Translation: Gianni Rodari on Humility and Non-conformity

John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, 1903

Today I am going to be brief since Gianni Rodari and his children's parables command brevity, which we are told is the soul of wit. This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of two more short children's stories and poems by Gianni Rodari published in his Book of Errors, Libro degli errori, in Italian. They are funny and ironic and biting and as usual attempt to teach a lesson, in this case another lesson of humility and non-conformism. The poem presented some challenges of translation because Rodari's verse and prose is written in quite simple, day-to-day Italian and I had to resort to a bit of flourish, as usual, in order to retain the rhyme scheme. I would say this is one of my perennial challenges in translating poems. I'd rather keep the rhyme scheme because I love its musicality, but it often means straying from the simplicity of the original text. I suppose there is always a compromise that has to be reached between one format and another, one person and another, one language and another and one mind and another. All finished things are the result of such a compromise.   

The Echo That Was Wrong

Don’t come to me anymore to sing the praises of the echo. Yesterday they took me to test one out. I started with simple little math questions:

“How much is two times two?”

“Two,” responded the echo without even thinking. We were off to a good start, needless to say.

“How much is three times three?”

“Three,” shouted out joyfully the little nitwit. Obviously, math was not her forte. In order to give her another opportunity to show off what she knew, I decided to ask her:

“Listen, but think for a moment before answering. Which is bigger Rome or Como?”

“Como,” exulted the echo.

Ok, let’s forget geography too. Let’s try history. Who founded Rome, Romulus or Manfredini?

“Manfredini,” shouted the echo. A diehard fan too! I could not restrain myself anymore, and I wanted to give her the final blow:

“Who is dumber me or you?”

“You!” responded the echo. How impertinent!

No, no. Please don’t come to me anymore to sing the praises of the echo, etc. etc.

------------------------

A Wooden King

Once upon a time there was a wooden king.
He had a head of wood
a crown of wood
he was all made of wood, for then
he was just a statue of a sovereign.
The termites ate at his mantle
The spiders made their web
between his nose and his ears.
He was made of wood, and he was also quite advanced in years.
That king’s statue was so old
that the king of that statue
was already dead, buried and consumed
at the bottom of the past unexhumed
where real kings go
with all of their kingdoms
and where don’t go
wooden symbols.

Translation: Gianni Rodari on Humility

Today I was looking for some simple fun, but since I am incapable of having complete simple fun without a lesson to learn or to impart, I have translated two texts from The Book of Errors, Il libro degli errori in Italian, so this is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of The Best Man in the World and Who Is In Charge? by the famous Italian children's author Gianni Rodari. His texts often feature plays on words and little lessons in morality or grammar, or sometimes both, dispensed with great humor. Both of these stories spoke to me on this cloudy day at the end of October, the first truly chilly day, as the leaves turn bright reds and yellows, the colors of rust. I thought we could all take a moment to gather our thoughts and reflect on what truly matters in life.  

Oscar Kokoschka, Self-Portrait of a "Degenerate Artist" 1937

The Best Man in the World, L'uomo più bravo del Mondo in Italian language, translated by Bora Mici

I know the story of the best man in the world, but I don’t know if you will like it. Should I tell it to you anyways? I’ll tell it.

His name was First, and ever since he was little, he had decided, "First in name and in actuality. I will always be the first in everything."

And instead he was always last.

He was the last one to be afraid, the last one to run away, the last one to speak lies, the last one to do mean things. In fact, he was so behind everyone that he did not even do anything mean.

His friends all came in first at something. One of them was the best thief in the city, another one was the best at being arrogant, a third was the most inane on the block. He, on the other hand, was the last one to say silly things, and when it was his turn to say something senseless, he kept quiet.

He was the best man in the world, but he was the last one to get wind of it. He was so behind that he did not even know it at all.

Pablo Picasso, The Happy Family, 1917

Who Is In Charge? Chi commanda? in Italian language, translated by Bora Mici

I asked a little girl, “Who is in charge at home?”
She keeps quiet and looks at me.
“Come on, tell me, who is in charge at your house, mommy or daddy?”
The girl just looks at me and does not respond.
“So, will you tell me? Tell me who is the boss.”
Again, she looks at me perplexed.
“Don’t you know what it means to be in charge?”
Yes, she does know.
“Don’t you know what boss means?”
Yes, she does know.
“What’s the problem then?”

She looks at me and keeps quiet. Should I get angry? Or maybe she is mute, the poor thing. Now she runs away, indeed. She runs all the way to the top of the field, and from up there, she turns around, sticks her tongue out and shouts toward me, laughing, “No one is in charge because me love each other.”

Translation: Alberto Moravia, The Disobedience

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymous Bosch, 1490-1500

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of an excerpt from Alberto Moravia's novella La disubbidienza, or The Disobedience in English. An adolescent boy goes through a crisis of metamorphosis that leads to a prolonged period of convalescence. Luca slowly rejects everything he has been given and taught by his parents and his teachers only to be reborn and to relearn to live through an acceptance and a newfound sense of belonging. His morose dejection and symbolic suicide, which he initially conceives as a game of progressive material renunciation, give way to a transformation in which he learns to trust and take pleasure in life. It's interesting to me that Moravia devotes the greatest part of his text to the unraveling of his character, describing it in great symbolic detail through his rejection of the rituals of the everyday life of a schoolboy, born into a well-to-do, loving, bourgeois family. The end of the novella, when the character finally begins to experience the joy of being alive, reads more as a resolution than as an important step in Luca's transformation journey, even though the author does stop to examine it over a few pages. I think it's important to describe what makes for a happy existence in just as much detail as what causes internal crises because both are significant and real parts of life. Is beautifully rendered suffering the only realm of great literature, leaving the rest to self-help books and religion? Or can literature reinvent itself to incorporate these other aspects of being in this world more than just symbolically or momentarily? 

