Ungaretti traduce Blake: rivelazioni

Giuseppe Ungaretti, a poet whose life was marked by the endless crossing and recrossing of boundaries, is the perfect embodiment of the animal traductor, anthropologically grounded in Derridean différance. The Italian poet seamlessly combined his poetic writing with the practice of translation. By his own admission, he turned to Blake as a way to react to himself at a time when he felt swamped with technical problems. Most critics would maintain that Ungaretti saw in Blake a reflection of himself and that his translations are ancillary to his poetry. This paper takes a different yet consonant perspective. Starting from the premise that Blake was himself a cultural mediator and that Ungaretti translated his poetry precisely because he thought it both provisional and untranslatable, we propose to consider Ungaretti’s "Visioni" not only as a sparring ground for writing, but also as the outcome of a self-conscious and respectful approach, pervaded by a longing for a measure of impossible faithfulness.