Principle of Decision takes a close look at the manifold, careful decisions made by translators in their interpretations. Each participating translator is given the same excerpt of a text to render into English, revealing the various incarnations that can stem from even a single word. In this edition, Catherine Xinxin Yu presents a piece from the Italian writer Ada Negri.
When I was casually browsing at a book fair in 2023, my eyes were caught by two descriptors on the back of a tiny claret booklet featuring Ada Negri’s works: ‘feminist literature ante litteram’ and ‘twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature’. I had to find out who this Ada Negri was.
Ada Negri (1870-1945), born in the northern Italian city of Lodi, grew up in a working-class milieu and began earning a living as a schoolteacher from the age of seventeen. She published her first poem La nenia materna (Mother’s Lullaby) in 1888, her first poetry collection Fatalità (Fatality) in 1892, and continued to garner literary acclaim through the 1910s. Her gaze was directed outwards, encompassing the struggles of the Italian working class of which she was a part, but also turned inwards, voicing her intense emotional turmoil as a woman, a lover, and a mother. At the same time, she actively participated in socialist projects like the Lega Femminile di Milano and co-founded the Asilo Mariuccia in 1902 for at-risk women and minors.
In 1917, Negri published her immensely successful short story collection, Le solitarie (Solitary Women), from which the excerpt below is drawn. Eighteen grayscale character studies provide ‘humble glimpses into the lives of women who fight alone: alone despite family, alone despite love, alone due to faults of their own, of men, or of destiny’, as the author wrote in the book’s preface (translated from the Italian). This collection was groundbreaking in its focus on the tribulations of lower-class women and unflinchingly tackles taboo subjects from female sexuality and abortion, to marital unhappiness and the lack of care for the elderly.
So far, so good, right? But Negri was also a controversial figure who achieved her status partly due to her staunch support of Mussolini’s fascist regime. In the 1890s, she befriended socialists active in Milan, such as Filippo Turati, the Russian-born feminist Anna Kuliscioff, Nobel peace prize winner Teodoro Moneta—and Benito Mussolini, who identified as a socialist at the time. But by the outbreak of WWI, as Mussolini’s break with socialism gave way to his avowed fascism, Negri definitively sided with Mussolini’s bellicose patriotism and distanced herself from the antimilitarist democratic socialism of Turati and Kuliscioff. She would go on to win the Premio Mussolini in 1930, become the first and only woman to be admitted into the Accademia d’Italia in 1940 (a short-lived hall of fame for intellectuals in fascist Italy, if you will), and follow government directives in her long-standing collaborations with major newspapers until her death in 1945.
As such, reading Negri is a thorny matter. How does one evaluate the works of a writer who paradoxically championed women’s rights and supported an ultra-patriarchal regime? I am personally captivated by Negri’s acerbic verismo, her ironic humour, and her daring exploration of female sexuality and sexual politics. But is Negri an author worthy of ‘rediscovery’ by today’s readers? I leave it up to you—my task here is to give a tiny taste of her prose and the translation challenges involved.
I chose the opening lines from the short story ‘L’Incontro’ (‘The Encounter’) for two reasons. First, Negri is better known for her verse, and two of her poetry collections have been translated into English by Maria A. Costantini, so I was curious to explore her prose instead. Secondly, these opening lines perfectly capture the ennui of industrialised northern Italian cities, where most of Negri’s writing is set, and immediately showcase her sharp characterisation and her idiosyncratic style, combining a serious tone with a shocking use of sexual imagery.
I was excited to see how different translators would approach this text. There’s the hurdle of interpreting and rendering the word ‘orgia’ (orgy) and other innuendos, and the perennial challenge in Italian-English translation of handling diminutives, such as ‘la figuretta magrolina’. There is also the broader challenge of how to tackle Italian sentence structure with its many clauses while achieving a good flow in English. This is linked to considerations about how the translation sounds, as discussed in Julia Conrad’s comment on ‘sonic attention to her femininity’ and Antonella Lettieri’s deliberate choice of the ‘hissing alliteration of the letter “h”’. And Candice Whitney’s timely and thought-provoking comment draws our attention back to the rampant colonialism in the historical moment when this piece was written, which echoes my own doubts about how to reconcile with the uncomfortable (conservative white) ‘feminism ante litteram’ in Negri’s historically situated work.
I would like to thank all the translators, who are senior colleagues I admire, for generously sharing their time, knowledge, and expertise. As someone more accustomed to translating contemporary works, reading four different translations of a text written nearly a century ago was a fascinating experience for me; not only did the translators show different ways to tackle common Italian-English translation challenges, but they also took into consideration shifts in meaning, style, and social context across time. I hope readers will find inspiration in this generative exercise as much as I did.
—Catherine Xinxin Yu
Original
Chi esce dal luogo dove ha, per lunghe ore, lavorato con intensità senza requie, ha molte volte lo stesso aspetto disfatto di chi esca da un’orgia.
La figuretta magrolina che, nella luce rossa di quel tramonto milanese, sbucava dall’ufficio postale di via Boccaccio, appoggiandosi al battente come se l’urto dell’aria aperta la colpisse in pieno petto, portava nel volto trasognato il pallore, lo smarrimento, l’abbandono quasi mortale, che son pure le stimmate della voluttà.
