The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni
A Bilingual Edition
With an Introduction by Peter Robinson
The Beach (La Spiaggia)
They’ve all gone away —
the voice was blathering down the receiver
Then, knowingly: — They’ll not return —.
But today
on this stretch of beach never visited before
those sunlight patches . . . Signals
of theirs, who hadn't left at all?
And when you turn they’re quiet, as if nothing.
What’s being wasted from day to day
is not the dead, but it’s those
patches of the nonexistent, lime or ashes
ready to become light and movement.
Don’t
be in doubt, — the sea’s strength assails me —
speak they will.
Viewed as one of the most important Italian poets of the last century, Vittorio Sereni (1913–83) wrote with a historical sweep unlike that of any of his contemporaries. A poet of both personal and political responsibility, he wrote of life under fascism, military defeat and imprisonment, the Italian economic miracle and cold war in Europe, and the resurgence of extreme right-wing politics, as well as the roles played by love and friendship in the survival of humanity. An equally esteemed prose writer, his pieces on the contradictions of war and the complex purpose of poetry and the arts in society are seminal contributions to Italian literature.
The first substantial translation of Sereni’s work published anywhere in the world, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is a unique guide to this classic twentieth-century poet. This bilingual edition collects the most representative poems from Sereni’s oeuvre, as well as a selection of prose works that extends the themes of his poetry. The book also contains examples of Sereni’s short fiction, published here in English for the first time. With a full chronology, commentary, bibliography, and learned introduction by distinguished British poet and scholar Peter Robinson, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is the only authorized rendering of Sereni’s verse in English.
"Perryman and Robinson’s scholarly edition, which has been twenty-five years in the making, includes an introduction (from Robinson), chronology, illustrations, copious notes and a bibliography, all beautifully packaged by Chicago Press at a snip. Both texts offer faithful translations down to punctuation and line breaks, but they never falter as poems, with the same restrained and careful diction found in Robinson’s own poetry....Perryman and Robinson have done us a great service in making such a rich selection of Vittorio Sereni’s work available to the English speaking public."—Belinda Cook, Modern Poetry in Translation
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chronology
Selected Poetry
da frontiera / from frontier
diario d’algeria / algerian diary
da gli strumenti umani / from the human implements
da stella variabile / from variable star
Selected Prose
from the immediate surroundings
from crossing milan
Commentary
Bibliography
Index of Titles and First Lines
Literature and Literary Criticism: Poetry | Romance Languages
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.
