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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? How the Novel Fares in Italian Translation Author(s): Mary Wardle Source: The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review , Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018), pp. 213-233 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/fscotfitzrevi.16.1.0213 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review This content downloaded from 131.111.5.46 on Wed, 02 Jan 2019 09:40:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? How the Novel Fares in Italian Translation

Author(s): Mary Wardle

Source: The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review , Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018), pp. 213-233

Published by: Penn State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/fscotfitzrevi.16.1.0213

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review

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The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, Vol. 16, 2018Copyright © 2018 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

Gatsby? Which Gatsby?

How the Novel Fares in Italian Translation

Mary Wardle

Abstract

While anyone proficient in English can read Fitzgerald’s texts as he wrote them, for millions of non-English speakers the only option is to rely on translations. The Great Gatsby alone has been translated into at least forty-two different languages. If we take into account that often more than one translation exists within each individual language community, we have to ask ourselves: are we all reading the same text? The novel under examination will be The Great Gatsby and its fifteen Italian translations to date. This article will first follow the editorial journey of the work in Italy, with focus on the first two translations. It will also discuss para-textual elements—the publishing companies, the series within which the novel appeared, dust jackets, product positioning, and so on—and will then concentrate on the transformation of the actual text. One of the debates within translation studies is how “faithful” the translator can or should remain to the original. This article will analyze the varying degrees of freedom available and the consequent effect on an audience which, for linguistic reasons, does not have access to the original version. Elements under investigation will include vocabulary, syntax, and stylistic devices—with specific attention to the way in which culture-specific references have been handled.

Keywords

The Great Gatsby, translation, retranslation, Italian reception, paratexts

Although it is difficult to access precise data regarding global language compe-tence, recent figures indicate that English is spoken to some degree by 1.5 billion people worldwide (including native speakers)1; this leaves around 5.5 billion who do not have any command of the language. While anyone in the first group can read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, stories, and nonfiction as he wrote them,

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214 Mary Wardle

for non-English speakers who want to discover his writings their only option is to rely on translations.

This article sets out to investigate what happens to a text when it is trans-lated. If I am reading Der Große Gatsby while my friend reads El gran Gatsby, to what extent can we still say that we are reading “the same book”? The fact that there are eight French translations and fifteen different Italian versions is a clear indication that translation is not a straightforward mechanical process whereby content A automatically becomes content B. But just how different can alternative translations be? This article will first follow the editorial journey of The Great Gatsby in Italy, with specific attention to the first two translations and will then focus on the transformation of the original text and the chal-lenges faced by the various translators. Although the novel’s fate in Italian is only one example, my contention is that the variety and degree of transforma-tion encountered is indicative of the journey undertaken by Fitzgerald’s works in other languages or cultures.

Why Is There More than One Translation?

The Great Gatsby has been translated into at least forty-two different languages, according to Deirdre Donahue. There are, however, far more than forty-two different versions of the book available because, almost always, more than one translation exists within an individual language community. Retranslations, or multiple translations of the same text into the same language, are a common phenomenon especially in the case of canonical literary texts. The practice can be ascribed to a number of factors: there may be a new edition of the source text, an authorized version that prompts a new translation; new interpretations or readings of the original work might warrant a fresh translation—retranslat-ing Virginia Woolf in the light of feminist theory is an example of this; and there is also a general convergence of opinion around the idea that translations tend to date, while the original continues to be read in its initial form. Typical observations include Tim Parks’s comment in the preface to his new transla-tion of Machiavelli’s The Prince—“Translations have a way of gathering dust. This isn’t true of an original text” (xxxi)—or Mary Jo Bang’s assertion about her recent translation of Dante’s Inferno: “My translation is destined to become an artifact of its era while the original poem will continue to exist” (11).

While copyright law is one of the major determining factors in the coex-istence of multiple translations (more about this below), it is undeniable that

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 215

classic texts such as Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby also represent an artistic chal-lenge to translators, offering them the opportunity to present their individual interpretation and the chance to correct what they often deem to be “unfaith-ful” earlier translations.

The First Translation

One year after The Great Gatsby was published in the United States, the first trans-lation appeared in 1926 in French, by the Peruvian writer and translator Victor Llona, who then lived in Paris. Italy had to wait ten years for its first translation, by Cesare Giardini and published in 1936 by Milan-based Mondadori in a popu-lar, low-cost series whose name, I romanzi della palma, “the palm-tree novels,” suggested something exotic. As the literary theorist Gérard Genette indicates, the paratextual elements of any novel (material extraneous to the actual words of the author, elements such as cover illustrations, book format, prefaces and notes, interviews with the author, the fame or reputation of the writer, etc.) are condi-tioned by their historical and cultural environment as well as commercial con-cerns (3), but they also affect the way we choose and ultimately receive the text.

