L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2015 www.italoamericano.org 13 L'Italo-Americano A medeo Gìacomini (1939- 2 0 0 6 ) w a s a p r o l i f i c writer: literary scholar, essayist, translator, and poet. He was born in the northeastern b o r d e r o f I t a l y i n V a r m o , Udine. Though he wrote and published widely in a variety of genres, he was mostly at home in his native Friulian dialect represented so eloquently and e m o t i o n a l l y i n h i s p o e t r y . According to Francesca Cadel in her forward to It looks Like Winter, he is often compared to other famous Italian poets, from G i a c o m o L e o p a r d i a n d Giuseppe Ungaretti to Eugenio M o n t a l e a n d P i e r P a o l o Pasolini. It looks Like Winter is considered by critics to be his masterpiece. It is easy to under- stand why. In the more than forty poems in the collection, Gìacomini engages in a dis- course with his ancestral roots in Varmo, its landscape, his rel- atives, and the local people. He has an uncanny ability to make the land, the trees, sky, moon, a n d a l l o t h e r a s p e c t s o f h i s hometown an intimate part of the voice speaking to us in each poem. He accomplishes all of this through his dialect, which is what connects him to his past, his town, and those friends and relatives he addresses in his poems. Dino Fabris, who has been translating Gìacomini for years, makes his Friulian dialect come alive in both the English and the Italian translations of the poems. Gìacomini's dialect is difficult and challenging for even the Italian reader who does not speak Friulian. One exam- ple from the Friulian will suf- fice here: "Di ains pluj j' no torni,/ no mi covente save . . .". Fabris translates, "It's years since I've been back. I don't need to know . . ." The careful reader must compare the origi- nal with both the English and the Italian at the bottom of the page. But the exercise is well worth the time. I spent hours reading these forty poems, com- p a r i n g t e x t s t o t r y t o g e t a s close as I could to the origi- nal. There were moments that I felt that the English translation was better than the Italian ver- sion of certain lines. But it is difficult to be sure. As Robert Frost once said, poetry is what is lost in translation. In the first poem in the vol- u m e , " N o t R e t u r n i n g t o Varmo," which is also the title of the first section of the book, Gìacomini writes about not hav- ing visited his beloved home- town for years. When he does revisit Varmo, he discovers that time and its traveling compan- ion change have made it impos- sible for him to return to the Varmo that he remembers. But what is remarkable about all his poems is that his poetry never descends into sentimentality. In the specificity of his images there is always a sharp, insight- ful edge. He says in the poem that he does not need to know what has changed in his home- town because, he concludes, "In the bitter, sure assurance that I live / I don't need the dead any more." The last line is unex- p e c t e d , a l m o s t j a r r i n g , a remarkable leap for a poem that seemed to be going in an entire- ly different direction. His is careful not to romanti- cize his landscape or use con- ventional images, even when writing about some of poetry's m o s t c o n v e n t i o n a l s u b j e c t s , s u c h a s a m i d n i g h t m o o n o r love. The landscape he once knew mirrors the change in his view of life as an older man. In "It Looks Like Winter," "The wind lofts gulls up from the sea, / fleeting as rags or thoughts, real only in their raucous cry- ing." In the "fleeting" image of those gulls, he expresses the lamentable passage of time and change that is inevitable in life. Likewise, in "What to Ask the Moon," he does not know what to ask the moon, or what mean- ing to draw from it. Though G ì a c o m i n i ' s n a t u r e i s n e v e r mute, it does not easily give up its secrets to the poet. To him t h e m o o n i s " s m o t h e r e d i n c l o u d s , " a n d h o v e r s o v e r a "careless world" in the "cold breath of its own beauty." He never surrenders his lines to commonplace images or form- less spiritual insights. It is a "bare-faced and silent" moon that peers down at him. Always writing with an eye to overturn conventional poetic l a n g u a g e , i n t h e l o v e p o e m , " W h a t o f Y o u I Say," Gìacomini describes a nature that is composed of the "veins of lizards," "lichens with yellow hearts," "birches' pun- gent milk," clods of earth," and " muddy pools." His grief is l o c a t e d i n t h e i m a g e o f t h e p o e t ' s p a i n f u l " n a i l s a n d veins." But the poem ends with the astonishing but touching lines, simple but powerful, that address the object of his love (his wife?), the "one who turns to retrieve / earrings forgotten on the dresser." It is a moment in his younger years suddenly r e c a l l e d i n t h e i m a g e o f h i s wife's forgetfulness. In "Life Slips Through My Fingers," Gìacomini writes that he is "crushed by facts," like "gypsy sold to the wind" con- demned "to look for an I that I don't recognize." His world is not necessarily hostile or alien, but it is a world that does not give up its meaning easily if at all. In the poem "Birthday," he writes "What's the point tonight / of summing up what you are / what you've been?" His only option as a poet, he concludes, is to "swim against the current." In "The Eye of the Poet," Gìacomini writes that the poet writes "blasphemies," (so-called by those around him), but they a r e , n e v e r t h e l e s s " w o r d s o f love,/ to a God whom others / could never even name!" In Don't Try a Tongue, he warns y o u n g e r p o e t s , " D o n ' t t r y a tongue / that doesn't suit you; / don't look for a land that isn't yours." In his choice to write in F r i u l i a n i n s t e a d o f s t a n d a r d Italian, which would no doubt make his poetry available to a w i d e r a u d i e n c e i n I t a l y , Gìacomini takes his own advice. With his Friulian he stays true to himself and that past which c a n o n l y f i n d a h o m e i n h i s n a t i v e d i a l e c t . L a m e n t a b l y , r e a d e r s o u t s i d e t h e F r i u l i a n dialect do not have full access to his "rooted speech." However, the tone, color, and specificity of his lines do resonate in trans- lation. What is lost on the non- Friulian reader is made up by Dino Fabris's translations into both English and Italian. In the final section of the book, Returning to Varmo, there is a sense of repose, the tension between the poet, change, and his past somewhat resolved. In "Boys," he writes of his days s p e n t i n V a r m o w h e r e t h e youthful and naïve Gìacomini and his friends "invented a man- ifold world, / moonstruck every- day." For the older poet such wonder before the world is no longer possible. In the poem "In Osteria" he writes about the people of his town and in State of Being the simple pleasures of d o m e s t i c l i f e w i t h h i s w i f e : "Our life. Yes, ours / and yet mine!" where "leaving is no longer necessary." He expresses an acceptance of life in his later years, no matter the change that has overcome life. Nevertheless, his poems challenge us and cre- ate in the reader not a sentimen- tal contemplation of the past but a thoughtful solitude about time and change in our own lives. Ken Scambray is the author ofA Varied Harvest: The Life a n d W o r k s o f H e n r y B l a k e F u l l e r , T h e N o r t h A m e r i c a n I t a l i a n R e n a i s s a n c e : I t a l i a n Writing inAmerica and Canada, S u r f a c e R o o t s : S t o r i e s , a n d Q u e e n C a l a f i a ' s P a r a d i s e : C a l i f o r n i a a n d t h e I t a l i a n American Novel. KENNETH SCAMBRAY It Looks Like Winter (Presumut Unviȃr): Poems in the Friulian Dialect (1984-86) by Amedeo Gìacomini. (Trilingual Edition) Translated by Dino Fabris. Forward by Francesca Cadel. Legas, 2015. Friulan poet Amedeo Giacomini

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