Spenser, Edmund. La Regina delle Fate. Milano: Bompiani, 2012. Trans. Luca Manini. lxxiv + 2278 pp. ISBN: 978-8845272066. $65.00 cloth.
Almost two centuries after the publication of the first Italian version of Book I and sixty-two years from the last, Luca Manini gives us the long-awaited Italian translation of the whole Faerie Queene.[1]
This fine bilingual edition includes an introduction by Thomas P. Roche, Jr. and a rich critical apparatus by Manini, comprising an essay on Spenser and the Italian Renaissance, a critical summary of the themes and narratives of the poem, a table of the main characters and stories in each canto, a chronological table of Spenser’s life, a bibliography, a list of characters, and five indexes. Spenser’s text is reproduced from Roche’s Yale/Penguin edition of 1978 and Manini’s prose translation preserves the stanzas.
It is hard to overestimate the impact of La Regina delle Fate, the first translation of the complete text of The Faerie Queene in any language, on the Italian—indeed, international—cultural scene. As regards Italy, thanks to Manini’s labours, The Faerie Queene is honoured on the occasion of important events (more on this below), and with full-page articles in the Italian national press. This degree of attention is unprecedented: at long last the poem has earned the prominence it deserves in Italy for its intrinsic value and in consideration of its tight links to Italian literature.
La Regina delle Fate has received full reviews—often accompanied by eye-catching colour reproductions of paintings or photographs, one featuring actress Kate Blanchett as Elizabeth I—in all the major Italian papers. An article by literary critic Emanuele Trevi was given almost a full page in the widely circulated Corriere della Sera. All the commentators emphasize the importance of this translation of a masterpiece finally made accessible to the large number of Italian readers to whom Spenser’s language in particular, and more generally English texts of some complexity, are difficult. Trevi praises Manini’s effort and highlights the challenges faced by the translator of a poem which he celebrates as one of the greatest literary works ever. In La Repubblica, Nadia Fusini, the critic and translator of Shakespeare, Keats and Woolf, admits to her initial disappointment regarding the choice of prose for this version of the poem, but then expresses her great appreciation for “the ritmo interno quasi cantato,” the internal song-like rhythm, of Manini’s translation and “il calco raffinato del realismo epico di marca italiana,” his refined calque of the Italianate epic realism. Full reviews of La Regina delle Fate figure prominently in the prestigious Sunday supplements of Il Sole 24 Ore, where Luigi Sampietro welcomes this edition of a poem he describes as not only a classic but also a monument, and Il Manifesto, whose critic defines Manini as a “hero of the labour of translation.” In a full-page article for L’Indice dei Libri del Mese (one of the more authoritative Italian journals of literary criticism) Luigi Marfé lays stress on the richness of the critical apparatus of La Regina delle Fate.[2] At present, The Faerie Queene has a higher profile in Italy than in any Anglophone country.
Literary critics and journalists also responded positively last February at Franco Parenti Theatre in Milan when Manini’s translation of The Faerie Queene was introduced at the launch of the series of which it is part. Special guests Dario Fo (1997 Nobel Laureate in Literature) and Umberto Eco (a semiologist of international renown and the author of The Name of the Rose) drew a vast audience. Philosopher Nuccio Ordine offered a scholarly presentation of the Bompiani series “Classici della letteratura europea,” which includes new translations and critical editions of Montaigne’s Essais, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Rabelais’s Gargantua et Pantagruel and Spenser’s Faerie Queene.[3] Ordine emphasized Manini’s great achievement in producing the first version of the whole poem. Visibly and understandably tense given the parterre de rois, Manini was transfigured once he began to introduce the Faerie Queene to an audience largely unaware of its very existence. His remarks, though solemn and learned, clearly revealed his passion for Spenser’s poem, a feeling that is palpable in his translation and its critical apparatus. He would need the passion.