Excerpt from The Disobedience by Alberto Moravia, translated from Italian into English by Bora Mici        

It was the beginning of December. One afternoon, Luca left home carrying all the money he had in his coat pockets, silver coins and small bills. The rain had stopped after many days. The sky was clean but dark, a smoky and even color, as if the usual blue had been replaced not by the shifting gray clouds that liquefy themselves into rain or are pushed away by the wind, but by another, more still, and gloomier hue that would last forever. There was that sense of depletion that follows storms in the fresh, windless air; but crows were flying low, seemingly warning with their aquatic caws, that it would rain again. Looking up a the sky and fiddling around with the money in his pocket, Luca headed toward the public garden, located not too far from his home. He knew that at that hour no one would be there and that he could carry out his plan without worrying about being observed. He went through the gate and started making his way into the garden. He knew where he was headed, a place which was tied to a kind of childhood obsession in his memory. It was a small plaza surrounded by tall leafy oak trees on three sides and, on the fourth, by an ornate wall with nooks, columns and and roman epitaphs. On the other side of the wall stretched out the zoo, and the roaring of the hungry beasts could often be heard. When he was a child, his governesses had frequently brought Luca to walk in that melancholy and lonely plaza, with white gravel framed by the dark fronds of the bronzy oak trees. While his governess sat on an overturned capital and read a book, Luca climbed all the way to the iron grille of the fake windows and tried to look down at the zoo. Otherwise, he thoroughly searched the wooded area at the margins of the plaza; it was very shady, with its blanket of many layers of dead leaves on the surface, shiny and wet underneath; here and there grew nettle bushes that seemed to nourish their light green color with all that rotting stuff, which filled Luca with a great disgust. One day, at his house, the governess and the maid had begun discussing a crime. A young man had been killed, and his body had not been found; but some bloody clothes and and the place where they had been located made people think that the dead body had been buried in one of the many gardens in the city. Luca had listened to the maid’s comments for a long time without saying anything, pretending to play, and finally had asked her: “Why did they kill him?” The woman had responded in a sententious and bitter tone: “Because he was nice and good…that’s why…because he was not made for this world.” And since this phrase had made an impression on him, Luca asked nothing further. But later, he could not tell why, he had gotten it into his head that the young man’s dead body had been buried in that same plaza where he went walking so often with his governess. This conclusion did not have any basis in reality, not even a far-fetched or tiny one; but maybe, it was precisely because of that that it seemed irrefutable. His mind fixated on this terrible but fascinating secret, and as he walked around the plaza, he liked being able to look at the precise place where the dead body was decomposing underground. It was a corner between the ornate wall and the woods at the foot of a tall oak tree; and Luca would often stop to look at that place, searching with his foot through the dead leaves or digging up the soft dirt with a stick. He knew that the dead man lay under there and would not have given up his conviction for anything. On the other hand, by turning it over in his mind, he had reconstructed the crime in his own fashion and had even imagined what the victim and the killers looked like. The former must have been a nice and good young man, just like the woman had said, but of a special kind of goodness and niceness, which were not at all ostentatious but secret, invisible to most; as for the latter, Luca saw them exactly in the same way he saw the people on the street, normal and anonymous pedestrians. Maybe they had killed him to steal his possessions, as the newspapers wrote; but in reality, according to what the woman had said, it had been because of his goodness and niceness, in order to remove him from this world, to which he did not belong. Thinking about the young man and his death, he felt a horrifying attraction and a great pity at the same time. Then, with the passage of time and nearly without realizing it, he had imagined that he was the victim and that the body buried under the oak tree was his own. This doubling, inspired by an unknown fantastical infatuation for the person and destiny of the victim, seemed natural to him and was not the first. At other moments, while reading adventure books, he had dreamed of being a heroic and fortunate character. What was exceptional was that this was the first time he had fallen in love with such a lugubrious fate; and he darkly sensed that, unlike in other similar doublings, this was due to deep reasons, to an obsession that expressed everything to which his life was devoted. As often happens, such an obsession had gradually become lighter over the years, just like the fog that dissipates in the sun, and had changed into a desolate memory that had finally vanished into forgetfulness.

But now, having gone back to the plaza, the obsession was coming back, though in a different way. He knew now that no one had ever been buried in the plaza; but sacralized in his imagination, the plaza still remained that place where something dead had to be buried. He would bury his money in the very place where he had once thought the victim lay; and in burying the money, in a certain way, he would also bury himself; or at least that part of himself that was attached to money. Also, memories of buried treasure in adventurous settings combined themselves vaguely with these more grave resolutions, echoes of the things he’d read in early adolescence.

He mainly had in mind The Gold-Bug by Poe. But as a kind of alibi, destined to remove any tragedy from the sacrifice, and keep it within the limits of the game. Besides the money, he had also brought with him a little blue glass bottle, inside of which he had placed a map with the directions for finding his small buried treasure. Not knowing much about cryptography, Luca had contented himself with writing the directions in academic jargon, adding an f to every syllable. Just like in the short story, he would hide this vial in the hollow of one of the oak trees that surrounded the plaza.

