I wake up this morning and I can’t find my contact lenses. I search everywhere, but I remember putting them down, in their little case (obviously), on top of my book on the floor next to my bed. I’m almost 100% certain that one of the three cats carried it off. There’s Piggy, Princess Leia, and Gourdzo. I’m betting on Gourdzo, he often likes to steal Billi’s toys and he’s the one who wakes me up in the middle of the night by jumping on me while I sleep. Oh well, I crack open a new pair and remind myself to buy a new case today.
Jennifer and I head into the city way ahead of schedule today. We want to have time to really look at the Pantheon, especially since discovering that there are very few people there in the morning. As I wander around, admiring the incredible marble used to construct the interior facades, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that there’s no way to see what it once looked like with all of the Roman gods represented. I imagine that there must have been mosaics and great statues of the gods where the altars to various catholic saints now sit. I imagine it was a little simpler too, perhaps a design that allowed the marble to bring the beauty. Catholic interior decorating seems to leave all the churches and cathedrals with a cluttered appearance as gilded this and that and various figures and paintings and tapestries are all crammed in together. In my mind the beauty of the original Pantheon must have been in its simplicity and inherent grandeur.
[SIDE NOTE: Later Giuseppe tells me that most of the Pantheon was originally plated with brass. But then the Catholics ripped that out to use in the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. Even if it’s recycling, I still consider that pillaging.]
Jennifer and I trace our now usual route to Campo de’ Fiori, but instead of going through Piazza Navona we take a left a little early and stumble upon a church tucked back in a courtyard. I remember “accidents” like this from my trip to Florence. Italy is old enough that simply by wandering one is guaranteed to run into beautiful and very old relics. We take photos, but there’s no time to linger, class does not wait for us!
Today we are off to visit Piazza Belli G. Gioachino, named for the great Roman poet. There is, of course, a statue dedicated to the man and we gather around it, but it’s awfully hard to concentrate in the oppressive heat and humidity. The sonnets that we will be translating from Alberti’s collection Roma, Peligro para Caminantes, are all accompanied by epigraphs by Belli. He was a great inspiration for Alberti and so we linger around the monument until the rivers of our own sweat threaten to wash us away.
We have a long trek up to the Spanish Embassy, and lots of translating work ahead of us. Today, the Embassy is open and we are able to collect in a small courtyard with a tiny basilica in the center. It’s actually quite beautiful and we’re allowed to take some photos before we have to get down to business.
Today we will learn about sonnets. I think most of our group has been feeling quite intimidated by the task of translating two of Alberti’s sonnets. We struggled with the two free-verse poems and now we must take on poems with very specific structure, cadence, and value.
The most important aspect of the sonnet is its sound; it’s supposed to be lyrical. In the romance languages each verse contains eleven syllables and is composed of two quatrains (four verses) and two triplets (three verses). There are various rhyming schemes (ABBA, AABB, ABAB), but there are also rules about where the stresses fall in the words. In Spanish (and I can’t speak for Italian), these rules seem fairly simple because word structure in the language is more or less patterned and regular. In English, well, we don’t really have much of a system having borrowed so many words and roots of words from so many languages. The rules in English, therefore, are different.
In English the sonnet is written in iambic pentameter (think Shakespeare*). Each line of verse must contain five metrical feet. One metrical foot consists of a short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable—this is also called an iamb. Basically, each line of the sonnet must have five iambs. Here are some definitions to really confuse things:
Iambic: of or using iambs.
Iambs: a metrical foot consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable.
Pentameter: a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet, or (in Greek and Latin verse) of two halves each of two feet and a long syllable.
Metrical: of, relating to, or composed in poetic meter.
Meter: the rhythm of a piece of poetry, determined by the number and length of feet in a line.
Feet: a group of syllables constituting a metrical unit. In English poetry it consists of stressed and unstressed syllables, while in ancient classical poetry it consists of long and short syllables.