Although the Palma series did introduce some acclaimed foreign literary texts to a large audience (Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, P. G. Wodehouse, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry), the emphasis was on entertainment. The series was clearly targeted at a female readership, with obvious appeal to moviegoers and a strong focus on romantic intrigue. To attract the widest possible audience, the Palma-series books were sold at the low cost of three lire, not in bookshops but at newsstands, and were also distributed through subscription. The emphasis was not so much on the literary merits of the works, but rather on the narrative element: they were sold as a good read.

The escapist nature of the books is clearly apparent when viewed collectively, alongside other volumes in the series that also appeared in 1936.2 All feature cover illustrations depicting a woman’s head, usually blonde and blue-eyed, clearly referencing the popularity of contemporary Hollywood stars such as Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow rather than typically Mediterranean Italian women. During the interwar years, Hollywood films became increasingly popular in Italian movie theaters, accounting for over 80 percent of screen time by 1928 (Forgacs and Grundle 147). In 1935, only one year before Giardini’s translation was published with a blonde woman, presumably representing Daisy, on the cover (fig. 1), Jean Harlow was voted the “most beautiful woman

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216 Mary Wardle

in Hollywood” by the readers of the women’s magazine Eva, “inspiring many Italian girls to bleach their hair” (Forgacs and Grundle 75).

This was the cultural background against which the novel was commercial-ized: Fitzgerald, like most American authors, was almost totally unknown to the Italian public at the time; the lack of prominence of his name on the cover is an indication of this. Indeed, the publication has more in common with a magazine than a conventional book: there are additional pages with advertisements for face cream, games, and crossword puzzles as well as references to current affairs, spe-cifically Italy’s recent annexation of Abyssinia, which had occurred in May 1936, three months prior to the August publication of Giardini’s translation.

This last fact is a sobering reminder that, by 1936, Italy was in the four-teenth year of the Fascist regime. Other paratextual elements bear witness to this historical context: the date on the cover of the publication is indicated according to the year within the so-called Fascist Era and, therefore, Anno XIV (year fourteen),3 while the typeface used for the title and the author’s name on the cover is the typical “stripped classicism” Roman-style lettering favored by the regime for public buildings and propaganda materials. Although it might seem surprising that the authorities allowed the translation and publication of litera-ture from the United States, which represented what was ultimately viewed by both the regime and the Catholic church as fostering a decadent lifestyle, it was not until late 1936 that the Ministry for Press and Propaganda began interven-ing strongly against foreign works, and before the now renamed Ministry for

Fig. 1 The cover of Cesare Giardini’s 1936 translation of The Great Gatsby, featuring a Jean Harlow-like image of Daisy Buchanan on the front cover, and a perfume ad on the back.

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 217

Popular Culture finally did so as well in 1938 with a more systematic approach. In fact, in 1933, Arnoldo Mondadori wrote to Galeazzo Ciano, head of the Prime Minister’s Press Office and son-in-law of Mussolini, defending the publication of the translation-heavy popular series: “Your Excellency knows that our series I Romanzi della Palma has had the merit of bringing about a huge reduction in the importation of French novels of the same kind into Italy, an importation that was free from any form of either political or moral censorship” (qtd. in Rundle 92).4

French was then the most common foreign language in Italy and widely read among more educated Italians. Cesare Giardini, the translator of The Great Gatsby, worked primarily from French translations, and his reader’s report to Mondadori recommending the publication of the book in Italian bore the title of Llona’s earlier French version, Gatsby le Magnifique, with the original English title only in brackets (Albonetti 369). The translation that he ulti-mately produced was strongly influenced by Llona’s French version, and was probably derived directly from it. The fact that the first Italian translation of The Great Gatsby was produced through this French “bridge” and not from Fitzgerald’s original is a further indication of Fitzgerald’s “lowly” status at the time. One final comment about this translation is that, because it appeared as a periodical publication for purchase at newsstands or railway stations, never to be reprinted, it had no longevity. Apart from a very small number of cop-ies that found their way into public libraries, it left virtually no trace, so much so that, nine years later in 1945, Fernanda Pivano, an Italian writer, journalist, and translator—who was to become known for introducing and popularizing American literature in Italy after World War II—believed that, in Fitzgerald, she had come across a new author to introduce to the Italian public.

The Most Famous Translation

In one of her several autobiographical accounts, Pivano tells how she first discovered Fitzgerald in a bookshop in Turin (Viaggio americano 23). It was the end of World War II and the Allies had left piles of discarded books for anyone to pick up: so it was that Pivano, together with her former teacher and now mentor, Cesare Pavese, found a copy of The Portable Fitzgerald, edited by Dorothy Parker, lying on the floor. This edition had just been published in 1945 by Viking Press and it was in the pages of it that Pivano discovered “one of the most sophisticated and modern technical means of expression: exploiting, in the description of an image, a whole range of sensory fields” (Album americano 65; this translation from the Italian and all others, unless otherwise indicated, are by the author of