Looking ahead, he crossed a big square meadow. The oak trees in the wooded area swayed back and forth at the end of this opening, their dark trunks resembling a crowd about to go into a panic, undulating before dispersing. Beyond the oak trees, in the pale whiteness of the gravel coursed by the daylight, you could glimpse the plaza with the decorative wall. He entered the wooded area, enjoying walking on the upright layer of dead leaves. In the underwood’s silence, he heard a subtle bird’s call; and then, turning around, he saw the bird itself, big and black, jumping up and down on the ground and then taking flight to hide among the leaves. He even noticed that, while he was making his way through the woods, he felt a sense of liberty; and he thought that it was nice to be able to act, even if it meant destroying his own life; this is precisely what acting meant; doing things according to our ideas rather than out of necessity.

There was no one in the plaza. He walked up and down it for a while thinking about the time when he had been certain about the buried dead man, and it seemed to him that the lonely and slightly sinister atmosphere that had seduced him when he was a child was intact again. There was the decorative wall with its empty nooks, the broken epitaphs, the cornices that were coming apart. There were the large windows, with their alcoves, and the big iron bars. He climbed up to one of those windows and looked at the other side into the zoo. He saw the thick foliage of a bay leaf bush, but through the leaves, it seemed to him to glimpse the green and golden plumage of a large exotic bird. A faraway roar startled him; then, as always, the beasts were hungry. He climbed down from the window and approached the designated place. The same oak tree was still there, old, hollowed out with a gaping hole, with the main branch hanging out over the plaza and leaning onto a brick support wall, like the arm of a cripple leans on a crutch. The dead man lay under the oak tree. All of a sudden, the cruel and pathetic sentiment of having been buried himself came back to him, him, killed without any pity.

He went on his knees under the tree and started digging a hole with his pocketknife. Under the dead leaves, the ground was light and wet, full of rotting pieces of bark. He displaced the dirt and then removed it with his hand and put it to the side in a small hill. When he had finished digging the hole, he slowly removed the bills from his pocket and started tearing them one by one, letting the pieces fall to the bottom of the hole. He realized that he felt a deep hatred for that money, like you hate someone who has oppressed you, and against whom you have rebelled. The idea that his parents had so much respect for money and that, without knowing it, for so many years, he had prayed in front of a safe full of that money, also contributed to his resentment. He felt that he was vindicated for all those prayers in tearing up the money, making reparations. But money was sacred too; even if in an entirely different way from the sacred image it was hiding behind while he was praying. It was sacred because of those royal effigies and those symbols that guaranteed its value; and it was sacred because it could have meant happiness for so many people. For example, for the poor man on the street, who always extended his hand toward him when he was going to school in the morning. But giving it to a poor man would have ultimately meant respecting it, reaffirming its value. And instead, Luca really wanted to destroy it, not just in his own desires, but also in reality. Loathed idol, as he felt, nothing further was necessary beyond that degrading tearing up to desacralize it forever.

When he had finished ripping up the bills, he mixed up the pieces and then, he pulled an envelope full of silver coins out of his pocket and shoved it at the bottom of the hole on top of the bills. He carried out these actions with a sense of grave and aware rigor, even if tinged by a mortal sadness. The man who had been killed and buried came back to his mind and once again that strange pity for himself overcame him. In the meantime, he filled the hole with dirt. When he was finished, he evened out the ground and covered everything with the carpet of dead leaves.

He stood up, cleaning his wet and dirty knees, and then he remembered the turquoise glass bottle and Poe’s short story. But this time, he did not have the courage to carry out that part of the plan. He felt a lugubrious and enchanted sadness, and he could understand that, after all, it had not been a game. He was not the bloodthirsty and insensitive pirate at the end of a life of adventure and freedom; that plaza was not the deserted coastline of a savage land; ultimately, no one would have ever discovered his meagre treasure of torn up bills and coins with joy. His own mediocrity, that of the place and of the treasure, all of a sudden seemed to him like the best proof of the strenuous seriousness of what he was doing and of the impossibility to delude himself by attributing to it the value of a game. He took the little bottle out of his pocket, opened it, took out the piece of paper and tore it into tiny pieces. He crushed the bottle under his heel. As he was leaving, it seemed to him that he had acted like a madman, he was just unable to understand it out yet.

….

The train lunged forward, and this thrust seemed to him like a delightful contrast to his own inertia. What else was the train to him but that which had a direction, a goal, a will, just like the nurses’s passion and his parents’ concern? All of a sudden, he thought that it would have been nice to keep going like this for all of his life. Greater, if not more mysterious forces would have followed the train, the nurse, his parents, and he would have believed in them with the same trust and the same delight. He saw himself as a soldier in torn up clothes, wounded and hungry, part of an army, whose leaders and whose war, he knew nothing about, a beggar thrust into a poverty he was neither responsible for nor aware of; rich of a wealth of which he had not earned a single penny; elevated to a power he had not sought out; a priest in a church whose rites he did not know; dead in the end because of a catastrophe he had neither foreseen nor wanted to avoid. The noisy shifting of the train on the switches, the regular and fast beating of the wheels, the whistle that tore through the silence of the countryside, the very landscape fleeting backwards on the other side of the glass windows, stimulated the rhythm of his thoughts. Yes, now he had become part of a vast, whirling and powerful current in which he was just a blade of grass that could do nothing but allow itself to be dragged along, barely hoping to float all the way to the end. And he abandoned himself to it trustingly, with his eyes closed, like he had abandoned himself a few days ago into the nurse’s arms.
….

