I am translating what I like to call the best modern Italian classic novel you've never read! (In English, at least).
It's called in Italian Passaggio in ombra by Mariateresa Di Lascia, and the working English title for the project, which was recognized with a grant from PEN America, is "Into the Shadows."
Working on a project you fear will never see the light of day is frustrating (the project hasn't found a publisher yet), but perhaps all the more so when you stumble across some of the most lyrical lines imaginable. I also love that the book features an unconventional female narrator. She's not perfect, she's not a devil, she's somewhere in between (more on this in a minute).
So I thought I would share a few short excerpts, particular as Literary Italy is in the throes of the final stages of this year's Strega competition (Di Lascia won the prize, which is like a Pulitzer, in 1995). The book is an intimate, first-person portrait of a woman recounting the tale of how her life unraveled, and Di Lascia frames the story by using a narrative device wherein the narrator says that after resisting the temptation to tell the story of her life, she has finally given in. And the book is just that -- her retelling the story of her life.
For Italian literature buffs, the book has the uncanny privilege of mirroring Menzogna e sortilegio by Elsa Morante, which triggers what's now called intertextuality. Essentially, Di Lascia structured her book so it opens in the exact same way as Morante's masterpiece.
What's more, it gives us the story not only of the narrator but of the women in her life -- her mother, her aunt, her grandmother -- who navigated a rural, post-war Southern Italian society not ready for gender equity. Di Lascia zeroed in on the mother-daughter relationship, but also tells the tale of a beloved aunt forced to give up a child for adoption -- a decision she never fully accepts. Indeed, one of the most poignant and harrowing moments of the book comes when her aunt reunites with her child; initially, the reader thinks it might be a clandestine meeting with a lover, so intense are the aunt's emotions and so furtive her movements as she plans a reunion others would prefer to suppress.
There's a volatile father-daughter relationship, and something else that I think, again, is unusual: the perspective of a woman coming undone, told from the woman's point of view. Not a male narrator or author presenting this.
I don't know how other translators choose projects but I find certain lines haunt me, and if the haunting doesn't let up, I need to do something about it. Here is one such line, a sentence that frames the beginning of the book, as the narrator begins to tell the tale of her life:
(Italian): "In questa storia, che mi fu solo raccontata, cerco l'inizio di ogni inganno."
(English): “In
this story, which was only told to me, I seek the genesis of all the deception.”
As someone mesmerized by her own family tree, I instantly felt a connection to the narrator (and the author, who to some extent was telling her own story), when I read this line. It's something Patrick Modiano, the French Nobelist who has written extensively about piecing together his family's jagged history, could understand. While researching the author's life, I remember feeling electrified when I discovered Di Lascia's parents had never married -- surely the inspiration for the unwed parents in the novel, whose daughter (the narrator) sees herself as a bastard who can never fly right.
The book begins like this:
(Italian) Nella casa dove sono rimasta, dopo che tutti se ne sono andati e finalmente si è fatto silenzio, mi trascino pigra e impolverata con i miei vecchi vestiti addosso, e le scatole arrampicate sui muri scoppiano di pezze prese nei mercatini sudati del venerdì. Ormai sono libera di non perderne neanche uno, e ho tutta la mattina per stare in mezzo alle baracche a rovistare a piene mani, fra stoffe colorate e sporche che qualcuno, per sempre sconosciuto, ha indossato tanto tempo fa.
(English) In the house where I’ve remained after everyone left and silence fell at last, I drag myself around lazily, dressed in my old clothes and covered in dust. Piled high against the wall are boxes bulging with cloth that I bought at the grubby flea markets held on Fridays. There’s no reason for me to miss any of them now, and I have the whole morning to roam around the stands and with both hands rummage through the colorful, soiled fabrics that someone, forever a stranger to me, wore years ago.
Here's another favorite passage, whose translation I have not finalized:
(Italian) "Quando aveva pensato a cosa sarebbe stata la sua vita, a quale forma si sarebbe piegata ad avere, se mai ne avesse avuta una, aveva sentito qualcosa ribellarsi dentro sé, come per una insopportabile imposizione. Allora aveva avuto un solo desiderio: conservare il più a lungo possibile, forse per sempre, la libertà di non avere nessuna forma."
(English) "When he thought about how his life would turn out, what form it would take if indeed it would ever lend itself to a specific shape, he felt something inside of him rebel. As if it would be an unbearable burden. In those days, he had one lone desire: to preserve for as long as he could --maybe even forever -- the freedom to have no direction of any kind."
What's interesting is that the passage describes the narrator's situation perfectly. This book is the story of Chiara's unraveling -- the story of her steadfast refusal to become anything, after appearing almost like a child prodigy. College graduate -- professional -- mother -- wife. She does none of that. But in fact, the quote above comes in a scene where we peer into the thoughts of Chiara's father, Francesco.
If you're interested in learning more about this book or author, I've written an essay about the work for the Ploughshares literary magazine (which you can find here). And here's an excerpt published by PEN America after the group awarded me the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature.
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