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218 Mary Wardle

this article). Eager to share her enthusiasm, she wrote to Alberto Mondadori—who had joined his father, Arnoldo, at the helm of the publishing company and was keen to introduce American writers to the postwar public—suggesting they publish a translation of The Great Gatsby. Mondadori was initially unaware of their own 1936 translation but, after some investigation, replied: “Dear Nanda, you’ll never guess what, but we already published The Great Gatsby as one of the Romanzi della Palma in 1936! As you can see, my predecessor had ‘a good eye’ for American literature.”5 Pivano asked for a copy of Giardini’s translation and, upon reading it, wrote back: “I admire Fitzgerald too much not to recommend translating this book again. It’s a question of tone and respect for the most important figure of the jazz age” (Pivano, Album americano 65).6 And so it was that in 1950, Pivano, who at this point in her life had never been to America, published her translation of Fitzgerald’s novel in the prestigious Medusa series dedicated to foreign authors.

The series had been established in 1933 and was different from the Palma series, “not so much in the authors it included, nor even in their literary quality, as in what today we would call its ‘target audience’. . . . The reader of a Medusa title was more interested in literature as such, and was prepared to read about more profound ide-als or social and historical issues” (Rubino 163). This information indicates some-thing about Fitzgerald’s status and the status of American literature in general in Italy at this time: he was taken seriously, with his novel published alongside works by authors such as Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Dos Passos translated by acclaimed Italian writers such as Elio Vittorini and Cesare Pavese. Further proof of the literary credentials of the Medusa series is provided in a letter from Enrico Piceni, the coor-dinator of translations from English when the series began: “The Medusa series is not simply a set of volumes for pleasant reading but rather a documentary collec-tion, we have decided to publish only the most faithful, unabridged translations” (Bonsaver 69).7 Below we will investigate what he might have meant by “the most faithful translations.”

The fact that Pivano’s translation is still in print today, albeit in a slightly revised version, is indicative of its generally favorable reception by the public and also of Mondadori’s position as the leading publishing company in Italy. Following its initial publication in the Medusa series, Pivano’s translation has appeared in a number of different formats and series, including two notable editions. First, it appeared in the 1958 Bosco series, a hybrid, crossover collection with features com-monly associated with lower-priced, more popular publications (soft front cover, price prominently shown on the front cover) but also displaying more prestigious features such as a cloth back (the front of the book has a soft paper cover, while the back is cloth-covered), indicating Mondadori’s intention to widen the audience for

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 219

their more “literary” titles. The major change, however, occurred in 1965 when the publishing house produced the Oscar Mondadori, Italy’s first low-cost paperback series with weekly volumes available at newsstands, with another Pivano trans-lation—that of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms—as the first title in the series. Her translation of The Great Gatsby appeared in the series that same year and truly consolidated Fitzgerald’s presence on the Italian market. Mondadori has kept the novel in print ever since with numerous different editions including a relatively costly hardback edition in 2013, published to coincide with the release of Baz Luhrmann’s film: the book cover replicates the film poster with Leonardo DiCaprio staring out from the “credits,” surrounded by his costars.

Multiple Translations

Despite being the most famous translation, Pivano’s is certainly not the only option available to contemporary Italian readers. Aside from Giardini’s initial translation, there are at present thirteen other Italian translations. As men-tioned earlier, among the many reasons for the existence of multiple trans-lations, one of the most relevant causes is copyright law. In Italy, as in many other parts of the world, books are protected by copyright for the lifetime of the author and then an additional seventy years after her or his death; the same is true for translations. Fitzgerald died in 1940, meaning that his works entered the public domain on 1 January 2011 when anyone could publish his work; but Pivano’s translation is still under copyright because she died more recently, so each publisher must commission its own translation. In fact, apart from one version published in 1989, the other twelve translations have all appeared since 2011, and half of these appeared in 2011.

Being able to include a “classic” text in one’s catalogue (with an eye toward possible inclusion on national school curriculum reading lists or in university bibliographies) is still seen as a safe commercial venture. As well as attracting more media attention than straightforward reprints or new editions, new trans-lations help confer prestige and canonical status on a work, just as the work’s prestige and canonical status prompts the retranslation. Many of the transla-tions currently available sought to set themselves apart from the others by dis-playing distinguishing features: the 2011 Marsilio translation by Roberto Serrai was published as a parallel text (with the original English on the left-hand page and the Italian on the right); the 2011 Minimum Fax translation by Tommaso Pincio chose to insert The Great Gatsby in a series of novels translated by authors rather than “regular” translators; the 2011 Newton edition, translated

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220 Mary Wardle

by Bruno Armando, made the very low price of the volume (€0.99) one of its prominent selling points; and the latest translation by Pierdomenico Baccalario and Laura Scuriatti, published by De Agostini in 2016, clearly indicated that it was targeted at a young adult readership by including an accompanying down-loadable file of the text.

Just How Different can Translations be?