Julia Conrad
Those emerging from where they’ve worked for long, intensive hours without pause tend to have the same spent look of someone exiting an orgy.
Out of the post office on via Boccaccio, the thin figure who surfaced into the red light of Milan’s sunset leaned back against the entry door as if battered by the impact of fresh air. Her little dazed face bore the pallor, the disorientation, the near-mortal abandon that are as much the signs of satisfied pleasure.
The first challenge of translating this text from 1917 was to make the word ‘orgy’ both shocking and inevitable. At first I wondered if I should translate ‘orgia’ as ‘bacchanal’, but then I remembered that Negri’s Fascist contemporary Gabriele D’Annunzio was certainly no stranger to the word ‘orgy’. Plus, this story is verismo brought to the cold, industrial north, meaning it focuses an unflinching realist eye on suffering in that region. Negri was also influenced by radical proto-feminists like the writer Sibilla Aleramo and socialist leaders Maria Giudice and Anna Kuliscioff, women who experimented with their sexuality and open relationships. ‘Don’t be such a prude, Julia,’ I thought, changing “bacchanal” back to ‘orgy’.
The two sentences are analogous in structure, but I tried to differentiate them enough to pull the reader in. For each, I ordered the clauses by taking cues from the cinematic gaze of the narration: I imagined what I would film first in an opening scene, and which order of ‘who-what-when-where-why’ was most important.
One of the trickiest things to translate from Italian is the use of diminutives. ‘La figuretta magrolina’ [The tiny-skinny little figure] sounds saccharine to my ear, as did ‘piccolo volto trasognato’, [little dreamy face]. I think the first phrase is not meant to sentimentalise, but more so meant to show how negligible and underfed the protagonist is, while also underscoring the plight of women workers by drawing sonic attention to her femininity. I withheld the protagonist’s gender with ‘thin figure’ to underscore her anonymity and kept ‘little face’ because ‘little’ was also a common diminutive for women in English at the time.
Antonella Lettieri
When leaving the place where they have toiled with relentless intensity over long hours, people often have the same dishevelled appearance as someone leaving an orgy.
In the red light of the sun setting over Milan, the thin, diminutive figure who emerged from the post office in Via Boccaccio, leaning against the door jamb as if the impact with the open air had hit her full in the chest, wore on her dazed face the pallor, the bewilderment, the nearly mortal abandonment that are also the stigmata of voluptuousness.
What an opening line! When I first read it, my immediate worry was how to correctly interpret the word ‘orgia’. Knowing that the short story was first published in 1917, I wondered if, over a hundred years ago, this word used to have a less sexually charged meaning than it does today, perhaps referring to a night of excessive drinking. For example, I know that in the past the Italian word ‘orgasmo’ used to mean ‘a state of extreme agitation and anxiety’, which makes for some epically funny moments of confusion when reading very serious classics from around that time. However, even before I had time to turn to the dictionary, the author herself came to my rescue, dispelling any shadow of a doubt: by ending the second paragraph with the outright sacrilegious ‘stigmata of voluptuousness’, she demonstrates to the reader from the future that she knows very well what she is doing. And I wonder if ‘Via Boccaccio’ and the ‘red light’ of the sunset are also slyly impish nods—especially considering that the short story later ends with the shocking simile ‘like a streetwalker’.
But the colour red can bring to mind more sinister associations: red is also the blood that the reader can imagine spreading on the protagonist’s chest after her metaphorical execution (‘leaning against the door jamb as if the impact with the open air had hit her full in the chest’), which foreshadows the protagonist’s death wish—one of the main themes in the short story. Here, I opted for the past perfect in the hope that the hissing alliteration of the letter ‘h’ (‘had hit her’) would suggest a volley of bullets to the reader, or at least a certain sense of lingering danger.
Finally, the issue of ‘figuretta magrolina’: two diminutives for which there is no direct equivalent in English. After tinkering with other options for a while, I decided that, if English does not have diminutive forms as such (or, at least, no productive diminutive forms), it still has the word ‘diminutive’ itself. Though this solution is perhaps mainly an inside joke for linguists, I still feel that ‘thin, diminutive figure’ is an accurate translation of the source—and so, where is the harm in having a little fun? I am sure Ada Negri would agree with me.
Elena Pala
Those who leave the place where, for hours, they have worked ceaselessly and strenuously, often wear the same dishevelled look as someone who has just departed an orgy.
That scrawny little silhouette who, in the red light of that Milanese sunset, emerged from the post office on via Boccaccio—leaning on the door as if struck mid-chest by the shock of open air—bore on her pale face the very same wistfulness, bewilderment, and death-like languor that are also the marks of carnal pleasure.
First off, I found the juxtaposition of a rather refined early twentieth century prose register and the unabashed use of terms such as orgia incredibly intriguing and refreshing. My main aim, in translating this passage, has been to retain the jarring impression I got upon reading it for the first time.