But the train, always following the slope, came out into an opening and, at the bottom of the gorge, above two smaller mountains completely covered by forests, Luca saw the towering summit of a mountain, snow white, that seemed very tall to him. The clouds had dissipated in the sky, and the sun was shining on that faraway snow making it glow. At that time, he did not even know why, at the sight of that intact whiteness, majestic and solitary, a sudden exaltation took over him. The idea of being transported and allowing himself to be transported trustingly toward an unknown destination came back to him; but this time, it was partially modified by the new sense of being transported and allowing himself to be transported toward that snow that was so high and so white. He started looking at the mountain with his eyes wide open; and the more he looked at it, the more he felt grow in him that trusting drunken exaltation. He understood that there was no objective reason to feel so happy just because he could see the snowcapped summit of a mountain; and yet, he could not help but realize that it was precisely that view that was putting into motion the mechanism of his deepest hope, which had been blocked for so long. Almost without intending, he turned to his mother and asked, “And the nurse?”
….

Luca closed his eyes. At that same instant, the train entered into a tunnel, letting out a long mournful whistle. When Luca reopened his eyes, he only saw darkness, while a wet wind blew into his face from the tenebrous walls, mixed with spraying water and vapor clouds. Echoing in the tunnel’s vault, the clanging of the wheels seemed to him like a monotonous and exalted voice that was always repeating the same words. It also seemed to him that he could make out these words. They were the same ones, full of hope, that had accompanied him day after day in his slow healing after he had woken up from his delirium; and he understood that, from now on, not just the bustling of a train in a tunnel or the whiteness of the snow on top of a mountain, but all things, would have a meaning for him and would speak to him in their mute language. Then, with another whistle, the train reemerged into the light of day.

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!

Translation: Salvatore Quasimodo, Alleyway

Alleyway in Talin, Estonia by Bora Mici

This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of the 20th-century Italian poet, Salvatore Quasimodo's poem Vicolo, or Alleyway. I chose to translate this poem because of its evocative imagery, which I found to be almost painterly in its choice of descriptive elements. I also enjoyed its simplicity, which is characteristic of Quasimodo. He marries an emotional rendering with a visual one, which all great artworks achieve. The alleyway is both typical and personal in this poem. We can all imagine what it is like to have been there. 

Salvatore Quasimodo, Vicolo by Bora Mici

Alleyway

Sometimes your voice calls me back,
and I don’t know what skies and waters
awaken within me:
the sun’s web that comes apart
on your walls which at evening were
a swinging back and forth of lamps
from the shops open late
full of wind and sadness.

Another time: a canvas cloth flapping in the courtyard
and at night a cry could be heard
of puppies and children.

Alleyway: a cross of houses
that softly call to each other,
and don’t know it is frightening
to be alone in the dark.

Translation: Italo Calvino, The Adventure of a Reader

George Bellows, Forty-two kids, 1907

This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of an extract from the short story "The Adventure of a Reader" or "L'avventura di un lettore" taken from Italo Calvino's collection of short stories Difficult Loves, or Gli amori difficili, in Italian. This collection contains several uniquely constructed love stories that highlight the psychological distance between the protagonists and those whom they love. In this particular story, Amedeo, an avid reader, who is more interested in books than in real life, is progressively torn between the engaging narrative he has his nose in and a typically attractive beach going woman, whose presence he initially observes and comments silently to himself from a distance, and the awkward encounters that ensue, bringing them closer and closer. In all of Calvino's short stories in this collection, as readers, we slowly zoom into the complexities and anticipations that get in the way of two lovers communicating clearly with each other. 

Italo Calvino, L’avventura di un lettore, by Bora Mici

At that point, Amedeo began talking about jellyfish: his direct knowledge was not very extensive, but he had read some books about famous fishermen and undersea explorers so—overlooking the minute fauna—he got around to speaking about the famous manta ray. The woman on holiday was listening to him while showing great interest, and now and then, she chimed in, always exaggeratedly, like women do. “Do you see this red spot I have on my arm? Do you think it could have been a jellyfish?” Amedeo touched the spot, located a little above the elbow, and said no. It was a little reddish because she had leaned on it while sunbathing.

And that was that. They said goodbye. She returned to her spot, and he returned to his and started reading again. It had been an intermission that had lasted just the right amount of time, neither more nor less, an unanticipated human interaction, (the lady had been polite, discrete and docile) precisely because it had been so understated. Now he experienced a much fuller and much more concrete attachment to the reality in his book, where everything had a meaning, a rhythm, and was important. Amedeo felt that everything was perfect: the printed page revealed a true life to him, deep and captivating, and when he raised his eyes, he encountered a random but pleasing correspondence between colors and feelings, a secondary and decorative world that could not engage him in any way. The tanned lady smiled at him and hinted a greeting from her beach mat. He also responded with a smile and a vague gesture and immediately looked down again. But the lady had said something.

“What?”

“Are you reading? Do you always read?”

“What?”

“Is it interesting?”

“Yes.”

“Enjoy the rest!”

“Thanks.”

He needed to no longer raise his eyes. At least until the end of the chapter. He read it in one breath. Now the lady had a cigarette in her mouth and was gesturing at him while pointing at it. Amedeo was under the impression that she had been trying to attract his attention for some time. “What?”