Undertaking an Italian version of The Faerie Queene was originally proposed to Manini by Gian Mario Anselmi, Professor of Italian at the University of Bologna, during a coffee-break at a conference on Petrarch. Manini was quick to take up the gauntlet, and with that gesture he embarked on a six-year labour.
As Manini himself points out in “Notes on the Italian Translation of Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” he first drafted a verse translation, but then agreed with his editor on a prose version.[4] In consideration of the fine poetic ear shown by Manini’s 2005 verse translation of Amoretti and Epithalamion, one could be led to regret the choice of a prose version of the sublime Spenserian stanza, the musical instrument forged by the poet through addition of a ninth line to the Italian ottava rima.[5] Manini’s own elucidations, however, are quite convincing. This authorial and editorial decision arose mainly from consideration of one specific feature of English, i.e., prevalence of monosyllables and disyllables enabling the inclusion of ten words in an iambic pentameter, whereas the Italian hendecasyllable cannot comprise the same number of words. The loss of at least a third of the source text, given that each and every word is an important element in the thematic and rhythmic architecture of the whole Faerie Queene, was deemed highly undesirable.[6] However, the gifts shown in Manini’s verse translation of Amoretti surface in the poetic movement and resonances of his prose version of the poem.
Manini’s translation of The Faerie Queene is sensitive, evocative, and detailed. He introduces some terms used by Ariosto, Tasso, Trissino and Guazzo, thus creating an important link between the language of the Italian literary tradition and modern Italian, as well as suggesting Spenser’s debts. He refrains, however, from the easy option of a prose rich in archaic terms to mirror Spenser’s archaisms or his coining of new words in dusty garb. He attains the desired effect—a text characterized by a “hint of antiquity”[7]—by rearranging the Italian syntax so as to obtain an archaic rhythm with a fluid and lively pace. The syntactic structure is at times unfamiliar to modern ears and induces effects of surprise which, however, do not generate obscurity. Manini’s language recreates some of the unique attractiveness, to the reader’s ear and imagination, of his source text.
Generally speaking, Manini’s translation is marvellous: apart from the original rhythm and poetic quality mentioned above, it is characterized by an impressive number of excellent renderings of Spenserian expressions that, because of their linguistic or conceptual density, present hard translational challenges. One example is Manini’s “innaturale generazione” for Spenser’s “backward bred” (V.pr.ii.6), but one could enumerate them in hundreds. Instances of less satisfactory solutions are few and negligible by comparison. For example, in the case of the portrait of the “Dread Souerayne Goddesse” who sits “in seate of iudgement, in th’Almighties place,” the clear reference to contemporary views of monarchs as God’s delegates is partly lost in the expression “nel luogo dell’Altissimo” which is more suggestive of a physical dwelling (“in luogo dell’Altissimo,” for example, is a less ambiguous option) (V.pr.11.1-2). Having worked for years on the theological context of Spenser’s works, I personally regret the omission of some significant terms or the loss of their conceptual density. The adverb “too” used in connection with the Red Cross Knight, for example, is absent in the Italian text despite its importance: by emphasizing that the knight is “too solemne sad” (I.i.2.8), Spenser’s narrator offers crucial hints on his spiritual imperfection (the absence of joy which Galatians 5.22 indicates as “the fruite of the Spirite” is a clear pointer) and temperamental weaknesses that will make him a paradigmatic figure of the death-wisher. I realize, however, that the intended reader of this edition of the poem is a Spenserian novice, not scholar, and a version taking into consideration the various levels and intersections of meanings of Spenser’s text would be impossible and perhaps inappropriate. Indeed, anatomies of The Faerie Queene—as of any other literary text—sometimes entail loss of the enjoyment of the lively and entertaining quality of its narratives, which, it must be said, is preserved in Manini’s translation.