One of the ongoing debates in translation studies has been how “close” the translator can or should adhere to the original. There is much talk of fidelity and faithfulness, with two of the most often quoted pithy phrases associated with translation being the Italian “Traduttore, tradiitore” (a translator is perforce a traitor) and the French “les belles infidèles” (like women, beautiful translations will be unfaithful). There are many different ways in which translations can differ from one another, and, as a general rule, the more complex and original the language of the source text, the more opportunity for variation there will be in translation; The Great Gatsby is a case in point. In a frequently cited July 1922 letter to his editor Maxwell Perkins, as Fitzgerald began writing his new novel, he announced: “I want to write something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned” (Bruccoli and Duggan 112). His combination of linguistic originality and structural creativity are highlighted by Matthew J. Bruccoli when he observes: “For English-language readers the excitement of the prose is inseparable from the impact of the themes” (Bruccoli viii).

But what of foreign language readers? What happens to Fitzgerald’s musi-cality, the rich texture of sounds and echoes, the intratextual motifs comprised of stylistic devices such as oxymoron, alliteration, and repetition? A series of examples follows to illustrate the many challenges faced by translators and to analyze different solutions.

Textual Building Blocks

The first level at which translations can differ is due to perhaps the most obvi-ous reason: different languages operate in different ways. This is best illustrated by picking one very simple phrase from the first chapter of The Great Gatsby, “A breeze blew through the room” and comparing its Italian translations.

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 221

Notwithstanding the fact that all these versions can be viewed as semantically “correct,” the range of variation is immediately apparent, even to non-Italian readers (see table 1; emphasis added in all instances).

The first feature highlighted by this exercise in contrastive analysis is the grammatical structure of each phrase (for clarity, the subject is in italics, the verb in bold and the adverbial phrase is underlined). Italian syntax is more flexible than English word order and the translators have taken advantage of this differ-ence between the two languages to come up with numerous possible permuta-tions. Without going into detail, we can also observe variations in punctuation, vocabulary, verb tenses, and the choices between definite and indefinite articles and singular and plural nouns (see Wardle). It is worth noting here that while English is a Germanic language and Italian is part of the Romance group, they both belong to the same larger family of Indo-European languages and there-fore ultimately present many similarities in grammar, syntax, morphology, and lexis. The differences become far greater and more challenging when translating between tongues that descend from different protolanguages.

Table 1 Comparative Analysis of Possible Translations

FSF A breeze blew through the room, (10)T1 [Giardini] Una brezza soffiò nella stanza, (10)T2 [Pivano] Nella stanza spirava un vento leggero (15)T3 [Pisanti] Spirava nella stanza un soffio leggero, (27)T4 [Cavagnoli] Una brezza spirava nella stanza; (61)T5 [Pincio] Un alito di vento soffiò nella stanza, (47)T6 [Cupardo] Una leggera brezza (38)T7 [Boccchiola] Una brezza soffiava attraverso la stanza, (27)T8 [Armando] Nella stanza spirava una brezza (9)T9 [Serrai] La brezza soffiava attraverso la stanza, (73)T10 [Manuppeli] Una leggera brezza attraversava la stanza, (17)T11 [Gambaccini and Salieri]

Nella stanza spirava una leggera brezza (11)

T12 [Pugliese] Una brezza soffiava attraverso la stanza, (28)T13 [Russo] Soffiava una leggera brezza attraverso la stanza, (42)T14 [Cenni] Una brezza attraversava la stanza, (36)T15 [Baccalario and Scuriatti]

Una brezza soffiò nella stanza, (14)

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222 Mary Wardle

Bittersweet Translations

Fitzgerald’s use of oxymoron as in “elegant young rough-neck,” “ferocious delicacy,” or “politely and abruptly” (GG 40, 57, 10) echoes the contradictions and doubleness of some of the characters and descriptions in the novel and, by extension, in American society in general, as suggested by Peter L. Hays when he comments: “As a well-behaved, socially conscious crook, [Gatsby] is a paradox, an oxymoron, and an exemplary American” (325). Unorthodox collocation, of which oxymoron is an example, draws attention to itself, requiring an effort of imagination to understand what is being said, and it forces the reader to hypothesize a meaning. When viewed together, these dis-parate linguistic items are more than the sum of their parts: juxtaposition always creates new meaning. One such unconventional juxtaposition is the recurring description of gardens and lawns as “blue.” Blue here can be inter-preted as the color of melancholy: Gatsby, despite having invited throngs of guests, remains alone and, crucially, without Daisy. His physical and psycho-logical solitude are conflated in the description of the space he inhabits. It would therefore appear important for any translator to notice the recurrence of these descriptions and then to seek, if possible, to emulate some similarly arresting collocation. In this particular context, however, English and Italian vocabulary are not semantically equivalent: Italian does not have one word that translates what is meant by the English word “blue”; or rather, English uses the more generic term “blue,” where Italian distinguishes between vari-eties of “blue,” each with its own name. The word that might seem the most obvious choice, blu, in fact denotes what English describes as “dark blue.” As can be seen in table 2, most translators opt for azzurro which is the term regu-larly used in Italian to describe the sea or the sky and is commonly translated into English as “light blue.”

