Papers by Massimo Bacigalupo
Raccontare a piccoli e grandi. I libri di Beatrice Solinas Donghi 1923-2023 , 2024
Beatrice Solinas Donghi (1923-2015), chiefly known as a writer of fiction for adults and young pe... more Beatrice Solinas Donghi (1923-2015), chiefly known as a writer of fiction for adults and young people, was also a perceptive critic, the author of a notable study on fairy tales and of numerous reviews, and the editor of collections of folk narratives. Born of an English mother, a painter, she often wrote about English-language literature. Her biographical studies of Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, the latter published posthumously, with the author’s translations of Anne’s poems, are noteworthy for their level-headed approach to the passionate world of the Brontës. Solinas Donghi was a careful observer, not given to romanticizing her subjects. The everyday life and the genius of Emily and Anne emerge more clearly from her shrewd accounts, which allow us to see the sisters both from the inside and as they appeared to their contemporaries, with their strong independence of character. Solinas Donghi portrays Anne as something of a rebel, whose two novels, especially The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, addressed taboo subjects, such as a woman’s right to abandon an abusive husband. Anne even questioned the Calvinist belief in predestined damnation, embracing the theodicy of an all-merciful God (“A Word to the ‘Elect’”). In a late story, “Vite alternative” (“Alternative Lives”), Solinas Donghi played with the idea of Anne’s later career, had she not died at 29, as an “Ann Brunty”, happily married in France and the author of children’s books. Beatrice Solinas Donghi’s writings on the Brontës, Dickens, and others, as well as her fiction, offer authoritative and rewarding accounts of books and lives in the 19th and 20th centuries, as they appeared to a quiet observer of uncommon insight and talent.
The Wallace Stevens Journal, 2001
Mattino domenicale ed altre poesie (1954) was the only volume of Wallace Stevens to appear in ano... more Mattino domenicale ed altre poesie (1954) was the only volume of Wallace Stevens to appear in another language during the poet’s lifetime, and may still be unequalled for its editorial and critical quality, the more so as it offers in the end-notes Stevens’ own invaluable comments, written for his admiring translator, Renato Poggioli. Poggioli was a an outstanding Harvard scholar of Russian and comparative literature, author (among other volumes) of The Theory of the Avant-Garde. His epistolary relation with Stevens was an important one, because of the comments that he elicited. Poggioli’s side of the correspondence tells us something of the person whom Stevens responded to, and makes us appreciate this unique moment in the history of Stevens’ international reception.
Paideuma;: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarshijp, 1998
An interpretation and survey of Ezra Pound's most famous poem and its processes of composition. A... more An interpretation and survey of Ezra Pound's most famous poem and its processes of composition. A revised version of this paper appears in "Ezra Pound, Italy, and the Canros" (Clemson University Press, 2020, 2024)
La Questione Romantica, 2011
Wordsworth's modern lack of pomp and focus on the material world and everyday events was not attr... more Wordsworth's modern lack of pomp and focus on the material world and everyday events was not attractive to the Italian generations that responded to the English Romantics from 1850 to 1950, while they translated and worshipped his contemporaries Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley. Despite the poet's neglect, the 1990 Italian translation of The Prelude was followed by a series of translations that responded to a need and addressed the more limited readership of students of English poetry and poetics. The article traces the history of the Italian editions of Wordsworth's poetry since the 1970s and reflects on the intellectual and emotional experience of translating The Prelude for an Italian readership that has always tended to be oblivious of its author. By translating Wordsworth, it is suggested, the scholar encounters the power of the poet's use of rhythm and is struck by the significance of the simplest phrases and by their capacity to embody feeling and represent the human condition with fidelity and vigor.
The Wallacer Stevens Journal, 2014
A consideration of Helen Vendler's critical approach, in the context of a discussion of how to re... more A consideration of Helen Vendler's critical approach, in the context of a discussion of how to read and teach poetry. It is necessary to know how and why a writer wrote and how he or she was and should be read. The question of tone is one of the central facts in a text, something that is occasionally difficult to deduce from the text itself.