Some things after all cannot be translated and some of Spenser’s most complex inventions are inevitably and for the most part unavoidably flattened; this is particularly true of the rhymes. For instance at VI.x.5 where Calidore wanders around “far from all peoples troad,” the rhyme-term “troad”—which suggests both “tread” and “road,” and in “tread” active feet in the dust of the road, and which manages because of these things to suddenly bring the madding crowd alive into the verse to show and not just tell what Calidore had escaped from—all this becomes “lontano dai sentieri battuti,” rather like “far from the beaten track,” both people and treading have gone. On the other hand to hear Spenser’s more home-spun or journeyman passages in the language of Dante and Ariosto, woven by an expert, is to hear them all over again for the first time with a sometimes ravishing melody of their own: in the same stanza, “as he did raunge the fields abroad” becomes “mentre vagabondava per i campi.” One is tempted to say “the advantage is unfair”; but what such passages show is the efficiency, adroitness, sheer skill, and humility of Spenser’s least intense passages. Manini has figures of his own aplenty. Spenser continues the phrases just cited in journeyman form: “Whilest his faire Pastorella was elsewhere,” a formulaic and plain line; Manini continues with “e la bella Pastorella si trovava altrove,” anything but plain and journeyman. Manini’s internal rhyme is perfectly Spenserian as is the play with “trova” and “trove.” Some of Spenser’s doublings are adroitly, rather beautifully, reproduced: “Vntil that Guyon selfe unto him spake / And called” (V.iii.34) becomes, “sinché Guyon non gli parlò, chiamandolo.” (The word preceding these of Manini’s is “chiunque” [“anyone”] which begins an alliteration on “chi” as adroitly managed as most of them are.) Spenser’s “gladful glee” in the same stanza becomes the equally effective “gioiosa allegria.” The translation would repay intense study, it is densely thought out and represents a thoroughgoing interpretation of the detailed phrasing of the poem. Manini’s versions of Spenser’s multiplicities will now need to be consulted alongside those of other commentators.[8]
Some of Spenser’s formulaic phrases (a notorious problem in translating Homer) Manini has chosen not to reproduce. For example, “wretched case” which Spenser uses in various forms a couple of dozen times: at III.iii.41.4, “where long in wretched cace / He liv’d” is given by “dove a lungo aveva vissuto in condizioni atroci”; I.iv.3.5: “Which euer after in most wretched case,” is given by “sventurati,” and again at 4.12.8.9 “thus to renew her wretched case” is also given by “sventure”; while at VI.ii.47.4: “a straunger to her wretched case” becomes “estraneo alla sua situazione disperata.” But the choice not to repeat identically when your author does is a legitimate choice to make. Among English translations of Homer, Lattimore goes out of his way to reproduce the formulae, while T.E. Lawrence goes out of his way to find a different expression for every case.
In turning to the apparatus, it will be noted that its value per se and in the perspective of the volume’s purpose is remarkable. Roche’s general introduction of nine pages offers the Spenserian neophyte all the necessary historical and thematic background. (Unfortunately the Italian version of Roche’s Introduction is not always commendable owing to some repetitions and unclear passages. See for example vii, where it is unclear with reference to what exactly it is said that “Non accadde nulla,” nothing happened.)
Manini’s “Spenser e la cultura italiana” is an ample (seventeen pages) and learned essay on the literary and philosophical legacy of the Italian Renaissance and its influence on a Cambridge graduate like Spenser. Manini displays solid scholarship and comfortable familiarity with authors long neglected (even by sophisticated readers) such as Gian Giorgio Trissino, whose sorceress Acratia from L’Italia liberata da’ Goti lends something of her sinister charm to Spenser’s Acrasia, or Stefano Guazzo, whose La civil conversazione offers inspiration for Spenser’s Legend of Courtesy. Also worthy of note is Manini’s discussion of Spenser’s re-creative powers in relation to Ariosto and Tasso and his capacity to infuse new meanings into specific episodes from L’Orlando furioso and La Gerusalemme Liberata (see for example xx and xxi). Manini’s register is lofty and refined; the breadth of the argumentation is appropriate to an academic article and yet both the volume’s intended audience and its purpose are always kept in sight.
