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. 

Translation: Words by Salvatore Quasimodo

Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, 1485

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of the short poem Words, or Parola in Italian, by the 20th century Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo. This poem expresses the poet's dilemma regarding his use of words to enchant others and himself, and how once an idea or an image has been rendered in words, much like once we have labelled something or someone we love, its aura disappears and we are left with nothing but our words, which also no longer provide consolation. In order to persevere in our endeavors, we must always leave the horizon of our expectations partially undefined.

Words by Salvatore Quasimodo

You laugh that I waste away for syllables 

and wrap around myself 

skies and hills, a blue hedgerow 

and the rustling of elm trees 

and the worried voices of brooks; 

that I swindle youth 

with clouds and colors 

which light shatters. 

I know you. Head over heels for you 

beauty lifts up your breasts, 

hollows out at the hipbones in a smooth curve 

widens around your timorous pubis, 

and redescends in a harmony of forms 

to your pretty feet with ten seashells. 

But if I get a hold you, there: 

oh words you also make me sad.

Translation: Art by Théophile Gautier

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913

This is Bora Mici's original French to English translation of the poem L'art by the 19th century French poet Théophile Gautier, known for having pronounced that art is created for its own sake, or "L'art pour l'art." This poem is taken from the collection Emaux et Camées, or Enamels and Cameos, in which the poet likens the creative process of a visual artist to that of a poet. Unlike the Romantic poets of his period, Gautier wrote in a much more simplistic, almost naive, manner and relished the sensual nature of words and what they represented. He tried to fashion what he wrote about as if he were applying color and texture to it, like a visual artist. In its original version, this particular poem, which I have translated a bit loosely in certain places, while still trying to retain its rhyme scheme and structure, is more conceptual and abstract than Gautier's other poems and is written in extremely simple verse. French being a language that is more prone to rhyming than English, I had to make a few concessions in my version. 

Art by Théophile Gautier

Yes, prettier is art that comes from
A shape worked with terse
Affront,
Marble, onyx, enamel, verse.

No feigned constraints upon!
But in order to walk upright
You don,
Oh Muse, a buskin slender and tight.

Away with rhythm and suit
Like a shoe that none fits,
Every foot
tries it on for fashion’s sake and quits!

Sculptor, push and plumb
The clay that molds
Your thumb,
When the mind wanderingly unfolds;

Wrestle with the Carrara stone,
With the Parian marble demure
Rarest alone
Guardians of the pure contour;

Borrow from Syracuse
Its bronze where sternly
The Muse
strikes a charming line firmly;

With a delicate touch
Seek in the agate you file
Not trying much
Apollo’s profile.

Painter, avoid water based hues,
And fix the color tones
Delicate blues
In the enameler’s oven stones.

Render the blue mermaids,
Which twist their tails
In myriad braids
As heraldic whales.

In her cloud-like trilobe
The Virgin and Child,
The globe
Let the Cross above it beguile.

Everything fades. — Only art robust
Possesses eternity.
The bust
Survives urbanity.

And the austere medallion
That the farmer unearths
With his scallion
Reveals royal births.

The gods themselves expire,
But the sovereign songs
Forever inspire
Like metals they are strong.

File, chisel, sculpt;
May your wandering dreams
Find hold
In the block that redeems!