“Sorry, a match…”

“Ah no, you know what? I don’t smoke.”

The chapter was over. Amedeo quickly read the first few lines of the next one, which he found surprisingly enticing, but in order to attack the new chapter without distractions, he needed to deal with the problem of the match first. “Wait!” He got up, started jumping across the rocks, half stunned by the sun, until he found a group of people smoking. He borrowed a box of “Minerva” matches, ran back to the lady, lit her cigarette, and ran back to return the “Minerva” box. “Just keep it, you can keep it,” they told him. He ran back to the lady again and left the “Minerva” with her. She thanked him. He waited a moment before saying goodbye, but then he understood that after such hesitation, he had to say something else, and he said, “You’re not going into the water?”

“In a bit,” said the lady. “What about you?”

“I’ve already been.”

“And you won’t go in again?”

“Yes, I’ll read another chapter and then go for another swim.”

“Me too. I’ll smoke my cigarette and jump in.”

“Ok then. See you later.”

“Later.”

This semblance of an appointment restored a calmness in Amedeo, which, as he now realized, he had not experienced since he had first noticed the presence of the solitary woman on holiday. His conscience was no longer weighed down by the need to maintain any kind of imaginable relationship with that lady. Everything was postponed until the moment of the swim—a swim he would have taken anyways, even if it had not been for the lady—and now he could abandon himself to the pleasure of reading without regrets. He did so to such a degree that he had not realized that at some point—while he had still not reached the end of the chapter—the woman on holiday, who had finished her cigarette, had stood up and had come up to him to invite him to go swimming. He saw her wooden sandals and straight legs a little beyond his book, looked up, looked back down at the page—the sun was blinding—and read a few lines hurriedly. Then he went back to looking up and heard her saying, “Isn’t your head bursting? I’m jumping in!” It was still nice staying there, continuing to read and looking up now and then. But not being able to delay things any longer, Amedeo did something he would never have done. He skipped almost half a a page, until the conclusion of the chapter, which he read very attentively instead, and then he stood up.

“Let’s go! Are we jumping off the top?”

Translation: The Canary Prince as told by Italo Calvino, Part 3

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1882

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 3

At the dogs’ wailing, the other hunters arrived, rescued him, and carried him on a stretcher made of tree branches, without even looking up at the window of his beloved who was still terrified by pain and fear.

Back in his kingdom, the Prince did not give any signs of recovery, and the doctors did not know how to bring him any relief. The wounds would not close and continued to hurt. His father, the King, put up signs in all the street corners promising treasures to whomever figured out how to heal him; but no one could be found.

In the meantime, the Princess was heartbroken that she could not be near her beloved. She began to cut her sheets into thin strips and tie them together in order to make a very long rope, and one night, she used this rope to come down from the very high tower. She began to walk along the hunters’ path. But it was completely dark and the wolves were howling, so she thought it would be better to wait for morning and found an old oak with an opening in it, went inside and curled up in there, falling asleep immediately since she was dead tired. She woke up in the middle of the night and thought she had heard a whistle. She put her hand to her ear and heard another whistle, then a third and a fourth one. And she saw four candle flames approaching. They were four Old Hags, who came from the four corners of the world and had decided to meet under this tree. From a slit in the trunk, the Princess, invisible, spied on the four old women with the candles in their hands, who were having and party and cackling, “Hah! Hah! Hah!”

They lit a bonfire at the base of the tree and sat down to warm up and roast a couple of bats for dinner. After they had eaten their fill, they began to ask each other what they had seen that was remarkable around the world.

“I have seen the Turkish Sultan who bought himself twenty new wives.”

“I have seen the Chinese Emperor who had grown his braid by three meters.”

“I have seen the King of the Cannibals who ate his own Chamberlain by mistake”

“I have seen the nearby King, whose son is ill, and no one knows the remedy except for me.”

“And what is it?” asked the other three Witches.

“There is a loose tile in his room. All you have to do is lift up the tile and you will find a vial. In the vial, there is a potion that would make all his wounds disappear.”

From inside the tree, the Princess was about to scream out with joy. She had to bite her finger in order to keep quiet. At that point, the Old Hags had said everything they had to say to each other, and each went on its way.

The Princess jumped out of the tree, and at the light of dawn, started walking toward the city. At the first secondhand shop, she bought an old doctor’s smock, a pair of eyeglasses, and she went and knocked on the palace doors. At the sight of this paltry doctor, the servants did not want to let him enter, but the King said, “As things are, he cannot harm my son any further, because it’s impossible for him get any worse. Let this one try too.” The false doctor asked to be left alone with the patient, and it was granted.

When she was at the side of her lover, who was moaning unconscious in his bed, the Princess wanted to burst out into tears and shower him with kisses, but she contained herself because she had to quickly follow the Witch’s instructions. She began to walk up and down the room until she found the loose tile. She lifted it and found a small vial full of potion. She started to rub the Prince’s wounds with it. All she had to do was put her hand covered with potion on them and the wounds would disappear. Completely satisfied, she called the King, and the King saw his son without wounds, with the the color back in his cheeks, sleeping quietly.

“Ask me for what you wish, doctor,” said the King. “All of the riches of the State treasury are yours.”

“I don’t want any money,” said the doctor. “Give me only the Prince’s shield with the family emblem, the Prince’s banner and his yellow jacket, the bloody torn one.” And with these three objects in hand, she left.