Despite the fact that the apparently odd description of grass or leaves as (any shade of) blue is maintained in the translations, the symbolic meaning of “blue” available to English-language readers, suggesting sadness, melancholy, or a certain nostalgia, as in the idiomatic phrase “to have the blues,” does not cross the linguistic border and is, thus, destined to be an example of what is famously said to be “lost in translation.” While all the translations (with the exceptions of T12, T14, and T15) maintain the repetition of their chosen color across all three occurrences, the preponderant use of azzurro, suggesting as it does the lighter, open expanse of sea or sky, confers a more optimistic tone on the description.

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 223

Table 2 Translating the Symbolic Meaning of “Blue”

FSF In his blue gardens . . .(33)

. . . this blue lawn

. . . (141). . . the blue leaves . . . (118)

T1 [Giardini] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (19)

. . . quel prato azzurro . . . (79)

. . . nel fogliame azzurro (66)

T2 [Pivano] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (50)

. . . questo prato azzurro . . . (214)

. . .le foglie azzurre (181)

T3 [Pisanti] Nei suoi azzurri giardini . . . (55)

. . . questo azzurro prato . . . (185)

. . . le foglie azzurrine . . . (157)

T4 [Cavagnoli] Nei suoi giardini blu . . . (90)

. . . questo prato blu . . . (224)

. . . le foglie blu . .

. (196)T5 [Pincio] Nei suoi giardini

blu . . . (80). . . quel prato blu . . . (235)

. . . le foglie blu . .

. (204)T6 [Cupardo] . . . nei suoi

giardini azzurri . . . (66)

. . . questo prato azzurro . . . (205)

. . . tra le chiome azzurre . . . (176)

T7 [Bocchiola] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (61)

. . . questo prato azzurro . . .. (219)

. . . le foglie azzurre . . . (187)

T8 [Armando] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (29)

. . . questo prato azzurro . . . (125)

. . . le foglie azzurre . . . (105)

T9 [Serrai] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (133)

. . . quel prato azzurro . . . (411)

. . . le foglie azzurre . . . (353)

T10 [Manuppeli] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (46)

. . . quel prato azzurro . . . (174)

. . . le foglie azzurre . . . (148)

T11[Gambaccini and Salieri]

Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (37)

. . . questo prato azzurro . . . (156)

. . . tra il fogliame azzurro . . . (132)

T12 [Pugliese] Nei suoi giardini azzurri . . . (53)

. . . questo prato azzurro . . . (166)

. . . tra le foglie blu . . . (143)

T13 [Russo] Nei suoi giardini blu . . . (71)

. . . quel prato blu

. . . (204). . . le foglie blu . . . (175)

T14 [Cenni] Nei suoi giardini blu . . . (67)

. . . questo prato blu . . . (215)

. . . le foglie azzurre . . . (184)

T15 [Baccalario and Scuriatti]

In quei giardini azzurri . . . (45)

. . . al suo prato azzurro (186)

. . . tra il fogliame bluastro . . . (158)

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224 Mary Wardle

Drifting Here and There

As noted above, three of the translators (T12, T14, and T15) choose to alter-nate between blu and azzurro, forsaking any sense of descriptive patterning. While their choices here may not be conscious or deliberate, the maintaining (or otherwise) of repetition or lexical patterns is a strategy that translators of The Great Gatsby are confronted with on a regular basis. Fitzgerald creates lin-guistic echoes throughout his work, developing themes and connections. A case in point is his use of the term “drift,” which, in different forms, occurs twelve times in the novel: characters—most notably Tom—drift; the landscape drifts; dust, music all drift; even ghosts drift. The repeated word is a constant reminder of vacuous wandering and transience. As W. J. Harvey observes, “All the implications of . . . rootlessness radiate from [this] keyword, drifting, and we may notice how Fitzgerald . . . links this idea with the idea of restlessness” (18). Again, in table 3 all emphasis is added.

Table 3 Occurrences of the Term “Drifting” in The Great Gatsby

They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. (8–9; chapter 1)I had no sight into Daisy’s heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game. (9; chapter 1)The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. (9; chapter 1)But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. (21; chapter 2)But young men didn’t—at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn’t—drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound. (41; chapter 3)“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me.” (54; chapter 4)

He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. (75; chapter 5)

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 225

In drawing these sentences together, further patterns are revealed: we can see that there is drifting in every chapter apart from the last. From this, it is plau-sible to produce a hypothesis such as “only death will put an end to (Gatsby’s) drifting.” Whether this interpretation is valid or not is beyond the scope of this article, but the point is that the reader of the source text is able to notice the repetition and make what they will of it. Can the reader of the translation be afforded the same opportunity?

