that tells about how a guy, in love but without a farthing,
he kills himself for a darling, a darling who had the same name as I.

Carlotta! A name not elegant but sweet! Which like the perfumes I don’t disparage
you bring to life the carriage, the scarves, the crinoline, what a feat…

Oh grandmother’s friend I know, the flowerbeds where you were reading
the story of Jacopo misleading, in the tender book by Foscolo.

With such sadness and sorrow, in my notebook I mark the date:
the year is eighteen fifty on June twenty-eight, I immortalize you for the day and the morrow.

You stand as if ravished in a hymn; looking deeply into the sky,
and your index on your lip as you try a demeanor romantic and dim.

That day—Woe me!—you were wearing a pink gown,
to have your portrait taken down, by a photographer—What novelty!

But I can no longer see you in the flower, oh Grandmother’s friend! Where are you?
oh alone—so that maybe I too—may love out of love’s power.

Read Part 1.

Translation: Extract of Malaria by Giovanni Verga

Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Malaria, 1883

This is Bora Mici's original translation of the beginning of the short story Malaria by Giovanni Verga. Verga was a proponent and practitioner of Verismo, or Italian Naturalism, a 19th century literary movement, which often focused on the lives of the poor and how their character and habits were inadvertently informed and determined by the environment in which they grew up or lived. Naturalist authors used a positivist sociological framework in order to bring to light the close relationship between the individual and society. Verga was also very interested in the relationship between the individual and the natural environment since he often wrote about rural settings. This particular passage shows how Sicilian farmers live and breathe the malaria that haunts their land and daily existence. 

Malaria extract, by Giovanni Verga

And you think you can touch it with your hands—like the replete land that smokes there, everywhere, all around the mountains that encircle it, from Agnone to Mongibello with its snowcaps—stagnant in the plain, like the sweltering July heat. The scorching sun and the pale moon are born and die there, and the Pleiades, that seem to navigate in an evaporating sea, and the birds and the white daisies of spring, and the burnt summer; and the ducks pass by in long, dark rows through the overcast autumn, and the river shimmers as if it were metallic, between wide, abandoned banks, white, threadbare and pebble-strewn; and at the bottom, Lake Lentini, like a pond, with its flat shores, without a single tree, without a boat, smooth and still. The rare oxen, chest-deep in mud, begrudgingly go to pasture on the pebbly riverbed in their hirsute hides. When the herd’s sad bell rings, the yellow wagtails fly away in the silence. They too are silent. And the shepherd himself, who is also a feverish yellow and white from the dust, blinks for a second with his swollen eyelids, lifting his head in the shadows of the dry reeds.

It’s that the malaria seeps into your bones through the bread you eat, and when you open your mouth to speak as you are walking along the suffocating dusty, sunny roads, and your knees give, or you let yourself fall onto the saddle of your trudging mule with your head leaning forward. Lentini, Francofonte and Paterno try in vain to clamber onto the first few hills, like lost sheep scurrying from the plane, and to line themselves with orange trees, vines and evergreen vegetable gardens; the malaria gets hold of the inhabitants on the empty streets and nails them to the doorways of their houses, whose plaster is crumbling under the sun. They feverishly shiver there under their greatcoats and the blankets thrown over their shoulders.

Down there in the plain, the houses are rare and melancholy looking, along the sun-worn streets, standing between two piles of smoking fertilizer, leaning against the faltering make-do shelter, where the horses are waiting for their next shift with listless eyes in front of empty troughs.—Or you can find it on the lake’s shore, where the inn’s decrepit wooden sign hangs on the doorway, in the large, sad, empty rooms, and the innkeeper who snoozes on the threshold with his head bound in a handkerchief, looking out, every time he wakes up, for whether a thirsty passenger is arriving. Or on the white wooden boxes, topped off by four spindly and gray eucalyptuses like feathers, along the railroad tracks that split the plain into two, as if with an ax, where the machine flies by, whistling like the autumn wind, and fiery sparks glow at night. —Or finally, here and there, on the perimeter of the plots, marked by a recently cut shaft, and the rooftops shored up from the outside, the broken shutters, in front of the crumbling barn, in the shadow of the tall straw piles where the chickens sleep with their heads under their wings, and a donkey lets his head fall with his mouth still full of straw, and a dog lifts up his head suspiciously, and hoarsely barks at the stone that is detaching from the plaster; from the lizard that crawls, to the leaf that shakes in the still countryside.

