The Selected Poetry And Prose of Vittorio Sereni

by Sereni, Vittorio; Robinson, Peter; Perryman, Marcus

• ISBN13: 9780226748788
• ISBN10: 0226748782
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The Beach (La Spiaggia) They've all gone away the voice was blathering down the receiver Then, knowingly: They'll not return . But today on this stretch of beach never visited before those sunlight patches . . . Signals of theirs, who hadn't left at all? And when you turn they're quiet, as if nothing. What's being wasted from day to day is not the dead, but it's those patches of the nonexistent, lime or ashes ready to become light and movement. Don't be in doubt, the sea's strength assails me speak they will. Viewed as one of the most important Italian poets of the last century, Vittorio Sereni (191383) wrote with a historical sweep unlike that of any of his contemporaries. A poet of both personal and political responsibility, he wrote of life under fascism, military defeat and imprisonment, the Italian economic miracle and cold war in Europe, and the resurgence of extreme right-wing politics, as well as the roles played by love and friendship in the survival of humanity. An equally esteemed prose writer, his pieces on the contradictions of war and the complex purpose of poetry and the arts in society are seminal contributions to Italian literature. The first substantial translation of Sereni's work published anywhere in the world, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is a unique guide to this classic twentieth-century poet. This bilingual edition collects the most representative poems from Sereni's oeuvre, as well as a selection of prose works that extends the themes of his poetry. The book also contains examples of Sereni's short fiction, published here in English for the first time. With a full chronology, commentary, bibliography, and learned introduction by distinguished British poet and scholar Peter Robinson, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is the only authorized rendering of Sereni's verse in English.