Semicerchio. Rivista di poesia comparata, 2023
Patrizia Valduga, an established Italian poet, published in 2022 a new translation of Ezra Pound... more Patrizia Valduga, an established Italian poet, published in 2022 a new translation of Ezra Pound's Cantos 1-7. She often used archaisms and neologisms, and added extensive annotations.. This is in essence a poet's peculiar account of equally peculiar texts.
Atti dell’Accademia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere, 2022
Women and their association with houses play a central role in the fiction of Camilla Salvago Rag... more Women and their association with houses play a central role in the fiction of Camilla Salvago Raggi (1924--2022)l. This paper is part of an “Omaggio a Camilla Salvago Raggi", convened by Stefano Verdino in the year of the writer's death. The pdf includes all 14 contributiions to the symposium and provides a nuanced account of this important writer.
Europe Facing Inter-Asian Cultural, Literary, Historical and Political Institutions. Edited by Lina Unali and Elisabetta Marino, 2014
Things I have learned about Ezra Pound's approach to China by working on a new translation of "XX... more Things I have learned about Ezra Pound's approach to China by working on a new translation of "XXX Cantos" (1930). Also on back-translation in Italian (and Chinese) of Pound's remodelling of his sources in the Cantos.
Tigullio giorno e notte. Luci e ombre negli anni d’oro: 1950-1969. La cronaca, i protagonisti, 2016
A survey of cultural and social life in the booming post-WW2 years in Rapallo and neighborhood --... more A survey of cultural and social life in the booming post-WW2 years in Rapallo and neighborhood -- and of the conspicuous role played there by Massimo Bacigalupo's parents, Dr. Giuseppe Bacigalupo (1912-1999) and U.S.-born Dr. Frieda Bacigalupo Natali (1909-1983).
Lingue Linguaggi From a s, 2015
Ezra Pound's Cantos, a Modernist classic, present many challenges for the translator, who has to ... more Ezra Pound's Cantos, a Modernist classic, present many challenges for the translator, who has to follow in Pound's footsteps and often divine the intention and context of the fragments that compose his historic and lyric collage. A new Italian translation of the first extensive installment of the poem, XXX Cantos (1930), appeared in 2012; a previous Italian rendering of the same work, by the poet's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz, was published in 1961. By comparing representative excerpts of the two translations, this paper discusses different approaches to one source text. While the 1961 target text aimed at concision at the expense of fluency, the 2012 text employs a more colloquial style, attempting to make an arduous and complex work more reader-friendly. However, the two translations adopt the same strategy when rendering the many passages Pound paraphrased from medieval and renaissance Italian writings. Rather than retranslating Pound's English, they print excerpts from the Italian originals he worked from, with their quaint spellings and often obscure wording. Just as Pound asks his readers and translators to work with him on the texts he presents in the poem, so the translators presuppose a reader who is also a collaborator, and who will be intrigued by the old documents appearing opposite Pound's modernist paraphrases. Translation is always a work in progress, but this is particularly the case when approaching the uniquely intricate and collaborative project of Pound's Cantos.
Ezra Pound and London: New Perspectives, 2015
W. B. Yeats is not mentioned in Ezra Pound's poetic sequence "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920) --whi... more W. B. Yeats is not mentioned in Ezra Pound's poetic sequence "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920) --which provides a compact and satyric survey of British culture, circa 1850-1920. Yet he is likely the main source of the material concerning the Nineties (Part 1, poems Vi-VII ).
Letteratura permanente. Poeti, scrittori, critici per Giorgio Ficara (MIlan: La Nave di Teseo), 2022
A survey of poets who in recent years (circa 1990-2020) have resided in and written about, Liguri... more A survey of poets who in recent years (circa 1990-2020) have resided in and written about, Liguria, the region around Genoa, Italy, i
Storia e memoria, 2022
A brief account of the different responses to the 1922 Genoa International Conference of Ernest H... more A brief account of the different responses to the 1922 Genoa International Conference of Ernest Hemingway, as a young Amdrican reporter, and of Count Harry Kessler, the experienced and disillusioned German diplomat.
