The Reception of France Prešeren in Italy

Abstract

The study of Prešeren’s reception in Italy reveals that it has come about in four relatively separate stages, divided by breaks of several years, which fragmented the process of reception and to a certain extent hindered the natural growth of interest and unveiling of the multifaceted artistic message of his poetry. – Not taking into account some lesser occasional newspaper publications, now all but lost to our historical memory, one can ascertain that it was in Italian anthologies of Slovenian literature and in some cases in more extensive, even international poetry selections that the Slovenian poet first started to appear. These early voices emerged only a good ten years after the Slovenians themselves had come to the present realization of the poet’s significance and his artistic strength. It was mainly on the initiative of Slovenian intermediaries that these introductions came about; however, it is evident that Italian scholars and editors themselves recognized Prešeren’s great poetic value. – In the second stage, Prešeren became the subject of prominent Italian Slavonic scholars; however, they simply adopted the findings of Slovenian literary criticism and more or less echoed them. These interpretations were mainly part of the more general, yet relatively limited outlines of Slovenian literary history and did not pay any special attention to Prešeren. The only attempt to create a new and original portrait of the world of Prešeren was the Calvi monograph, which barely registered in Italy and received an unfavorable response in Slovenia. Slovenian literary criticism is aware of Prešeren’s ties to Italian and Latin literature and, accordingly, takes it into consideration; however, the Slovenian critical reviews of the Calvi monograph and subsequent studies of Prešeren have shown certain relatively modest analytical and investigative faculties of the author of this Italian monograph on the greatest Slovenian poet. – After a prolonged silence, in the third stage of recognition, the initiative was taken up by the Slovenians themselves, who keenly saw to the publication of the new translations of Prešeren’s poetry; as a result, it was then almost entirely translated into Italian. His Poetry in Italian was accompanied by Slovenian studies of the poet in translation, which, as a rule, did not sufficiently take into account Italian readers, since they were in fact simply slightly adapted texts intended for the Slovenian readership. A number of these book-form translations met a polite, but reserved reception from the Italian public. The few authors who at least hinted at the unresponsiveness of the Italians obviously did not question the greatness of Prešeren’s poetry, and there was almost no mention of the fact that it is difficult to establish poetic communication between a 19^th-century Slovenian poet and a modem Italian reader who is not aware of the broader literary-historical context. It was only the analysis of Marija Pirjevec that drew attention to the many unanswered questions posed by Italian translations of Prešeren. – The most recent attempts to bring Prešeren closer to the Italian reader, target a demanding and qualified expert on Slovenian literature. In this case, several major Slovenian projects marking Prešeren’s anniversaries (the 200^th anniversary of his birth in 2000 and the 150^th anniversary of his death in 1999) came together. A careful translation, which took many years and was carried out by Giorgio Depangher with the assistance of Marija Pirjevec, was ripe for publication. The publication of a broader selection of Prešeren’s poetry in translation converged with the publication of the translation of Paternu’s monograph on Prešeren’s poetry and was presented to the Italian public on several occasions and in different arenas; in Italy in 2000 there were two symposiums focusing on Prešeren. Judging by the reception of several other writers more widely recognized in Italy (Ivan Cankar, Srečko Kosovel, Ciril Zlobec), the efforts of such a process should not conclude too soon, so in this area, persistence seems more important than quality.