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Nov. 25th, 2010 01:39 amGalassi's Leopardi sent me back to Heath-Stubbs, though I'll try him again soon. I won't say there's no room for improvement, but Heath-Stubbs' versions feel like poetry to me - he was a scholar of 19th century verse and writes a sort of Romantic house style I really like. My two favorite of Leopardi's many moon poems (clearly an inspiration for Calvino's many moons, esp. the second one here), via Heath-Stubbs:
To the Moon
O gracious Moon, I call to mind again
It was a year ago I climbed this hill
To gaze upon you in my agony;
And you were hanging then above that wood,
Filling it all with light, as you do now,
But dim and tremulous your face appeared,
Seen through the tears that rose beneath my eyelids,
My life being full of travail; as it is still —
It does not change, O my sweet Moon. And yet
Remembrance helps, and reckoning up
The cycles of my sorrow. How sweet the thought
That brings to mind things past, when we are young —
When long’s the road for Hope, for Memory brief —
Though they were sad, and though our pain endures.
A Fragment
Alcetas:
Hear me, Melissus; I will tell you a dream
I had last night, which comes to mind again,
Now that I see the moon. I stood at the window
Which looks out on the fields, and turned my eyes
Up to the sky; and then, all of a sudden,
The moon was loosened; and it seemed to me
That coming nearer and nearer as it fell down,
The bigger it appeared, until it tumbled
In the middle of the field, with a crash, and was
As big as a bucket is; and it spewed forth
A cloud of sparks, which sputtered, just as loud
As when you put a live coal under water
Till it goes out. For it was in that way
The moon, I'm telling you, in the middle of the field,
Went out, and little by little it all turned black.
And round about the grass went up in smoke.
And then, looking up at the sky, I saw was left
A kind of glimmer, or mark, or rather a socket,
From which it had been torn, and at that sight
I froze with terror; and don't feel easy yet.
Melissus:
And well you might, indeed; for sure enough,
The moon might tumble down into your field.
Alcetas:
Who knows? For don't we often see in summer
Stars falling?
Melissus:
But then, there are so many stars:
And little harm if one or other of them
Do fall - there's thousands left. But there is only
This one moon in the sky, and nobody
Has ever seen it fall, except in dreams....
That second one also anticipates "The Broom" - and is remarkably suggestive in itself. Are the stars other people, the moon oneself? Or are the stars people but the moon something we need to be eternal even if we aren't, e.g. the moon of the first poem. But not even moons are eternal, as even these shepherds half-divine. In "The Broom" clear-eyed human solidarity against nature, or anyway the need of it, becomes the one thing you can hang your hat on.
Leopardi's total bleakness can come across as contrived and silly when you read him in bulk, much like Hardy and Beckett can (for some of us anyway), but these three poems, "The Infinite" and some bits of other ones always work on me.
To the Moon
O gracious Moon, I call to mind again
It was a year ago I climbed this hill
To gaze upon you in my agony;
And you were hanging then above that wood,
Filling it all with light, as you do now,
But dim and tremulous your face appeared,
Seen through the tears that rose beneath my eyelids,
My life being full of travail; as it is still —
It does not change, O my sweet Moon. And yet
Remembrance helps, and reckoning up
The cycles of my sorrow. How sweet the thought
That brings to mind things past, when we are young —
When long’s the road for Hope, for Memory brief —
Though they were sad, and though our pain endures.
A Fragment
Alcetas:
Hear me, Melissus; I will tell you a dream
I had last night, which comes to mind again,
Now that I see the moon. I stood at the window
Which looks out on the fields, and turned my eyes
Up to the sky; and then, all of a sudden,
The moon was loosened; and it seemed to me
That coming nearer and nearer as it fell down,
The bigger it appeared, until it tumbled
In the middle of the field, with a crash, and was
As big as a bucket is; and it spewed forth
A cloud of sparks, which sputtered, just as loud
As when you put a live coal under water
Till it goes out. For it was in that way
The moon, I'm telling you, in the middle of the field,
Went out, and little by little it all turned black.
And round about the grass went up in smoke.
And then, looking up at the sky, I saw was left
A kind of glimmer, or mark, or rather a socket,
From which it had been torn, and at that sight
I froze with terror; and don't feel easy yet.
Melissus:
And well you might, indeed; for sure enough,
The moon might tumble down into your field.
Alcetas:
Who knows? For don't we often see in summer
Stars falling?
Melissus:
But then, there are so many stars:
And little harm if one or other of them
Do fall - there's thousands left. But there is only
This one moon in the sky, and nobody
Has ever seen it fall, except in dreams....
That second one also anticipates "The Broom" - and is remarkably suggestive in itself. Are the stars other people, the moon oneself? Or are the stars people but the moon something we need to be eternal even if we aren't, e.g. the moon of the first poem. But not even moons are eternal, as even these shepherds half-divine. In "The Broom" clear-eyed human solidarity against nature, or anyway the need of it, becomes the one thing you can hang your hat on.
Leopardi's total bleakness can come across as contrived and silly when you read him in bulk, much like Hardy and Beckett can (for some of us anyway), but these three poems, "The Infinite" and some bits of other ones always work on me.