Tradurre: Pratiche, teorie, strumenti , 2011
American poetry has enjoyed a huge readership in Italy. Major figures like Whitman, Dickinson and... more American poetry has enjoyed a huge readership in Italy. Major figures like Whitman, Dickinson and the chief Modernists and Beats have been translated many times, with the possible exception of Robert Frost. In the postwar years, until about 1975, several major anthologies were published and the canonical translations of Whitman, Dickinson, Masters, Pound, Eliot, Ginsberg, Plath, Williams, Moore, Cummings, Lowell, Corso and Ferlinghetti appeared. Beat poetry was launched by Fernanda Pivano’s path-breaking anthology of 1963, Poesia degli ultimi americani. Then a period of consolidation set in, marked by new important editions and translations. But while the appeal of major figures was confirmed, interest in American poetry as such flagged, and no major anthology appeared until West of Your Cities (2003). Nevertheless, established contemporary poets like Simic, Wright, Levine, Glück, Collins, Komunyakaa, find translators, publishers and readers possibly with greater ease than their French, Spanish, German and Russian fellow authors. The 2010s are still a time in which American culture is more pervasive than others in Italy, even in the relatively exclusive realms of poetry.
Xenia. Rivista trimestrale di letteratura e cultura, 2021
A Bloomsday reading of James Joyce's Ulysses took place in Genoa on June 16, 2021. This was the ... more A Bloomsday reading of James Joyce's Ulysses took place in Genoa on June 16, 2021. This was the 16th consecutive year in which groups of readers recreated the novel's episodes in various sites of the old town. The paper describes the sequence of readings, their different approaches to the text, and comments on the day-long event.
Doppiozero, 2022
An account of Louise Glūck's achievement, written for the occasion of the awarding of the LericiP... more An account of Louise Glūck's achievement, written for the occasion of the awarding of the LericiPea Poetryì Prize, 29 October 2022, with notes on the poems which she chose to read during the award ceremony: "The Red Poppy", "Before the Storm", "Crossroads", "The Night Migrations", "A Foreshortened Journey", "Afternoons and Early Evenjgs", "Song".
Il 29 ottobre 2022 Louise Glück ha ricevuto il suo primo riconoscimento italiano, il Premio LericiPea-Golfo dei Poeti "alla Carriera", che è andato prima di lei, fra gli anglofoni, al quasi coetaneo Seamus Heaney. Scritto per l'occasione, questo articolo offre uno sguardo d'insieme sulla sua opera, e annotazioni sulle sette poesie che Glūck ha scelto di leggere durante la premiazione, quando ha anche fornito alvuni intressanto chiarimenti.
Notiziario della Banca Popolare di Sondrio, 2022
James Joyce’s Ulysses, published 100 years ago, still has the reputation of being accessible only... more James Joyce’s Ulysses, published 100 years ago, still has the reputation of being accessible only to experts. It is actually a largely comic novel that presents all aspects of human life in its universal traits: love, death, friendship, sex, joy, and pain. Joyce was a great poet and inventor of language games, and engages the reader’s ingenuity and sympathy in a long session, calling upon all of his or her resources, but finally evoking situations familiar to all humans and telling us that life is a miraculous adventure illuminated by humour and affection. Therefore Ulysses has not aged in 100 years and deserves to be placed among the most significant contributions that the arts have made to an understanding of our common humanity.
I contemporanei. Novecento americano, 1983
This is an ample and detailed account, for Italian readers, of Louis Zukofsky’s career, poetics, ... more This is an ample and detailed account, for Italian readers, of Louis Zukofsky’s career, poetics, and writings, against the background of his relations with Ezra Pound and his Objectivist peers. It appeared in the second of three massive volumes devoted to 20th-century American literature, “I contemporanei. Novecento americano”, edited by Elémire Zolla (Rome: Lucarini Editore, 1981-83). My paper includes a description of the various parts of Zukofsky’s long poem “A”, and a close reading of “Anew”, possibly his most lyrical and accessible work.