Author Biography

Peter Robinson is professor of English literature at Kyoto Women’s University. Marcus Perryman is a freelance translator and consultant.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	xiii
Preface	xv
Acknowledgments	xix
Introduction	1	(30)
Chronology	31	(11)
Selected Poetry
from Frontier
Garden Concert	42	(18)
Winter	42	(1)
Garden Concert	42	(2)
Sport on Sunday	44	(2)
Recalling America	46	(1)
Lombard Song	46	(2)
Birthday	48	(1)
Fog	48	(2)
Storm at Salsomaggiore	50	(2)
To M. L. Passing Above Her Town in an Express Train	52	(2)
Diana	54	(1)
Soldiers in Urbino	54	(2)
3 December	56	(2)
Military Poem	58	(1)
Piazza	58	(1)
To Youth	58	(2)
Frontier	60	(12)
Winter in Luino	60	(2)
Terrace	62	(1)
Zenna Road	62	(2)
September	64	(2)
Another Summer	66	(1)
Image	66	(2)
Your Memory in Me	68	(1)
Creva Road	68	(4)
See How the Voices Fall	72	(4)
``See how the voices fall and friends''	72	(4)
Algerian Diary
The Athenian Girl	76	(12)
Outskirts 1940	76	(1)
City at Night	76	(1)
Bolognese Diary	76	(2)
Belgrade	78	(2)
Italian in Greece	80	(1)
Dimitrios	80	(2)
The Athenian Girl	82	(4)
Up the Arno from Pisa	86	(1)
Villa Paradiso	86	(1)
Pin-up Girl	86	(2)
Algerian Diary	88	(4)
``Over there where from tower''	88	(1)
``An unexpected vacancy of heart''	88	(2)
``Valor and grace''	90	(1)
``He knows nothing anymore, is borne up on wings''	90	(2)
``Alas how what returns''	92	(1)
``They don't know they're dead''	92	(2)
``Only the summer is true and this''	94	(1)
``And again in a dream the tent's edge''	94	(2)
``Often through tortuous alleys''	96	(1)
``Too late has the time come''	96	(2)
``If fever for you no more sustains me''	98	(2)
``In the smuggled glass''	100	(1)
lgeria	100	(2)
The African Sickness	102	(1)
Fragments of a Defeat	102	(4)
The African Sickness	106	(6)
Notes from a Dream	112	(2)
September the Eighth	114	(4)
from the Human Implements
A Backward Glance	118	(4)
Via Scarlatti	118	(1)
Interrupted Communication	118	(2)
The Provisional Time	120	(1)
Journey at Dawn	120	(2)
A Return	122	(12)
In the Snow	122	(1)
Journey There and Back	122	(2)
The Misapprehension	124	(1)
On the Zenna Road Again	124	(2)
Window	126	(2)
The Sharks	128	(1)
Mille Miglia	128	(2)
Years After	130	(2)
The Ashes	132	(1)
Six in the Morning	132	(2)
A Factory Visit	134	(6)
Appointment at an UnusualHour	140	(12)
The Great Friend	140	(2)
Discovery of Hatred	142	(1)
A Nightmare	142	(2)
Those Children Playing	144	(1)
Saba	144	(2)
Passing	146	(1)
Situation	146	(2)
The Friends	148	(1)
Appointment at an Unusual Hour	148	(4)
The Inhabited Center	152	(1)
In Sleep	152	(14)
The Lines	158	(1)
Corso Lodi	158	(2)
The Alibi and the Benefit	160	(1)
Poetry Is a Passion?	160	(6)
Apparitions or Encounters	166	(36)
A Dream	166	(2)
On the Creva Road Again	168	(2)
Interview with a Suicide	170	(4)
Il Piatto Piange	174	(2)
On a Cemetery Photograph	176	(2)
To a Childhood Companion	178	(2)
From Holland	180	(4)
The Unjust Pity	184	(2)
In the True Year Zero	186	(2)
The Hope	188	(2)
Metropolis	190	(2)
The Wall	192	(2)
Earthly Pantomime	194	(2)
The Reunited	196	(2)
The Beach	198	(4)
from Variable Star
I	202	(12)
Your Thoughts of Calamity	202	(1)
In an Empty House	202	(2)
Toronto Saturday Night	204	(1)
Place of Work	204	(2)
Works in Progress	206	(4)
Beautiful Lugano Goodbye	210	(2)
Interior	212	(2)
Growth	214	(1)
II	214	(12)
Of Cuts and Stitches	214	(2)
Poet in Black	216	(1)
Revival	216	(2)
It Will Be the Boredom	218	(2)
Festival	220	(1)
Exterior Seen Again in Dream	220	(2)
Giovanna and the Beatles	222	(2)
Each Time That Almost	224	(2)
III	226	(22)
A Holiday Place	226	(18)
Niccolo	244	(2)
Fixity	246	(2)
IV	248	(8)
Translating Char	248	(1)
``In my way, Rene Char''	248	(1)
Muezzin	248	(2)
A Lay Temple	250	(1)
Vertical village	250	(2)
Hammered Slowness	252	(1)
Nocturne	252	(2)
Madrigal to Nefertiti	254	(1)
``A nothing sufficed''	254	(2)
V	256	(25)
Verano and the Solstice	256	(1)
Requiem	256	(2)
First Fear	258	(1)
Second Fear	258	(2)
Other Place of Work	260	(1)
The Disease of the Elm	260	(2)
Uphill	262	(2)
The Knoll	264	(1)
Summer in the Po Valley	264	(2)
In Parma with A. B.	266	(2)
Autostrada della Cisa	268	(2)
Rimbaud	270	(2)
Luino-Luvino	272	(2)
Progress	274	(1)
Another Birthday	274	(7)
Selected Prose
from The Immediate Surroundings
Prewar Letter	281	(1)
Bologna '42	282	(1)
Ljubliana	283	(2)
Sicily '43	285	(4)
Algeria '44	289	(3)
Barbed-Wire Fever	292	(4)
That Film of Billy Wilder's	296	(4)
Airs of '53-'55	300	(6)
The Title of Poet	306	(2)
You Began	308	(1)
On the Back of a Piece of Paper	309	(1)
Two Old Flames	310	(3)
Creative Silence	313	(2)
The Year '43	315	(7)
The Year '45	322	(7)
The Reunited	329	(1)
On the Death of Ungaretti	330	(1)
Self-Portrait	331	(3)
Port Stanley Like Trapani	334	(4)
Infatuations	338	(3)
from Crossing Milan
The Capture	341	(7)
The Option	348	(27)
Twenty-Six	375	(14)
Commentary	389	(38)
Bibliography	427	(6)
Index of Titles and First Lines	433