{"id":2254,"date":"2019-12-11T09:12:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T09:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2254"},"modified":"2019-12-11T09:12:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T09:12:31","slug":"text-occasion-pascoli-il-gelsomino-notturno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2254","title":{"rendered":"Text \/ occasion – Pascoli, “Il gelsomino notturno”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the level of discursive interpretation, the lovely \u2018Il gelsomino notturno\u2019 by Giovanni Pascoli offers significantly different ideas depending on whether you know about the circumstances of its composition. Here it is, first in Italian and then in the plain prose translation accompanying it in The Penguin Book of Italian Verse,<\/em> introduced and edited by George M. Kay:<\/p>\n

E s\u2019aprono i fiori notturni
\nnell’ ora che penso a\u2019 miei cari.
\nSono apparse in mezzo ai viburni
\nle farfalle crepuscolari.<\/p>\n

Da un pezzo si tacquero i gridi:
\nL\u00e0 sola una casa bisbiglia.
\nSotto l\u2019ali dormono i nidi,
\ncome gli occhi sotto le ciglia.<\/p>\n

Dai calici aperti si esala
\nl’odore di fragole rosse.
\nSplende un lume l\u00e0 nella sala.
\nNasce l\u2019erba sopra le fosse.<\/p>\n

Un\u2019 ape tardiva sussurra
\ntrovando gi\u00e0 prese le celle.
\nLa Chiocetta per l\u2019aia azzurra
\nva col suo pigol\u00eco di stele.<\/p>\n

Per tutta la notte s\u2019esala
\nl’ odore che passa col vento.
\nPassa il lume su per la scala;
\nbrilla al primo piano: s\u2019\u00e8 spento…<\/p>\n

\u00c8 l\u2019alba: si chiudono i petali
\nun poco gualciti; si cova,
\ndentro l\u2019urna molle e segreta,
\nnon so che felicit\u00e0 nuova.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Jasmine at Night<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And the flowers of night open, in the hour that I think of those dear to me. The twilight butterflies have appeared among the viburnums.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For a while now the cries have ceased: only over there a house whispers. Nests sleep under wings, like eyes under eyelids.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The scent of red strawberries is breathed up from open chalices. A light shines there in the room. Grass springs above ditches.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A late bee murmurs finding the cells already taken. The Hen goes through the blue barnyard followed by her chirping of stars.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All through the night a scent rises that passes with the wind. The light passes up the stairs: shines out from the first floor: is extinguished …<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is dawn: the petals close, slightly crumpled; there nests in the soft and secret urn some new happiness, I cannot say what.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly germane to this poem to know that \u2018la Chiocetta\u2019 \u2013 \u2018the Hen\u2019 \u2013 is the name given by country people to the constellation of the Pleiades, as Pascoli explained in a note.<\/p>\n

What about the knowledge that the poem was composed for a friend\u2019s wedding? The sterner sort of New Critic or Leavisite might have declared such knowledge simply irrelevant. In my own way of reading, it takes second place to the direct sensuous impact of what it feels like to say the words, and to the pictures they put into the mind, but granting that, it greatly enriches the poem. The sequence of images makes a much more closely linked and specific sense if we are thinking of a bridal night.[1]<\/a> The ceasing of the \u2018gridi\u2019 \u2013 translated as \u2018cries\u2019 by Kay, though \u2018shouts\u2019 or \u2018calls\u2019 would have been equally accurate \u2013 the silence but for the whispers in one house, the light going upstairs, the light going out, all these things become steps in the progression from the communal noise and distraction of the wedding to the moment when the bride and groom are alone together as man and wife for the first time. The final stanza becomes not a fanciful eroticising of the night-flowering jasmine but a metaphor for the sexual satisfaction and domestic happiness the watcher anticipates for his friend. It\u2019s a happiness from which he himself is poignantly excluded. This isn\u2019t an external deduction dependent on knowing that Pascoli himself never married. The whole poem is suffused with the wistfulness of the excluded observer. We see only the things the poet sees but see them with an intentness and yearning that echo his own.<\/p>\n

Last Dream<\/em>, Geoffrey Brock\u2019s selection and translation of poems by Pascoli, includes a beautiful version of \u2018Il gelsomino notturno\u2019. I haven\u2019t used that here because it\u2019s a poetic recreation that takes greater liberties than Kay when it comes to the literal meaning of individual words and phrases, though it seems to me brilliantly sensitive to the poem\u2019s feeling and spirit. You can read it by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> It\u2019s like watching a film in which we only see<\/em> the things that Pascoli directly describes, but understand their reference to the situation of the wedding. The emotional colour comes almost entirely from the pictures the film shows and the sound track \u2013 equivalent to\u00a0 the phonetic, metrical and syntactic shaping of the poem \u2013 but the meaning includes the larger context. When I say the poem to myself, my feeling of it is very\u00a0 much dominated by its actual words, though writing about it may seem to give more weight to what I know about the context. I don\u2019t imagine I\u2019m unusual in this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the level of discursive interpretation, the lovely \u2018Il gelsomino notturno\u2019 by Giovanni Pascoli offers significantly different ideas depending on whether you know about the circumstances of its composition. Here it is, first in Italian and then in the plain prose translation accompanying it in The Penguin Book of Italian Verse, introduced and edited by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-giovanni-pascoli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2254"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2259,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions\/2259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}