Bonnie McClellan's Weblog

3 Responses to “Sitting from “California Notebooks”: by Anna Mosca”

1. Those lines are beautiful – highly atmospheric, Anna. I loved listening to your recordings and especially to the Italian version.
   I’m not an Italian speaker but I also enjoyed looking at the way you had translated from Italian to English – translation is never easy of course. I feel that the English version retains much of the beauty of the original although the musicality of the Italian is unavoidably lost.
   But please excuse me: may I ask about certain translation decisions? I wonder whether “rumore” would be better rendered in English as “sound”. To me this suggests something rather gentler than “noise”, although the distinction is hard to make.
   Also, how did you mean to translate “il deciderio sale” ? Desire rises, or increases?
   But these questions are unimportant – the sense of the translation is clear and the real beauty and magic are captured in your reading of the Italian! E mol to bello.

   John Stevens said this on February 9, 2014 at 3:15 pm | Reply

2. Hi John, thank you for your comment and feedback, I totally appreciate you getting involved into both poems. As I was explaining to Bonnie these poems were written at the very same time in both languages. It may seem strange but it did happen, I was sitting and they came, fluid as water, out of me. Beside that, rumore has a connotation of something disturbing here, the absence of which leads to peace, while sound, as you said is too gentle. Desire rises is also a visual expression, won’t get into details here…
   Grazie per la tua attenzione.

   anna mosca said this on February 12, 2014 at 11:14 pm | Reply

3. Thanks for responding Anna. I find your explanation fascinating – it was obvious that you had exercised a lot of careful thought in writing the poem; inspiration certainly, but fine judgement too. Grazie mille.

   John Stevens said this on February 13, 2014 at 10:56 am | Reply