Vagrelli & Palumbo

Since this is my bloghome, I am going to indulge myself in a bit of shameless self-promotion. It's an unfortunate part of the publishing game and I try not to get too full of myself, but that being said, I am quite proud of this particular accomplishment.

As part of my Literary Translation class with Prof. Brian Henry during my final semester at the University of Richmond, we had to pick a selection of work by a single author and translate it. Now, much of the early part of the course was spent discussing translation theory, going over ponderous essays and books that delved into the very nature of language as human communication. I will spare you the theory, even though I enjoyed most of it.

The project I chose was a selection of eight poems by a living Italian writer named Valerio Magrelli. He is an astonishing poet, but the most interesting tidbit I discovered while working on this project is that Magrelli is, by trade, a philosopher. It is only natural that his poems deal with his everyday work, but he is able to avoid the pitfalls of all the other philosopher-poets I have read. His poems come through in a simple voice that capture the essence of the philosophical or metaphysical problem at hand. A supreme example is the poem below. If you would like to know what any of it means, feel free to read my translation of it here at Guernica Magazine.


Domani mattina mi farò una doccia
nient’ altro è certo che questo.
Un futuro d’acqua e di talco
in cui non succederà nulla e nessuno
busserà a questa porta. Il fiume
obliquo correrà tra i vapori ed io
come un eremita siederò
sotto la pioggia tiepida,
ma né miraggi né tentazioni
traverseranno lo specchio opaco.
Immobile e silenzioso, percorso
da infiniti ruscelli,
starò nella corrente
come un tronco o un cavallo morto,
e finirò incagliato nei pensieri
lungo il delta solitario dello spirito
intricato come il sesso d’ una donna.

-Valerio Magrelli, 1980