Again, the translator’s first challenge is to be aware of the repetition and then decide whether she or he wants to reproduce it. If so, the next question becomes whether it is possible to replicate: does the language allow it? Without analyz-ing each individual solution, it is striking that not one of the fifteen translations maintains one single term for all the occurrences of “drifting” and the same is true, even more surprisingly, for the threefold repetition (“drifted,” “drift,” “drifting”) within fifteen lines of text in the first chapter, as can be seen in table 4 (all emphasis is added).

While it is true that the translators must juggle many linguistic “balls” at once, and it might, therefore, seem unfair to analyze the text in such detail, it is only by investigating the microlevel that macrolevel themes and structures can emerge. Ultimately, it has to be said that, although not disappearing totally, such themes and structures are often remarkably diminished.

Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows along shore. (77; chapter 6)

Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps where “Three o’Clock in the Morning,” a neat sad little waltz of that year, was drifting out the open door. (85; chapter 6)

From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air. (103; chapter 7)

At the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor. (118; chapter 8)

A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. (126; chapter 8)

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226 Mary Wardle

Table 4 The Translation of Repeated Terms

FSF . . . and then drifted here and there unrestfully . . . . . but I felt that Tom would drift on forever . . . . . . drifting up the side in bright vines . . . (9)

T1 [Giardini] . . . poi avevano errato qua e là, irresolutamente . . . . . . ma sentivo che Tom avrebbe errato indefinitamente . . . . . . per spezzarsi finalmente contro il muro . . . (9)

T2 [Pivano] . . . e poi erano stati sospinti qua e là, irrequieti . . .. . . ma sapevo che Tom sarebbe rimasto eternamente in moto . . . . . . per innalzarsi . . . in rampicanti vivaci . . . (13)

T3 [Pisanti] . . . e poi si erano spostati qua o là . . .. . . ma sapevo che Tom sarebbe stato sempre sospinto in qualcosa in movimento . . .. . . s’innalzava … a formare luminosi rampicanti . . . (26)

T4 [Cavagnoli] . . . e poi si erano trascinati irrequieti qua e là . . .. . . ma pensavo che Tom avrebbe continuato a trascinarsi in eterno . . .. . . si avventurava su . . . in rampicanti dai colori vivaci . . . (60)

T5 [Pincio] . . . e avevano vagato di qua e di là . . .. . . ma sentivo che Tom avrebbe seguitato a spostarsi in eterno . . .. . . si innalzava in una rigorosa parete di rampicanti . . . (45)

T6 [Cupardo] . . . per poi scivolare qua e là, inquieti . . .. . . ma di sicuro Tom avrebbe continuato a spostarsi in eterno . . .. . . per salire . . . su rampicanti verdeggianti . . . (36–37)

T7 [Bocchiola] . . . e poi avevano seguito il vento, di qui e di là . . .. . . ma sentivo che Tom avrebbe vagato per sempre . . .. . . per salire . . . in rampicanti vivaci . . . (25)

T8 [Armando] . . . e poi, inquieti, avevano girovagato qui e là . . .. . . ma sentivo che Tom avrebbe eternamente girovagato . . .. . . per innalzarsi . . . in rampicanti vivaci . . . (8–9)

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 227

Cultural (R)evolution

One final example of the textual features at stake in the translation process is how the different versions deal with the translation of cultural elements, or more specifically, how early twentieth-century North American references

T9 [Serrai] . . . e da allora vagavano irrequieti . . .. . . ma sentivo che Tom avrebbe vagato per sempre . . .. . . ne risaliva il fianco sotto forma di splendidi rampicanti . . . (69–71)

T10 [Manuppelli]

. . . e poi erano stati alla deriva qua e là . . .

. . . però sentivo che Tom non avrebbe mai smesso di vagare . . .. . . ne risaliva il fianco in un intreccio di viti luminose . . . (71)

T11[Gambaccini and Salieri]

. . . si erano diretti qua e là, irrequieti . . .

. . . ero certo che Tom sarebbe rimasto perennemente in moto . . .. . . per innalzarsi . . . in vivaci rampicanti. (10)

T12 [Pugliese] . . . e poi se n’erano andati alla deriva di qua e di là, irrequieti . . .. . . ma sentivo che Tom sarebbe andato alla deriva in eterno . . .. . . si accumulava . . . in luminosi rampicanti. (27)

T13 [Russo] . . . e poi erano andati alla deriva senza mai fermarsi . . .. . . ma ero convinto che Tom avrebbe continuato, nostalgicamente, la sua deriva . . .. . . risalendo sul fianco sotto forma di brillanti tralci di vite. (40)

T14 [Cenni] . . . e poi si erano lasciati trasportare qua e là irrequietamente . . .. . . però sentivo che Tom si sarebbe lasciato trasportare per sempre . . .. . . le s’ammucchiava . . . .in vivaci rampicanti. (34–35)

T15 [Baccalario and Scuriatti]

. . . e poi si erano lasciati trascinare qui e là senza fermarsi mai stabilmente . . .. . . ma sentivo che Tom avrebbe continuato a spostarsi per sempre . . .. . . per poi esplodere sottoforma di viticci colorati . . . (13)

