Rome, 2018

NOTES

1. From the preface to La ricerca delle radici, in Primo Levi, Opere complete, vol. I, ed. Marco Belpoliti (Torino: Einaudi, 2017). Published in English as The Search For Roots: A Personal Anthology, ed. and trans. Peter Forbes (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002). Originally commissioned and published by Einaudi in 1981, the anthology – a miscellany of formative readings particularly dear to Levi – consisted of thirty texts chosen, excerpted, introduced and, in five cases, translated by the author. Among the selections were works by Charles Darwin, Marco Polo and Paul Celan. (The reference within the citation itself is to Jorge Luis Borges’ A Personal Anthology, a compilation of Borges’ works edited by himself, first published in Spanish in 1961 and translated and published in Italian in 1962.)

2. Leopardi’s poem is based on the Batrachomyomachia, a parody of Homer’s Iliad which has been translated from Ancient Greek into English as The Battle of Frogs and Mice. Leopardi translated the Batrachomyomachia and conceived of the Paralipomeni as a continuation of that work. Leopardi’s title for the latter work literally means ‘omissions’ (to the Batrachomyomachia).

3. The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, trans. Jane Soamers (London: The Hogarth Press, 1933), p. 14.

4. The citation comes from ‘La noce d’oro’ (‘The Golden Nut’), the story by Cristina Campo which is included in this anthology. In Italian it reads, ‘l’abisso che avrebbe spezzato un secolo’.

5. Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi, ed. Michael Caesar and Franco Ditino, trans. Kathleen Baldwin et al. (London: Penguin, 2013), p. 202 [321], 13 Nov. 1820.

Elio Vittorini

1908–66

The tiny Sicilian island of Ortigia, where Vittorini was born, is connected by an isthmus to Siracusa, home of an Ancient Greek theatre. A railway worker’s son, Vittorini left Sicily when he was nineteen years old to work on a construction site in the region of Venezia-Giulia. He was a proofreader for a newspaper in Florence, and it was there, thanks to a co-worker, that he learned English during his breaks, by translating, word for word, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. At the foreign books division of Mondadori, he was commissioned to translate a book by D. H. Lawrence, and he also translated Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, William Saroyan and John Steinbeck. His passion for translation would culminate in assembling the epic anthology Americana (see Introduction). But as one of the prime movers at Einaudi, Vittorini was also part of the ingenious editorial collective that galvanized Italian literature after the Second World War. His first book, Piccola borghesia (Petty Bourgeoisie), published in 1931, contained stories that had appeared in the anti-Fascist journal Solaria, criticized at the time for featuring the works of Jewish writers. His first major novel, Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversations in Sicily), reflects the cadences of the English language which he’d read, translated, absorbed and reconstituted into Italian. The American edition contains a glowing preface by Ernest Hemingway. This story, elusive, unadorned and understated, is a parable combining quotidian and supernatural elements. It showcases Vittorini’s penchant for dialogue, and places the acts of writing and naming at its very centre.