I also appreciated the—clearly not deliberate—use of red light by the author in reference to the sunset, which to a modern reader (both Italian and anglophone) further enhances the sexual connotations of the setting. Fascinating how a layer of meaning can be added simply by the passing of time and the emergence of new cultural references.
There weren’t many thorny translation choices on my part, more so adjustments made completely arbitrarily in the name of ‘what flows best’, which to me is always the overriding principle (above loyalty to the original text). Cases in point are the addition of little to scrawny little silhouette where scrawny would have sufficed; and the ‘swapping’ (for lack of a better term) of trasognato and pallore in the final sentence. Literally, it should be: bore on her wistful face the very same paleness etc. But since paleness and wistfulness are both qualities attributed to her face, no harm in swapping an adjective for a noun and vice-versa, provided the final picture remains the same.
Candice Whitney
When people leave work, and they had been there for many intense hours without any rest, they often share the look of someone who just came out of an orgy.
The small little girl popped out of the post office on Via Boccaccio in the red light of the Milanese sunset, catching her breath on the doorframe as if open air had hit her right in the chest. Her pale face and foggy mind, almost like a petite mort, could have been interpreted as signs of pleasure.
I agreed to translate this piece because I noticed the year it was published. 1917. The year of the Balfour Declaration, which further catalysed imperialism, Zionism, and the displacement of Palestine. Cesare Lombroso in Italy was alive and publishing, building the foundation of criminology studies with eugenic and biological racist theories. Italy had already started to colonise Libya, as a way of building a national, racial identity dependent on the outsider, the other. To prepare for this translation exercise, I wondered: did Ada Negri know about the British Mandate of Palestine, and what did she think, considering she wrote pro-war poems about World War I and Italian colonialism? (See Amy Boylan’s 2014 article ‘Arms, Wombs and Tears: The Mother’s Body in Women’s Writing About War in Early Twentieth–Century Italy’ in Italica.). I translated this piece because while this introduction is provocative and audacious, colonization and genocide was and is still happening at the time this was written and translated.
When I read the first line, I immediately imagined someone dirty, overworked, from a lower class compared to the rosy-cheeked, white borghese class. My interpretation of the text is based on some readings I have done on Italian fascism, including Bianco e nero. Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani by Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Gaia Giuliani. The image of the protagonist contrasts with how women under fascism were supposed to be: domestic and clean. To me, the first sentence sets up the protagonist as overworked, unclean and oversexualised.
Here’s a bit more about my choices. In the second sentence, the image of the protagonist feeling the air hit her face felt vivid to me, hence why I chose to translate ‘se l’urto dell’aria aperta la colpisse in pieno petto’ in that way. Additionally, I chose to translate ‘il pallore, lo smarrimento, l’abbandono quasi mortale’ as I did because I was trying to think about the sweaty, overstimulated images the author was indicating as someone who was overworked. Additionally, I chose to use the French term, petite mort, as that matched her audacious tone.
Again, I chose to translate this piece as a reminder that what was happening during the original writing of this piece is still occurring during the translation. Free Palestine. Free Tigray. Free the Congo. Free Haiti. Free all the U.S. colonies. End the genocide in the Mediterranean Sea. Free errbody.
Julia Conrad is a writer and translator, currently based in Chicago. Her most recent translations have been published by EuropeNow Journal, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, and The Offing, and her writing has been translated into Spanish, Germany, and Italian. A former Fulbright fellow and in-house translator for Mondadori, she holds MFAs from the University of Iowa in Nonfiction and Literary Translation. She is currently at work on a book about sexism in classical music, which will be published by Simon & Schuster. For more information, visit www.juliaconrad.net.
Antonella Lettieri is a London-based translator working into English and Italian. She was the 2023 NCW Emerging Translator Mentee for Italian, where her mentor was Howard Curtis. In 2023, she was awarded first prize in the John Dryden Translation Competition. Her first full-length translation, Maria Grazia Calandrone’s Your Little Matter, received the 2024 PEN/Heim Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature and will be published in June 2024 by Foundry Editions. Her translations, articles on literature, and creative writing have been published in English and Italian magazines—a full list is available on her website: antonellalettieri.com.
Elena Pala translates from Italian and French. The passion for literary translation came relatively late, after a PhD in linguistics and a few years working in advertising. Her first translated novel, The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi, was shortlisted for both the TA’s John Florio prize and First Translation prize, as well as adapted for radio for BBC radio 3. Recent works include Alba Donati’s Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop and Beatrice Salvioni’s The Cursed Friend.
Candice Whitney (she/they) is a writer and translator based in the southeast of the US. Candice is a former Fulbright scholar and alum of Mt Holyoke College. They’ve written about Blackness and Italy for Public Books and Words Without Borders, and curated events for CUNY, NYU, and more.
Catherine Xinxin Yu (she/they) is a literary translator working with English, Chinese, and Italian. She is interested in literature from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Italy, especially works that explore ecology, gender, indigeneity, and diaspora. Her translations and writing appear or are forthcoming in Asymptote, The Oxonian Review, This Is Southeast Asia, La Piccioletta Barca, and Full Stop Magazine. More about them @riso.allegro on Instagram and on www.cxxyu.eu.
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