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228 Mary Wardle

are made to cross the time gap and linguistic border into contemporary Italy. Culture-bound elements, such as the proper names of characters, places, and products, forms of address, or the mention of songs, books, or food items, not only place the narrative within a specific cultural and historical context, but can also imply a set of values as well as creating a defined ambience: one brief exam-ple illustrating this point could be how the first French and Italian translations have dealt with the following sentence: “It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a gray, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track” (GG 23; emphasis added). Llona chose to make manifest what is meant by “Fourth of July”: “Dans quelques jours, c’était la Fête Nationale, et un petit Italien gris et malingre alignait des pétards le long de la voie du chemin de fer” (24). Cesare Giardini followed Llona’s lead as far as Independence Day is concerned but also felt it necessary to substitute a Spanish child for the Italian one in the original, presumably aware of the Fascist regime’s sensitivity to any implied criticism of its fellow citizens: “Di lì a qualche giorno cadeva la Festa Nazionale, e un piccolo spagnuolo grigio e malaticcio allineava dei petardi lungo la strada ferrata” (14).

These elements, and the associations they imply, influence the way in which the reader identifies with the story and characters. A translator’s strategy, in this area, will often depend on the cultural proximity between the source culture and the target culture and how much the translator can reasonably expect the reader to know about the customs and traditions of the foreign locale. This knowledge is obviously likely to change over time: a modern Italian readership is now far more aware of all aspects of American culture than their counterparts in the 1930s or 1950s when the first transla-tions were produced.

As one example, in the opening chapter, Nick describes Tom Buchanan as “one of the most powerful ends that had ever played football at New Haven,” presenting us with three different cultural references. Table 5 shows how the various translators dealt with the description (emphases added to table).

First, the use of the term “football”: looking at the different translations, we can observe a variety of options, ranging from rugby to calcio (soccer) and the omission of the name of the sport altogether (T8 and T15: Tom is the strongest player on the squadra or team). The most common option, but notably only in the later versions, is football which, for an Italian audience, is commonly used as an abbreviation of football americano.8

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 229

Table 5 Translating Cultural References

FSF . . . one of the most powerful ends that had ever played football at New Haven. (8)

T1 Giardini] . . . uno dei più formidabili atleti che avessero mai giocato il rugby a Yale. (7)

T2 [Pivano] . . . una delle ali più potenti che mai avessero giocato al calcio a New Haven. (12). . . uno dei più potenti attaccanti che mai avessero giocato a football a New Haven. (revised translation, 12)

T3 [Pisanti] . . . uno dei più straordinari esterni che avesse mai giocato a football a New Haven. (44)

T4 [Cavagnoli] . . . uno dei giocatori di football più forti di New Haven. (59)

T5 [Pincio] . . . una delle più potenti ali che mai avessero giocato in una squadra di calcio a New Haven. (25)

T6 [Cupardo] . . . uno dei migliori attaccanti che avessero mai giocato a football a New Haven. (36)

T7 [Bocchiola] . . . uno degli esterni più potenti che avesse mai giocato a football a New Haven. (24)

T8 [Armando] . . . uno dei ricevitori più potenti della squadra di New Haven. (8)

T9 [Serrai] . . . una delle ali più forti che avessero giocato a football a New Haven. (69)

T10 [Manuppelli] . . . una delle ali più potenti che avessero mai giocato a football a New Haven. (15)

T11[Gambaccini and Salieri]

. . . di essere, in attacco, uno tra i più potenti tornanti di fascia che a New Even avessero mai praticato calcio. (9)

T12 [Pugliese] . . . una delle ali più potenti che abbiano mai giocato a football a New Haven. (27)

T13 [Russo] . . . una delle ali più potenti che avessero mai giocato a football a New Haven. (40)

T14 [Cenni] . . . uno dei più potenti estremi* che mai avessero giocato a football a New Haven. (34)

(Continued )

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230 Mary Wardle

The second potential stumbling block for a translator is the use of the term “end.” As Christian Messenger points out: “Buchanan is an end; his success is built on using his body for leverage . . . as he uses his social class to sus-tain that leverage. His ‘cruel body’ thrusts him into society where his wealth makes him a formidable representative of American capitalism” (407). This insight into Tom’s character is available only to readers acquainted with the roles of different players within the sport and what their significance might be. To most readers without any specific knowledge of American football (the vast majority of Italians), however, the term “end” provides no such insight. Is it the translator’s responsibility to provide such information for their audience? The solutions here include the generic atleti and giocatori (athletes and players), several occurrences of ali (wings, vocabulary associated with soccer), the descriptive attaccanti (attackers) and ricevitori (receivers). One translation, T14, uses the term estremi, part of the burgeoning Italian vocabulary for talking about American football, and adds a footnote explaining how these players are positioned at the end of a line. Despite all these different solutions, for a novice with little knowledge of the game, none necessarily suggests the “brute force” element required of such a player.