Three days later, the King’s son was out hunting again. He passed by the castle in the middle of the woods, but he did not even lift his gaze toward the Princess’s window. She immediately took the book, turned the pages, and even though he was upset about it, the Prince was forced to transform into a canary. He flew into her room, and the Princess made him turn into a man again. “Let me go,” he said. “Isn’t it enough that you speared me with your pins and caused me so much suffering?” As it turns out, the Prince no longer felt any love for the girl, thinking she had been the cause of his misfortune.

The girl was about to faint, “But I saved you! I was the one that healed you!”

“It’s not true,” said the Prince. “The one who saved me was a foreign doctor, who wanted no other reward than my emblem, my banner and my bloody jacket.”

“Here is your emblem, here is your banner, and here is your jacket! I was that doctor. The pins were my stepmother’s cruelty!”

The Prince looked her in the eyes for a second gobsmacked.

She had never seemed so beautiful to him. He fell to her feet asking for forgiveness and declaring all his gratitude and love.

That same night, he told his father that he wanted to marry the girl from the castle in the woods. “You must only marry the daughter of a King or an Emperor,” said his father.

“I am marrying the girl who saved my life.”

And the wedding preparations were under way. All the Kings and Queens from the nearby surroundings were invited. The King who was the Princess’s father also came unwittingly. When he saw the bride walking to the altar, he exclaimed, “My daughter!”

“What do you mean?” asked the King who was the host. "My son’s bride is your daughter? Why did she not tell us?”

“Because,”—said the bride. “I no longer consider myself the daughter of a man who allowed my stepmother to imprison me.” And she pointed at the Queen with her index finger.

After hearing about all of his daughter’s misfortunes, the father was filled with compassion for her and contempt for his treacherous wife. And he did not even wait to return home to have her arrested. And so the wedding was celebrated with happiness and joy by all, except for the disgraced one.

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. 

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 Parole 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: The Canary Prince as told by Italo Calvino, Part 1

Veronica Veronese by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872

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 1

There was a King who had a daughter. Her mother had died and her stepmother was jealous of her and always badmouthed her to the King. The girl desperately tried to clear her name; but the stepmother was always a step ahead and the King, even though he loved his daughter, ended up believing the stepmother: and he told her she was allowed to send her away. However, she had to put her in a comfortable place because he would have never allowed her to be mistreated. “As for that,” said the stepmother, “don’t worry, don’t even think about it,” and she locked up the girl in a castle in the middle of the woods. She gathered a group of Court maidens and locked them up with her to keep her company with the instructions that they ought to neither let her go out nor sit by the window. Of course, she paid them from the coffers of the Royal House. The girl was given a comfortable room and all that she wanted to eat and drink: she just could not go out. The maidens, on the other hand, who were very well paid and had a lot of free time, kept to themselves and did not pay attention to her.

Now and then, the King asked his wife, “And how is our daughter? Is she doing anything interesting?” In order to make it seem like she was involved in her affairs, the Queen went to visit her. At the castle, as soon as she got out of her carriage, the maidens all ran to greet her and to tell her to not worry. The girl was doing very well and was very happy. The Queen climbed up to her room for a few minutes. “So, you are doing well, yes? You have everything you need, yes? I can see from your complexion that you are healthy. The air is good. So keep smiling! Good-bye!” And she left. She told the King that she had never seen his daughter so happy.

However, the Princess who was always alone in that room, with her escort who did not even look at her, spent her days sadly looking out of the window. She sat there with her elbows on the windowsill, and she would have gotten calluses on them if she had not thought to put a pillow underneath. The window looked upon the forest and all day long, the Princess saw nothing but the tops of the trees, the clouds and beneath, the hunters’ path. One day, the son of a King happened upon this path. He was following a wild boar and passing by the castle, which he thought was abandoned many years ago, he was surprised to notice signs of life: clothes drying between the balustrades, smoke in the chimneys, open windows. He was looking up at all this when he saw a beautiful girl sitting by a window and smiled at her. The girl also saw the Prince dressed in yellow hunting pants and carrying a musket, and she also smiled at him. They spent an hour looking and smiling at one another and also curtseying and bowing because the distance that separated them did not allow for other forms of communication.

The next day, the Prince dressed in yellow, showed up again with the excuse that he was going hunting, and they spent two hours looking at each other; and this time, other than exchanging smiles, curtseys and bows, they also put one hand on their hearts and shook their handkerchiefs for a long time. The third day, the Prince stayed for three hours, and they also blew each other a kiss with their fingertips. On the fourth day, he was there as always, when an Old Hag tumbled out from behind a tree and began to snigger: “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Who are you? What’s there to laugh about?” said the prince in a lively voice.

“It’s just that I have never seen two lovers who are so stupid as to stand so far away from one another!”

“If only I knew how to reach her Grandma!” said the Prince.

Read Part 2.

Translation: The Martian in Love by Stefano Benni, Part 3

This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of the short story Il marziano innamorato or The Martian in Love, in English, by the contemporary Italian author Stefano Benni. The story tells of an unlikely encounter between the Martian and the author and is told from the quirky point of view of the Martian. It includes delightful plays on words, descriptions of a desolate planet of origin and its contrast with all of the unusual colorful and variegated good stuff that can be had on Earth, and many comical situations arising from a miscomprehension of what is valuable to humans and what is not. Kraputnyk Armadillynk is on a quest to make his beloved girlfriend Lukzettina stop crying -- otherwise she will rust -- and find her an original gift that cannot be had on Becoda. 