CoSMo Comparative Studies in Modernism, 2022
The paper takes its title from a lecture given by T. S. Eliot in 1950, in which he pointed out th... more The paper takes its title from a lecture given by T. S. Eliot in 1950, in which he pointed out the lessons Dante had taught him. In fact Dante remains Eliot's chief model and point of reference throughout his work. His first collections present characters and encounters reminiscent of Dante's dialogues with the damned and purging souls in the afterlife. Eliot saw in Dante "the great master of the disgusting", authorizing his own descent into the sordid world of the Sweeney poems of 1920. But Dante is also a guide to an earthly paradise, to bliss and acquiescence in God's willstates of mind approached in the poems written after Eliot's conversion, which are meditative soliloquies rather than confrontations with others. In Dante Eliot detected, surprisingly, "the Catholic philosophy of disillusion", that is, his own somber view of fallen humanity. This position is shared to some extent by Robert Frost (whose characters are often in pain, and whose worldview is dark, if ironic). Other modernists, like Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound, are more optimistic about the pursuit of worldly happiness, and so come well within Protestant tradition. Dante is barely alluded to by Stevens, who attempted to write as if there were no precedent, while the entire project of Pound's Cantos is Dantean, even in the violence of their denunciations and maddening topicality, as well as in their recurrent revelations of a proximate paradise.
Sigma. Rivista di letterature comparate, teatro e arti dello spettacolo, 2021
Mara Fazio’s study Voltaire contro Shakespeare takes a close look at Voltaire’s long quarrel wit... more Mara Fazio’s study Voltaire contro Shakespeare takes a close look at Voltaire’s long quarrel with Shakespeare, whom he discovered in England, to some extent stole from in his own tragedies, and attacked with increasing fury as the Plays began to be translated and praised in continental Europe. Voltaire claimed that tragedy should not be modernized but should preserve the decorum and unities of Corneille and Racine, and that a mountebank like Shakespeare could never be compared to the great French
tragedians. Fazio’s richly documented study allows readers to appreciate Voltaire’s personality in its cultural and social context. Voltaire was a precursor of modernity not as a tragedian but as a formidable satirist.
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Papers by Massimo Bacigalupo
Il 29 ottobre 2022 Louise Glück ha ricevuto il suo primo riconoscimento italiano, il Premio LericiPea-Golfo dei Poeti "alla Carriera", che è andato prima di lei, fra gli anglofoni, al quasi coetaneo Seamus Heaney. Scritto per l'occasione, questo articolo offre uno sguardo d'insieme sulla sua opera, e annotazioni sulle sette poesie che Glūck ha scelto di leggere durante la premiazione, quando ha anche fornito alvuni intressanto chiarimenti.
tragedians. Fazio’s richly documented study allows readers to appreciate Voltaire’s personality in its cultural and social context. Voltaire was a precursor of modernity not as a tragedian but as a formidable satirist.
Il 29 ottobre 2022 Louise Glück ha ricevuto il suo primo riconoscimento italiano, il Premio LericiPea-Golfo dei Poeti "alla Carriera", che è andato prima di lei, fra gli anglofoni, al quasi coetaneo Seamus Heaney. Scritto per l'occasione, questo articolo offre uno sguardo d'insieme sulla sua opera, e annotazioni sulle sette poesie che Glūck ha scelto di leggere durante la premiazione, quando ha anche fornito alvuni intressanto chiarimenti.
tragedians. Fazio’s richly documented study allows readers to appreciate Voltaire’s personality in its cultural and social context. Voltaire was a precursor of modernity not as a tragedian but as a formidable satirist.
A review of Andrea Carandini's 2015 study of Isaiah Berlin.
Nel 2007 Massimo Bacigalupo ha curato un'ampia antologia di Gregory Corso, Poesie: Mindfield-Campo mentale (Roma, Newton Compton, pp. 525). Il volume comprende un'ampia introduzione critica e la cronologia più dettagliata oggi disponibile della vita tumultuosa di questo poeta maledetto. Oltre ai testi poetici in inglese e italiano, vi sono prefazioni di William Burroughs e Allen Ginsberg, anche queste ristampate sia in originale che in traduzione. Si riproduce qui la parte introduttiva del volume.
"Starting from China: A New Translation of The Cantos." Europe Facing Inter-Asian Cultural, Literary, Historical and Political Situations. Ed. Lina Unali and Elisabetta Marino. Rome: UniversItalia, 2014. pp. 239: 17-32. ISBN 9788865076064.