The third and final cultural reference in the sentence is the mention of New Haven: over time, this reference has become opaque even for an Anglophone audience. As Ruth Prigozy tells us in a note, “New Haven” was “[i]n the 1920s, a snobbish reference to Yale University by those who attended, or who were part of the circle who attended, elite Eastern colleges” (145). While the refer-ence might have been more immediately understandable to Fitzgerald’s con-temporary readership, this is clearly no longer the case: hence Prigozy’s note, which reminds us of the alma mater bond between Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan. Apart from the Giardini translation of 1936 (which follows Llona’s French version), all translations opt to maintain “New Haven” but none adds a note. The suggestion of clique jargon is therefore lost to the Italian reader.9

Conclusion

As this brief analysis of a very limited number of examples has illustrated, the possibilities for variation in an intricately structured text such as The Great

T15 [Baccalario and Scuriatti]

. . . una delle ali più forti che avessero mai avuto in una squadra a New Haven. (12)

*Estremi: nel football, l’estremo è uno dei giocatori posizionati al termine di una linea. (trans. “in football, the estremo is one of the players positioned at the end of a line.”)

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Gatsby? Which Gatsby? 231

Gatsby are almost infinite: further areas of investigation include the trans-lation of simile and metaphor; onomatopoeia; humor; regional voices or accents; idiolects denoting social class; punctuation; the lexicon of color, light and shade; the sea—and the list goes on. Although it is true that the transla-tion of any single feature, taken in isolation, will have little influence on the overall impact of the text, there is a powerful cumulative effect caused by the accretion of phrases and images, especially in a text such as The Great Gatsby where opportunities for variation are continuously presented by the prose. One of the common topoi in discussing translation is that something is lost in the transfer from one language to another and this might well be true if we limit our analysis to individual examples from specific translations. If, how-ever, we take a longer view and consider the retranslations as a whole, we can see how these multiple versions highlight the hermeneutic process implicit in literary translation and introduce an element of abundance, manifesting the richness of language that can express the same meaning in so many different ways as well as the multitude of interpretations we can discover in one single source text.

Ultimately, we can say that, just as (narratively speaking) we discover Gatsby the character through the eyes of Nick Carraway—we must rely on him for our information—so we discover Il grande Gatsby or Gatsby le magnifique, the foreign language novel, through the words of the translator. Perhaps, rather than the words, we should say through the voice of the translator. The concept of “voice” is one very close to Fitzgerald’s heart—by my count, he repeats the word fifty-eight times in the novel, along with eleven occurrences of “voices.” Just as ten different people who witness the same event will each give their own individual “faithful” account—focusing on different aspects, highlighting what affected them most, and making the narrative resonate for their specific audi-ence—in much the same way, translators present their version of the narrative with their own prosody and style. The richer the text, the more scope there is for variety. To anyone who cannot read Fitzgerald’s original words as he wrote them, perhaps the best recommendation is to read as many different transla-tions as possible, with the aim of picking out the one voice, among the many, that resonates the most.

MARY WARDLE is professor of English Language and Translation Studies at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Her research interests include translation the-ory, especially from a historical perspective; the phenomenon of retranslation; translation and paratexts; and teacher training. She is also a freelance translator. Her recent publications have appeared in Journal of American Studies of Turkey, Vertimo Studijos, and Palimpsestes.

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232 Mary Wardle

Notes

1. Recent data on language use is available at Simons and Fenning, Ethnologue: Languages of the World <https://www.ethnologue.com/language/eng>.

2. Other titles include Fanny Hurst, Estasi (Jan. 1936); Richard Zaugg, Jean Lioba Libero docente (Mar. 1936); Pierre Benoit, L’ingiusto amore (Apr. 1936); and Vicky Baum, Il nano Ulle (June 1936).

3. The years within the “Fascist Era” were expressed in Roman numerals and counted from 29 October 1922, the culmination of the March on Rome, when the then King of Italy handed power to Mussolini.

4. “Ella sa che questa collana dei Romanzi della Palma ha avuto il merito di diminuire immensamente la importazione in Italia di romanzi francesi dello stesso tipo, importazione che veniva fatta senza alcun divieto di carattere politico o morale.” Trans. by C. Rundle.

5. “Cara Nanda, accadono cose incredibili! The Great Gatsby è già stato pubblicato dalla Mondadori nei Romanzi della Palma nel '36. Come vedi, il mio predecessore era ‘un forte’ in letteratura americana.”

6. “Ammiro troppo Fitzgerald per non suggerirti di far rifare la traduzione. . . . È ques-tione di tono e di rispetto per il personaggio più importante dell’età del jazz.”

7. “La Medusa non è un semplice gruppo di volumi di lettura amena bensì una raccolta documentaria, abbiamo deciso di pubblicare soltanto traduzioni fedelissime ed integrali.”

8. In the revised version of Pivano’s translation, calcio (soccer) has been updated to football.

9. T11 has a very strange “New Even,” which must be a typographical error; other men-tions in the text are accurate.

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