translation

Daniel Bourne

Daniel Bourne’s books include The Household Gods, Where No One Spoke the Language, and the forthcoming Talking Back to the Exterminator, from Regal House Publishing. His poems and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, APR, Field, Boulevard, Guernica, Salmagundi, Yale Review, Pleiades, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Plume, Colorado Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere.

 

Tadeusz Dziewanowski

Born in Gdańsk in 1953, Tadeusz Dziewanowski was involved in Polish street theater as both a writer and performer during the 1970s, and was a cofounder of the Gdańsk-area creative group, Tawerna Psychonautów (The Tavern of the Psychonauts), in the 1980s. More recently, he has been a poet and translator from English. His first book of poetry, Siedemnaście tysięcy małpich ogonów (Seventeen Thousand Monkey Tales), appeared in 2009, and his poetry, reviews, and translations from English appear regularly in the Polish literary journal Topos.

 

From Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

english translation

From Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

original Italian poem

Poem 22 of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

A qualunque animale alberga in terra,
se non se alquanti ch’ ànno in odio il sole,
tempo da travagliare è quanto è ’l giorno;
ma poi che ’l ciel accende le sue stelle
qual torna a casa et qual s’annida in selva
per aver posa almeno infin a l’alba.

Et io, da che comincia la bella alba
a scuoter l’ombra intorno de la terra,
svegliando gli animali in ogni selva,
non ò mai triegua di sospir col sole;
poi quand’ io veggio fiammeggiar le stelle
vo lagrimando et disiando il giorno.

Quando la sera scaccia il chiaro giorno,
et le tenebre nostre altrui fanno alba,
miro pensoso le crudeli stelle
che m’ ànno fatto di sensibil terra,
et maledico il dì ch’ i’ vidi ’l sole
che mi fa in vista un uom nudrito in selva.

Non credo che pascesse mai per selva
sì aspra fera, o di notte o di giorno,
come costei ch’ i’ piango a l’ombra e al sole;
et non mi stanca primo sonno od alba,
ché ben ch’ i’ sia mortal corpo di terra
lo mio fermo desir vien da le stelle.

Prima ch’ i’ torni a voi, lucenti stelle,
o tomi giù ne l’amorosa selva,
lassando il corpo che fia trita terra,
vedess’ io in lei pietà, che ’n un sol giorno
può ristorar molt’ anni, e ’nanzi l’alba
puommi aricchir dal tramontar del sole.

Con lei foss’ io da che si parte il sole,
et non ci vedess’ altri che le stelle,
sol una notte, et mai non fosse l’alba,
et non se transformasse in verde selva
per uscirmi di braccia, come il giorno
ch’ Apollo la seguia qua giù per terra!

Ma io sarò sotterra in secca selva,
e ’l giorno andrà pien di minute stelle,
prima ch’ a sì dolce alba arrivi il sole.

     — Francesco Petrarca
            (Original Italian poem)

 

Lee Harlin Bahan

Lee Harlin Bahan is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Migration Solo (Writers’ Center Press of Indianapolis, 1989) and Notes to Sing (Finishing Line Press, 2016), as well as two collections of translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, A Year of Mourning (Able Muse Press, 2017), named a special honoree for the 2016 Able Muse Book Award, and To Wrestle with the Angel: Sonnets from Petrarch’s “Chapbook” of 1337 (Finishing Line Press, 2018).

 

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), commonly known as Petrarch in the English-speaking world, is the great Italian master whose work helped to create the Renaissance sonnet craze in England. He was a Franciscan tertiary, a scholar of the Classics, a friend to Decameron author Giovanni Boccaccio, and an immensely popular poet in his day. Despite his religious vows, he had two children out of wedlock, and is best known for sonnets professing intense love for a woman named Laura.

 

 

Argos, Odysseus's Dog

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