Ollie

Ún più aranciato tramonto

Ún più aranciato tramonto,

il relativo maggiore

di un estate che scoda oltre se stessa,

precipitando fra i cespugli

oltre la luna.

Difficile dire passato,

meglio pensiero del crepuscolo, ricordo,

il quid che unisce rocce a scleteri, e li allea.

Qui, noi

risaliti alle luce del non-tempo

dove ogni cosa batte un colpo in mezzo al cuore

scoperchiandosi.

Ed ecco. Un cimitero di conchiglie.

Un cimitero di conchiglie e la laguna,

vischiosa d’alghe e mucillagine, e le valve

strette a far mucchio nel brivido del sole.

-Massimo Morasso

A vibrant orange sunset

is the greatest remnant

of the arid summer that lingered in your memory

plummeting through the mind’s damp foliage,

and then up over the shining moon.

We aren’t left with much to say, past

that it’s better to remember, to hold on,

than to allow yourself to fall into the twilight and dusk,

that which brings kingdoms to wreckage.

And here,

we rose up to behold the glistening light of this timelessness

where everyone has their place, their beat, in another’s heart,

revealing all.

But alas, we are left to our cemetery amongst the seashells

This mausoleum of shells laid to rest in the lagoon.

Left slimy with algae and mucilage, our mollusk shells

huddle together, closing, forgotten, left to shiver in the shadows.

-Translated from Italian by Ollie

The brightest orange sunset

shines as a reminder

of the sunny summer that burned into your memory,

plummeting through the mind’s dark forest,

and then up over the shining moon that brings it light.

We aren’t given much to say, other than

that it’s better to hold a candle, to grasp the light,

than to allow yourself to slip and fall

into the twilight and dusk,

that which brings castles to the ground.

And here,

we got up to see the glistening light of this timelessness

where everyone has their place, their beat, in another’s heart,

enlightening all.

But alas, we are left to our dim cemetery amongst the seashells

This crypt of shells cast into the darkness of the lagoon.

Left slimy with algae and mucilage, our mollusk shells

close up, forgotten, left to shiver in the shadows.

-Translated from Italian by Ollie

Translator’s Statement

The author of my poem, Massimo Morasso, was born on July 31st, 1964. He attended the faculty of arts at the University of Genoa, located in Genoa, Italy. In 2001, he wrote the Charter for the Earth and for Man, which was a manifesto of environmental ethics that ended up being signed by various Nobel prize winners for literature and Pulitzer prize winners for poetry. His collection of poems titled L'opera in rosso won several Italian awards such as the Gozzano award and Prata award. Many of his works, both critical and creative, have been published in Italian anthologies and magazines, such as Humanitas, Micromega, Atelier, and Poesia. At the moment, he is the editorial director of Edizioni Contacts. The most recent award he has obtained is the Catullo prize of the UNESCO World Academy of Poetry, which was awarded to him in 2018.

My poem, Ún più aranciato tramonto, (which, in my translation, has the English equivalent of A vibrant orange sunset) was published in Morasso’s 2016 award-winning collection, L'opera in rosso. The poem rhymes occasionally, but there isn’t any major rhyme scheme that continues throughout the poem. The tone of the poem sounds reminiscent, and this aligns with the consistent themes of memory as well as forgetfulness that permeate the poem. The only thing that repeats throughout the poem are the themes of memory, for as I mentioned earlier, there is no repeating rhyme scheme. In terms of layout, the poem is formatted interestingly, as some lines are full sentences or phrases, and others are one or two words separated from the rest, typically aligned to the right of the rest of the poem. One good example would be the following passage:

Ún più aranciato tramonto,

il relativo maggiore

di un estate che scoda oltre se stessa,

precipitando fra i cespugli

oltre la luna.

Overall, my translation process was relatively simple, although I did encounter some issues along the way. I talked to my grandfather to help me translate the poem, as he is the only one alive in my family with some minimal knowledge of Italian. He also had an Italian dictionary with him to help him translate, which ended up making the translation slightly more difficult for me. Because of the usage of the dictionary, he would translate things word-by-word, which would usually ignore the context informed by the sentence around any given word. This resulted in a very, very literal translation. Because it was better with using context clues from the text around it, I ended up using Google Translate alongside my grandfather’s translation to help me find out the general ideas the poem was trying to convey. Using the two English translations, I used resources such as an online thesaurus and an online Italian dictionary to dive deeper into the multiple meanings of Italian words as well as their equivalents in English. In my first translation, I decided to focus more on the themes of the mind and memory present in the poem. In my second, I focused on the theme of light and dark as metaphors for memory, a small detail I noticed in the original poem. Once I had figured out the themes of my two poems, I fine-tuned the language I used to represent these different motifs. Overall, I was slightly saddened by my translation process with my grandfather, simply because along with my interview with him, it painted a picture of Italian assimilation.

The interview was quite interesting, and I heard a lot of stories that I hadn’t heard before. As I mentioned earlier, the interview also made me a bit melancholic, as many of these stories revolved around experiences such as going to a separate church service in the basement of a regular church or needing to effectively assimilate into American culture. Earlier in this unit, as a class, we looked over writings from translators about their thoughts and experiences with translation. One I resonated with in particular was the following: “I didn’t grow up speaking much Spanish. My father doesn’t speak it, and in California, my mother was some 3,500 miles away from her Puerto Rican family,” (de Valle Schorske).

Bibliography

De Valle, Carina. “Letter of Recommendation: Translation.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-translation.html

Morasso, Massimo. “A Sunset More Tinged with Orange.” Poetry International, https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poems/poem/103-28421_A-sunset-more-tinged-with-orange/#lang-org.

Morasso, Massimo. “L'opera in Rosso.” Google Books, Passigli Editori, https://books.google.com/books/about/L_opera_in_rosso.html?id=Rdb4jwEACAAJ.

Massimo Morasso, Wikimedia Foundation, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Morasso

Ollie is 15 years old and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. They love drawing, building computers and keyboards, spending time with friends, watching movies, and video editing. Their favorite movies include Bullet Train (which they always manage to bring up in conversation), Everything Everywhere All At Once, and really anything by Wes Anderson. Their favorite musician is MF DOOM, which they constantly keep on rotation.