{"id":2703,"date":"2017-11-17T11:55:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T10:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/worldwar1\/?page_id=2703"},"modified":"2017-11-17T11:55:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T10:55:38","slug":"sunken-keep","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/worldwar1\/resources\/book-reviews\/sunken-keep\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sunken Keep – a translation of Ungaretti’s Il Porto Sepolto"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sunken Keep, A version of Ungaretti\u2019s<\/em> Il Porto Sepolto<\/em>
\nTranslated by Andrew Fitzsimons
\nIsobar Press http:\/\/isobarpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n

On September 1st 1918 William Carlos Williams wrote the Prologue to his Kora in Hell: Improvisations<\/em> which was later to be published by The Four Seas Company in 1920:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe imagination goes from one thing to another. Given many things of nearly totally divergent natures but possessing one-thousandth part of a quality in common, provided that be new, distinguished, these things belong in an imaginative category and not in a gross natural array.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly a century on, David Shields published his \u2018Manifesto\u2019, Reality Hunger<\/em>, in which he expressed interest in collage as \u201can evolution beyond narrative\u201d. In terms of Art, and this includes poetry:<\/p>\n

\u201cMomentum derives not from narrative but from the subtle buildup of thematic resonances\u201d<\/p>\n

When Williams wrote his autobiographical account of I Wanted to Write a Poem<\/em> he gave an account of that earlier time when the First World War was still raging throughout Europe:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was halfway through the Prologue, \u2018Prufrock\u2019 appeared. I had a violent feeling that Eliot had betrayed what I believed in. He was looking backward; I was looking forward. He was a conformist, with wit, learning which I did not possess.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his introduction to this beautifully produced new volume from Isobar Press the translator, Andrew Fitzsimons, directs us to recognise the connection between what Williams was trying to do in 1918 and what Giuseppe Ungaretti was achieving in the trenches of the Carso plateau in Friuli in 1916:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026these thirty poems are central to Ungaretti\u2019s revitalizing of Italian poetic language; a renovation of rhythm, syntax, punctuation and diction\u2026comparable also to the work of William Carlos Williams, given the resemblance between how both poets set about reconfiguring the parameters of the poetic line in their respective traditions, as well as their commitment to particulars<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a haunting immediacy to these new versions of Ungaretti\u2019s poems and they look at loss in terms of time passing rather than confining themselves to the nightmare presence of the trench warfare which he volunteered for in 1915 having only moved from Paris to Italy at the outbreak of war. The opening poem stands as a memorial stone dedicated to the friend of his youth, Mohammed Sceab:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn memory
\nof
\nMohammed Sceab
\ndescendant
\nof nomad emirs
\na suicide
\nfor loss of
\na homeland\u201d<\/p>\n

The words weep down the page as if engraved upon a tombstone and the fractured narrative of what follows in the second stanza accords with that buildup of thematic resonances:<\/p>\n

\u201cA lover of France
\nwho became
\nMarcel
\nbut not French
\nwho no longer knew how
\nto dwell
\nin the tent of his kin
\nto listen to the chant
\nof the Koran
\nover coffee\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u2018s\u2019 sound in the seventh line allows an image of dwelling to move almost invisibly between the semi-desert world of the young man\u2019s past to the power of belonging not only to family but also to an existence within his own skin. The short next piece offers a brief account of isolation and limitation:<\/p>\n

\u201cWho could not
\ngive voice
\nto the song
\nof his own desolation\u201d<\/p>\n

And then in a manner that Samuel Beckett would have applauded there is a precision, a placing, which gives visibility to the actuality of the person. It reminds me of Beckett as I think of the respect he held for the clarity of Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> in which the spirits of the dead have only a few lines to give a portrait of themselves before they merge back into the anonymity of eternal damnation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI escorted him
\nwith the landlady of the place
\nwhere we lodged
\nin Paris
\nfrom 5 Rue des Carmes
\na rundown sloping alley\u201d<\/p>\n

The term \u201cescorted\u201d brings the world of Dante again to the fore and it is worth just comparing it with two other translations. Kevin Hart\u2019s suggestion is quite literal in terms of the Italian (The Buried Harbour<\/em>, The Leros Press, 1990):<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the woman
\nwho owned our hotel
\nat 5 Rue Carmes
\nthat faded, sloping alley
\nI went with him\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Creagh\u2019s version for the Penguin Modern European Poets (1971) becomes more detailed as if spelling things out for the reader:<\/p>\n

\u201cI followed his coffin
\nI and the manageress of the hotel
\nwhere we lived
\nin Paris
\nnumber 5 rue des Carmes
\nsteep decrepit alleyway\u201d<\/p>\n

The word used by Fitzsimons, \u201cescorted\u201d, manages to retain a sense of friendship and familiarity as he accompanies the body to the burial ground and the word \u201clodged\u201d has a temporality to it which emphasises the fragility of a life.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe rests
\nin the cemetery at Ivry
\na suburb locked
\nforever
\nin the day a fair
\npacks up and leaves<\/p>\n

Maybe I alone
\nstill know he
\nlived<\/p>\n

And I will
\nuntil my turn
\nto die\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRests\u201d, \u201clocked \/ forever\u201d, \u201cfair \/ packs up and leaves\u201d; it has the sound of Thomas Hardy\u2019s verse, \u2018Exeunt Omnes\u2019 or \u2018During Wind and Rain\u2019.<\/p>\n

This is a book to keep close to hand. Not only are the translations very powerful but the drawings by Sergio Maria Calatroni have a resonance which complement the poems. Congratulations to Paul Rossiter and Isobar Press!<\/p>\n

Ian Brinton, 13th October 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sunken Keep, A version of Ungaretti\u2019s Il Porto Sepolto Translated by Andrew Fitzsimons Isobar Press http:\/\/isobarpress.com On September 1st 1918 William Carlos Williams wrote the Prologue to his Kora in Hell: Improvisations which was later to be published by The Four Seas Company in 1920: \u201cThe imagination goes from one thing to another. Given  Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":2402,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n