In the evening, as soon as the sun goes down, dried up men appear in the doorways under poor straw hats and in wide canvas underpants, yawning and stretching their arms; and half-naked women with dark shoulders, breastfeeding pale and already exhausted children. Who knows how they will become dark and tall, and how they will roll around in the grass when winter returns, and the courtyard turns green once again, and the blue sky, and all around, the countryside smiles under the sun. And who knows where they are and why all those people rush to the lonely small churches for Mass on Sunday, surrounded by the hedgerows of prickly pears, ten miles around, as far as one can hear the broken bell ring in the never-ending plain. However, God has also blessed this land of malaria. In June, the ears fall to the ground under their weight, and as the plowshare turns the soil in November, the furrows smoke as if they had blood in their veins. So it is only natural that those who plant and harvest fall to the ground like mature ears because God has said: “You must earn the bread you eat with your own sweat.” So that when the feverish sweat leaves someone stiff on their cornhusk mat, and there’s no longer any need for sulfate or eucalyptus tea, they load them onto the hay cart, or across a donkey saddle, or on a ladder, whatever works, with a sack on their face, and they take them into the little solitary church, under the prickly pears with their thorns, but whose fruits no one therefore eats. The women cry in a circle, and the men look on while smoking.

Translation: The Canary Prince as told by Italo Calvino, Part 2

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Music, 1862

This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of the fairytale The Canary Prince, Il Principe canarino, as told by Italo Calvino. It tells a story of treachery, love, bravery and ingenuity that integrates many traditional fairytales, including Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel and lesser known ones.

The Canary Prince by Italo Calvino, Part 2

“I like you,” said the old woman. “So I will help you.” And after knocking on the castle’s door, she gave the Court maidens a big old book with frayed and oily pages, saying it was a gift for the Princess so she could spend her time reading. The maidens brought it to the girl who immediately opened it and read, “This is a magical book. If you turn the pages in the right direction, the man will become a bird, and if you turn them in the opposite direction, he will become a man again.”

The girl ran to the window, placed the book on the windowsill and quickly began to turn the pages while looking at the young man dressed in yellow standing in the middle of the path. And there you have it, from the young man dressed in yellow that he was—he moved his arms, shook his wings—he had become a canary; the canary took flight and there he was already higher than the treetops, he was coming toward her and landed on the cushion on the windowsill. The Princess could not resist the temptation to take that beautiful canary in the palm of her hand and kiss it. Then she remembered it was a young man and felt ashamed. Then she thought of it again and was no longer ashamed, but she could not wait to transform him into a young man again, like he had been before. She took the book again, leafed through the pages, making them flow in the opposite direction, and there was the canary that was picking at its yellow feathers, shaking its wings, moving its arms and had once again become the young man dressed in yellow hunting pants, on his knees before her telling her, “I love you!”

When they had finished confessing their love to one another, it was already evening. The Princess slowly began turning the pages of the book. The young man, who was looking into her eyes, became a canary again, flew to the windowsill, then onto the waterspout. Then he let the air carry him and went down in large swoops, landing on the lowest branch of a tree. Then she turned the pages in the opposite direction and the canary became a Prince. The Prince jumped to the ground, whistled to his dogs, blew a kiss toward the window, and went away down the path.

So everyday, the pages of the book turned in order to make the Prince fly to the window on the tower top, turned again to re-endow him with his human form, then turned again to make him fly away, and turned one last time to make him go home. The two young people had never been so happy.

One day, the Queen came to see her stepdaughter. She walked about the room, as usual saying, “You’re doing well, no? I see you’ve lost a bit of weight, but it’s nothing, right? You’ve never been so well? Isn’t it so?” And in the meantime, she made sure everything was in its place: she opened the window, looked outside, and down on the path, she saw the Prince dressed in yellow that was approaching with his dogs. “If this prissy little thing thinks she is going to make eyes at the windowsill, I will teach her a lesson,” she thought. She asked her to go prepare a glass of sugar water; then quickly she removed five or six pins from her hair and stuck them into the cushion, so that they were head up but no one could see them coming through. “This way she’ll think twice before she looks out the window again!” The girl returned with the sugar water, and she said to her, “Oh, I am not thirsty anymore. Why don’t you drink it little one? I have to go back to your father. You don’t need anything, right? Bye, then,” and she left.

As soon as the Queen’s carriage had disappeared, the girl hurried to turn the pages of the book. The Prince turned into a canary, flew to the window and swooped like an arrow onto the cushion. Immediately a painful high-pitched chirping could be heard. The yellow feathers were stained with blood. The hairpins had speared the canary in the chest. He lifted himself with a desperate thrashing of the wings, let the wind carry him, descended in uncertain swoops, and landed on the ground with his wings open. The frightened Princess, who still had not completely realized what had happened, rapidly turned the pages in the opposite direction hoping that if she regave him his human form, the piercings would disappear. But alas. The Prince reappeared with blood squirting out of deep wounds that tore through his yellow chest, and lay face down on the ground surrounded by his dogs.

Read Part 1.