The Martian in Love by Stefano Benni, Part 3

If that wasn’t gibolain, I don’t know what would be! Suddenly, however, the woman’s lights turned off and the man kicked her and started swearing. They are so violent after having gibolainated! The man passed in front of me and I heard him say:

— This pinball machine is a piece of crap, you can never win. And what’s this, a new vending machine? — And he touched my nose (which is not the nose).

—Don’t know—said the man who was handling the coffee machine—how should I know, the boss must have put it there. Hey, check out that chick that’s passing by!—

—Finally! I looked in the direction the two men were looking. Two things were going by: one was a yellow thing with the writing Taxi on it. The other one was a man with more trond in the front, pretty colored strands on the head and more lively eyes. I started following her discreetly until she met up with someone similar to herself. She said to her:

— Do you see that thing behind us? By now everyone thinks it’s something for advertising washing machines— Was I the thing?

—Then the first woman stops and exclaims:

—What a nice car! What wouldn’t I give to have one like it!—

What she is referring to as a car is a smokier and noisier quazzmobile. A little cumbersome to give as a gift but if it’s so liked…The cars were all lined up on the street standing still. Inside men and women sounded notes by hitting a button at the center of a trond. They sounded the note for hours and hours even though they seemed super tired. I understood: the car is a musical instrument!

—In a short while, the woman arrived to a place that said “parking” and found a yellow note on her car window. It must be the music sheet, I thought. Instead, the woman got angry, tore the piece of paper and started screaming:

—Traffic jams, traffic and now a fine! Rather than continue driving, she threw it in a ditch! We should burn all cars!” And she was off without even sounding a note.

—Alas, alas, it’s not such a great gift after all.

———————

—I started following another woman and I saw her meet up with a man. They entered into a quazz eatery. I made my way in too: I have learned that if I stand still no one says anything, and what’s more, they try to feed me coins. I pricked up my ears and heard the woman saying:

—Oh dear, this is the best gift you could have given me … it’s wonderful, I am speechless — and she kissed him.

—Gradually I made my way under their table. I looked, and guess what the woman has in her hands? A black case with a quazz necklace inside, those transparent pebbles that on Becoda can be found by the thousands in the ash. A real nice gift!

—Disappointed, I decided to draw inspiration from the television because here, just like on Becoda, it must tell almost all of the truth. I analyzed three hours of Earth news shows with my analogical-galactic computer, and the result was that the gift everyone wants, that everyone talks about and that everyone holds to be indispensable and desirable, is “facts”.

So I went into a small shop with the writing “We have everything” on it and without hesitating, I said:

—Please give me two facts right away, one for me and one for my fiancée. And I mean facts, not words—

The man looked at me askance and said:

—Look, I don’t know if you are a robot or a dwarf payed by some political party, but I’ll let you know that I’ve had it up to here with electoral campaign propaganda—

—Just a moment, please repeat—I tried to say, but other humans entered into the discussion raising their voices, and soon after started arguing and throwing quazz at each other’s heads. Having had enough, I left. I walked and walked, and exited the city arriving to this area.

—I thought about loading one of those gray rugs you call streets onto my astromobile. But it’s too heavy to roll up. Or I could have taken a slice of green fur. But I had not understood anything about Earth, and I would risk bringing not such a great gift with me. Everyone would laugh at me and at my Lukz. How discouraging! In that moment I heard some young humans speaking among themselves:

—So thirsty—says one of them.

—What wouldn’t I give for a chinotto—says another.

—Imagine—says the third one—what a gift it would be if someone were to bring us some here…—

—This time I turned on the rapid travel turbo-propeller and flew to the nearest store. I was ready to use the photon cannon too. At the counter there was a slight woman with two glass quazz in front of the eyes.

—Woman—I said—please give me all the chinottos you have—.

—You’re strange, child—She said, and she too touched my nose (which is not the nose). —I have four left, is that enough?

—Szyp—I said.

—That will be a dollar fifty—

Alas, I had not thought about this! But I had an idea: I put in her hand two or three of those shiny quazz that the other woman had liked so much. I saw her go pale and become speechless. Done! I flew back and landed in front of the three young humans.

—Hey so funny—they said—what are you?—

—I am the robot from the win-the-chinotto competition—I said—and you have won three, one for each—

—Wow!—screamed the first one.

—Great!—howled the second one.

—I’m so happy—said the third, and right away they start breaking them open so that the oil comes out and they drink it. All the children did the same.

—So, all in all—I asked—it’s a nice gift, isn’t it?

———————

—It’s the nicest gift I could have expected today—said the first one.

—It’s a wonderful gift—confirmed the second one.

—Now I feel good—said the third.

—This time I’ve done it. We said goodbye: they waved their hands, and I waved my nose, the real one, which is located on my lower right side. I returned to my quazzmobile in order to admire the chinotto that I had put away for Lukz. How beautiful, what transparency, with the dark oil that moves inside, and what a great smell. On the top there’s also a trondy crenelated piece of jewelry with the writing “Chinotto” on it in fire-red letters. What a gift for wearing on one’s neck or on one’s head, or in the ears, what a gift for my love!

—Damn! I was in such a hurry to return home that I flooded the engine, and the quazzmobile stopped running. Now you have found me, sir, and I know very well what you want: you want my precious chinotto. But I beg you, take anything else, all of my brilliant quazz, my cranial skull cap, the piece of my quazzmobile that you like the most, the trondlike steering wheel or the astrodog that nods, I’ll give you all of it, but please leave me the chinotto! Lukzenerper is waiting for me.

