Group 1
Veglia, literal translation:
- Wakefulness
An entire nighttime
thrown near
to a companion
massacred
with his mouth
open
he turns to the full moon,
with the congestion
of his hands
penetrated
in my silence
I have written
letters full of love.
I have never been
so
attacked by life.
Veglia, communicative:
Awake
The whole night
tossed beside
a fellow soldier
massacred
with mouth
dangling
facing the moon,
with the meeting
of his hands
pierced
in silence
I wrote
loving letters.
Never have I been
so very
struck by life.
Veglia is about a soldier during the First World War, alone and awake at night beside a fallen comrade. The poem is very simple, utilizing short lines, and straightforward imagery. This brusqueness is, I believe, to reflect the serenity and emptiness one feels when alone in nature, as is the poem’s subject. This serenity is then contrasted with the brutality of the description of the dead body near the narrator. What is disturbing about this poem is that, though natural beauty and a decaying body seem like stark contrasts, they are not so to the poem’s subject. For him, such a sight is commonplace and mundane—not even worth special note. His repose is little disturbed by the body and he has no difficulty in writing pleasant letters to his friends and family back home. This poem is clearly inspired by Ungaretti’s experiences in the First World War, and he is probably the poem’s subject.
For my communicative translation, I tried to keep the lines as short as possible, since I feel this is the most crucial aspect of the original. In pursuit of this, I omitted pronouns and articles when not absolutely necessary. An exception is the penultimate line, where I wrote “so very” instead of merely “so”, because I think “so” by itself in this context sounds like idiotic California speak.
Group 2
Mattino, literal translation:
2. Morning
I illuminate myself
of the immense
Mattino, communicative translation:
2. Morning
It brightens
in brilliance
In Mattino, the meaning of the words is secondary to their sound and feel. In the original, both lines fit together perfectly. They contain many of the same letters, and end in the same sound. Though the meaning is important as well, I doubt Mattino would be famous in the slightest if not for its eloquent wordplay. In his early years (when he wrote this poem), Ungaretti was a hermetic poet. Hermeticism is a style which is intentionally obtuse and that emphasizes the sound of words. Mattino is very clearly a Hermetic poem, with evident care and attention put toward its sonic qualities.
For my translation, I felt I needed two words that at least started and ended with the same sounds, without rhyming. I was willing to change the meaning of the poem to achieve this, but fortunately I did not have to. I did change the subject from first person to third person, in order to have an s sound at the end of both lines. Clearly, though, the subject is still the morning.