Tradurre le poesie di Shelley e di Byron dalle forme italiane: due casi di studio

The article analyses contemporary Italian poetry translations of two major Romantic works, both written in an Italian form following Italian models: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s much-anthologised “Ode to the West Wind”, a refined experiment with Dante’s terza rima, and Lord Byron’s unfinished mock-epic, Don Juan, composed in ottave after Luigi Pulci’s example. For the former, I consider translations by Roberto Mussapi, Giuseppe Conte, and Bianca Tarozzi; I then compare Giuliano Dego’s, Tomaso Kemeny’s, and Simone Saglia’s versions from Don Juan. Positing that rendering these poems back into Italian, as it were, poses a unique challenge to the poet-translator, the article assesses the formal solutions each adopted by drawing on modern translation theory. Moreover, whenever a rendition, in line with Italian editorial practice for literary classics, is published with parallel English text, attention will be devoted to the potential implications for the translator’s choices.