*Shakespeare wrote in the Elizabethan sonnet, which was in iambic pentameter and consisted of three quatrains and a final couplet with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
So now that we’re all equally confused… Let’s throw some history on top of it. Sonnets originated in Latin-based language, which would explain why the lyrical element seems much easier in Spanish and Italian. Giuseppe and Tony throw a bunch of names at us in a quick-dose background of the sonnet. Most important to note is the incredible impact Dante Alighieri’s work had on the world of poetry, and the Italian language itself. In fact, through the sonnet and his Divine Comedy, Dante established a single dialect that evolved into present day Italian. He wrote in the spoken language of the people, and as a political theory student I can assure you that nothing unifies a people or a country as fiercely as a common language.
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) added the passion to the sonnet through his famous Canzoniere, which is a loving ode to a woman named Laura. And it was Garcilaso de la Vega who established the sonnet in Spain. It might be important to keep in mind that Dante was writing in about 1309, Petrarca was writing in about 1351, and de la Vega was writing in the early 1500’s. In England, Shakespeare was writing in the late 1500’s. There was no, literally no, established American literature or poetry during the lives of any of these poets—the United States would not exist for more than a hundred and fifty years after Shakespeare’s death. That’s a tremendous amount of history and tradition all weighing down on our little minds as we bend over our text to begin translating our first sonnets.
In fact, Carin and Cortney and I continue to stare at our text and our blank sheet of paper for a half an hour while everyone around us at least looks like they’re making wonderful progress. Carin is pissed, Cortney is confused, I’m discouraged, we’re non-functional.
We leave with nothing on paper. We wander down the hill of the Gianocolo, sort of shaking our heads, still stunned by the daunting task at hand. I keep thinking of our sonnet, trying to rework our rough English translation into something that might fit our meter requirements. I keep rolling words around in my head, scribbling little notes down when I think something might be a good start…
We stop at a small gelato joint and Carin and Cortney and I are determined to crack this thing. However, before we can get started, Giuseppe has taken it upon himself to help me get a new SIM card for my cell phone. I had asked him one little innocent question about cell phones earlier, but Giuseppe is very self-sacrificing in his quest to make sure that each one of us is safe and taken care of and really gets the opportunity to find joy in this trip. So the next thing I know, Giuseppe is leading me down this long, long street to an electronics store to help me run my errand! Unfortunately we get the Gomer Pile of electronics salesmen and it takes him about a half an hour to not help me at all before Giuseppe and I cut and run. I keep scribbling my notes the entire time.
When we finally meet back with my group I can tell that the little breather has been good for all of us. I’m pretty thrilled to be able to sit down with Cortney and Carin and show them that I’ve made some progress and it might actually be possible to translate a sonnet after all! Bolstered by my rough notes, we manage to translate the entire first sonnet. And not just a rough translation either, we OWN IT. In fact, we’re so proud of ourselves that we enjoy a rollicking round of high fives and congratulate each other with sickeningly sweet praise.
Now we’re on a roll and pretty much consider ourselves master-translators, so we set in on our second sonnet. Unfortunately we don’t actually like this one as much as the first, not in the original text, and definitely not in our rough translations. This second sonnet is much, much more difficult. So we get as far as we can and decide to plug away at it again later… we’re way ahead of schedule anyway, so why kill ourselves today?
Here is the original text of our first sonnet:
V
Vida Poética
Siempre andar de bajada o de subida.
Entrar, salir y entrar… Ir al Mercado.
¿A cómo están los huevos? ¿Y el pescado?
Se va en comer y en descomer la vida.
Ir a los templos, y la fe perdida.
Sentirse el alma allí gato encerrado.
Volver al aire… Beber vino aguado…
Ir al río… Y de Nuevo, a la comida.
Leer el diario y lamentar que todo
si no es papel higiénico es retrete,
crimen, vómito, incienso, servilleta.
Llorar porque no ha sido de otro modo
lo que ya se fue en panza y en moflete…
Esta en Roma es la vida de un poeta.
Here is our English translation:
When I get home dinner is waiting for me—cannelloni and peas! I scarf the cannelloni and eat the peas (even though I hate peas) and even though it’s a huge meal, there’s always room for gelato! Afterwards, Jennifer and I stay up in the living room, stubbornly working on our sonnets. I manage to complete a first draft of our second sonnet and feel triumphant, despite knowing that it’s pretty forced and is going to need a huge amount of work—but that’s what group work is all about! After our poetry cram session I crash hard; tomorrow there’s a lot to see!
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