That burning desire of translating».The Streben of translation between Leopardi and Bonnefoy

Abstract

There are many investments having to do with literary translation.

Referring to some important translation studies on the topic, the study starts with Giacomo Leopardi who focuses on a theoretical and practical view on translation according to a “desiring” perspective: in the Zibaldone, in the paratexts of his works and especially in his juvenile Scherzi epigrammatici.

That same perspective will occur in Leopardi being translated as well.

Among the many possible examples, the one belonging to Yves Bonnefoy is particularly meaningful since the French writer inscribes his translation of Leopardi within a specific dynamic of Desire («per quanto insufficiente sia la traduzione, […] essa ha dato forma a un desiderio, rivelato un affetto»). It becomes the key, in critical texts, to understand Leopardi’s poetry as it happens in his unique translation-interpretation of the Canto notturno where the moon, close to the shepherd, agrees to «boir de son désir, de son espérance», accompanying him «riante».

Bonnefoy dwells, also with regards to other translated authors such as Shakespeare, upon the «fantasmes» of the text which the poet-translator, driven by a firm «désir conceptuel», must be able to sort out in order to convey the work to be translated in relation to the enigmatic sense of poetry and poetic reading, that is according to the sense of his Desire.