This essay is followed by eight pages of a reader’s guide to The Faerie Queene, also by Manini. This section is notable for the clear and learned introduction of some important Spenserian themes. The poem’s first-time reader will appreciate the handy table of the main characters and stories arranged by book and canto (xxxvii-xlv), a welcome guide to the labyrinthine narrative structure of the poem. There follows the Italian version of “A Letter of the Authors”: its position within the critical apparatus is a peculiar choice, and the absence of the English original is regrettable. Translation of “A Letter” is followed by a chronological table of Spenser’s life. The bibliography is very rich, with a useful section listing all Italian translations of Spenser’s works. It is in fact too rich for the intended audience, who would have benefited more, I think, from a less ample selection of texts, with indication of their didactic function and the specific areas covered. The title of section 2 announcing a list of editions of the poem published before 1930 is misleading, since all important editions to the present day are duly indicated. Endnotes run to 131 pages (2083-2214): they are extremely informative and are followed by a list of characters, with indication of their role in the narrative and references to the etymology of names when needed. The apparatus includes five indices (of historical, literary and mythological names; of planets and stars; of allegorical buildings and pageants; of geographical references; of names in the introduction, endnotes and critical apparatus). The remarkable richness of the apparatus attests to the authorial and editorial awareness of and attention to the purpose of the volume. It certainly points to Manini’s genuine passion for Spenser’s poem and his desire to win new readers for it.
La Regina delle Fate is a very useful book for its intended audience: it will be beneficial for all Spenserian novices (not just Italians) familiar with Italian. This volume also adds a great deal in terms of practical applications, as it enables Italian secondary-school teachers and university lecturers in English or comparative literature to include passages from The Faerie Queene—which even English-speaking students find hard—in their syllabi.
As an introduction to Spenser’s “land of faeries” for Italian-speaking readers, this edition is unlikely to be surpassed; for English-speaking readers, a highly detailed and imaginative commentary on the diction, syntax, and rhetoric of The Faerie Queene.
Paola Baseotto
Insubria University
[1] Edmund Spenser, Il Cavaliere della Croce Rossa o La leggenda della Santità, trans. T. J. Mathias (Naples: Nobile, 1826), La Regina delle Fate, libro I, trans. C. Izzo (Florence: Sansoni, 1950).
[2] E. Trevi, “Spenser, una morale magica,” Corriere della Sera, 15 Dec. 2012, N. Fusini, “La Regina delle Fate: Fantasy del Seicento,” la Repubblica, 18 Feb. 2013, L. Sampietro, “La fata cavalleresca,” Domenica (Sunday supplement of Il Sole 24 Ore), 30 June 2013, V. Papetti, “La Rinascenza inglese calata nelle rime dei virtuosi cavalieri,” Alias, (Sunday supplement of Il Manifesto), 16 Dec. 2012, L. Marfé, “Allegoria della corte inglese,” L’indice 7 Aug. 2013.
[3] Professor Nuccio Ordine, a specialist of the Renaissance in general and Giordano Bruno in particular, is general editor of the series published by Bompiani.
[4] Luca Manini (trans. Gianmarco Lampugnani), “Notes on the Italian translation of Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” Spenser Review 43.1.2 (Spring-Summer 2013).
[5] Edmund Spenser, Amoretti e Epitalamio, trans. Luca Manini (Roma: Carocci, 2005). A new edition of Manini’s version of Amoretti and Epithalamion, with a revised critical apparatus, is forthcoming for Bompiani.
[6] Manini, “Notes on the Italian Translation of Spenser’s Faerie Queen.’”
[7] Manini, “Notes on the Italian Translation of Spenser’s Faerie Queene.”
[8] Sadly there are misprints, as for instance Spenser’s “But horse and foot knew Diamond …” (IV.ii.42.6) in the Italian has “Triamond”; and in the English, too, at II.xii.56 we have “Whole” instead of “Whose” to begin line 3.
43.2.27
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This degree of attention is unprecedented: at long last the poem has earned the prominence it deserves in Italy for its intrinsic value and in consideration of its tight links to Italian literature.
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