—Mr. Kraputnyk—I respond—not only do I not want to take the chinotto, but in the name of the Earth’s people, I moreover hand over to you a personal gift: it’s a chinotto accessory. If one day you want your friends to be able to smell the chinotto, use this and the container will open…

—Pretty object. And what’s it called?

—A bottle opener.

—Bottall-opaner—repeated after me the moved Becodinian.

—Thanks, it’s too much for me. Who knows how much it costs!

—There there—I said—don’t think much of it and go home. They’re waiting for you.—With my 500 I gave him a nice push. The quazzmobile vibrated a little and then engaged the engine, and wow, what an engine! In ten seconds it had disappeared into the clouds.

I went back to fishing and caught three 11 pound pikes.

Read Part 1.

Read Part 2. 

Translation: Guido Gozzano Grandmother Hope's Friend, Part 1

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878

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 1. 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. 

Grandmother Hope’s Friend by Guido Gozzano, Part 1

“ … to her Hope
from her Carlotta…
June 28, 1850”.


Stuffed is Loreto and Alfieri’s bust, Napoleon’s
flowers in a frame, (good old things in terrible taste are a must!)

the chimney is a bit glum, the boxes without confetti,
the marble fruits steady, sheltered by glass bells that stay mum,

some rare toys in ruts, the half-shell chests in tow
the objects with the warning hello, I remember the coconuts,

Venice depicted in mosaic, the watercolors slightly faded,
the prints, the chests, the painted white of anemones archaic,

the canvases of Massimo d’Azeglio, the miniatures,
the daguerrotypes: creatures that dream perplexedly,

the large outdated chandelier, which hangs in the living room’s middle,
that multiplies the good old diddle on the quartz’s splendid veneer,

the cuckoo that sings the hours all nifty, the chairs adorned
in crimson damask … I am reborn, I am reborn in eighteen hundred fifty.

the little brothers, the room, on this day, cannot enter but cautiously
(they have removed all of the furniture’s upholstery: it is a day to swoon).

But they charge in a swarm. Look! their older sister Hope
and her friend with whom I want to elope, on vacation have come home!

My grandmother is seventeen years old; Carlotta has about the same style:
it’s been just a little while since they they were allowed to put hoops in their folds.

the very vast hoop crinkles the skirt with turquoise roses:
more elegant than their poses emerges a slender waist that wriggles.

Both have a shawl with oranges ablaze, flowers, birds and garland bands:
their hair parted in two strands falling down halfway to the cheeks aflame .

From Mantua they’ve arrived full of courage to Lago Maggiore unseen
even if they’ve travelled fourteen hours in a horse-drawn carriage.

Of all the class their exam got the most distinguished marks. How worked up
they were about the terrible past! They’ve left school for starts.

Oh Belgirate serene! The room looks over the garden at daybreak:
among the straight trunks gleam the mirrors of the turquoise lake.

Be quiet children! The friends — children try and quietly move about! —
the friends on the piano are trying out a scroll of notes that centuries transcends:

Slightly artificial motifs they’re arty the fronds of the settecento
by Arcanegelo de Leuto and Alessandro Scarlatti;

Innamorati lost lovers, lamenting “il core” and “l’augello”,
languors of Giordanello in sweet terrible verse:

“my dear you’re missed
believe me at least,
without you,
languishes my heart!
yours truly
sighs at the start
of every hour
immediately
stop your cruelty!

Carlotta sings, Hope plays. Sweet and in flowery bloom
life burgeons in the brief relays of a romance made of a thousand promises too soon.

Oh music, lighthearted whisper! In the soul it’s already hidden
To each smiles the groom that’s bidden: Prince Charming is the mister,

the husband of many dreams dreamed… Oh daisies just back from school
to find the the magic spool leaf through the tender verse of Prati redeemed!

Uncle arrives, a virtuous gentleman of much esteem,
faithful to the Past and to the cream of Lombardy-Venice and the Emperor’s acumen.

Auntie arrives, a consort very deign, very proper and decent,
faithful to the Past even if she has a penchant for the King of Sardinia’s reign.

“Kiss your Aunt and Uncle’s hand!” would say Mom and Dad:
and they would raise the fiery chins a tad of the restless little ones in a band.

“And this is the friend on vacation: mademoiselle Carlotta Capenna:
the most gifted student in the arena, Hope’s dearest friend in the nation.”

“Well what do you know…what do you know…”—would say the esteemed Uncle
and piously the words he would bungle—“Well what do you know…what do you know…

Capenna? I knew an Arthur Capenna…Capenna…Capenna…
Sure! In the court of Vienna! Sure…sure…sure…”

“Would you like a bit of marsala?” “Dear lady my sister: we wish.”
And on the armchairs reserved for the gala they were sitting like pretty conversationalists.

“…but Brambilla did not know…— She’s already too fat for Hernani;
the Scala has no more soprani… — That Giuseppe Verdi should show!…

“…in March we’ll have some work dear niece— at the Fenice they’ve told me—
the Rigoletto I can’t wait to see; they’re talking about a masterpiece.—

“…do they wear blues or grays? — And these earrings! They dazzle!
The rubies appearing! And these cameos? They frazzle…—The latest in Paris these days…

Read Part 2.