Hic et Nunc (1)

I am a mutilated statue
at the bottom of clear waters.

Halted in a gesture — and broken.

Only a tremor of things
reflected — trees enskied
and quick flights — can give me
the thrill of time,
a way to change nothing into words.

Hic et Nunc (2)

Stopped dead, I’m locked
in a broken gesture,

an ancient statue at the bottom of a lake.

Look, what I see’s a world reflected,
sky trees, bird flights,
time changing my unchangingness,
and tiny tremors I cannot feel
turning the nothingness into words.

Angela Leighton’s new poetry and prose collection Spills, closes with a series of translations from Leonardo Sciascia’s La Sicilia, il suo cuore (Sicily, Its Heart). Each poem appears in two translations exemplifying different approaches: set out on facing pages, the pairs comprise what Leighton describes as, first, “a fairly strict rendering, which conveys the sense and syntax, line by line, but loses, in the process, the rhythm of poetry” and “a free version which takes the original and [is] part interpretation, part variation on a theme.” The titles are not numbered in the text.

The Sicilian writer and politician Leonardo Sciascia produced two collections of poetry during his career. La Sicilia, il suo cuore (1952) was a response to the suicide of his younger brother four years earlier. Leighton’s Note on the Translations gives us a vivid impression of the sulphuric landscape of Sciascia’s birthplace, Racalmuto, the mining territory where “the classical resonances of the landscape, its antiquity in story, are mingled with … more recent connotations of a fiery underworld”. Hic et Nunc makes us particularly aware of those “classical resonances”, with its Latin title and vantage-point of “a mutilated statue”. Broken, displaced, the statue is a presence so strong it addresses us directly, out of the water and across time, an immediate paradox being set up by Sciascia’s juxtaposition of the sunken statue and the title’s Hic et Nunc (Here and Now).

“Hic et Nunc” (the tag) has been described as “the imperative motto for the satisfaction of desire”.

It may also have an almost opposite, theological dimension, and allude to the immediate revelation of the divine presence. More loosely, it could describe the poet’s response to his/her material and the way language transports the past into the present – a meaning perhaps closer to the theological.

The stricter translation (1) has the lighter texture of the pair, and at times seems the nearest in its music to the original. The feminine endings of the Italian are picked up by the first three lines, creating an impression of wateriness and airiness. The second translation emphasises solidity in its hard opening consonants, with a Plathian echo in the first line that might evoke the cruelly abrupt, or insufficiently prepared-for, shutdown of the body in a fatal accident or violent act of suicide. The statue is described as “mutilated” in the original poem and the first translation, but the emphasis in the second version is on an abrupt cessation, almost the paralysis of rigor mortis: “Stopped dead, I’m locked/in a broken gesture”.

The imperative “Look” picks up the stony consonants of “locked” and “lake” and contributes to the insistent tone. The literary but graceful “trees enskied” is lost, while specific details are gained, such as “bird flights” instead of “quick flights”. The qualifier “Only” (“soltanto”) lends fragility and evanescence to “only a tremor of things” in the first version, very unlike the effect of “what I see’s a world reflected” in (2). The “tremor” itself is repositioned in the second version, from line four to line seven, and becomes “tiny tremors I cannot feel” – a nice evocation of ripples and also, perhaps, delicate, undetectable soundwaves. Both versions avoid the phrase “delirium of time” (“delirio di tempo”) but “the thrill of time” has a shiver and shimmer omitted from (2).

Leighton’s free translations may alter the original structures. Here, though, the free version is modelled on its partner. This skeletal similarity sharpens our awareness of the contrasted textures of the fleshings-out, and the differences of vocal style. The voice in (1) seems, on the whole, more vulnerable and tentative than the voice in (2).

While the free version initially proclaims stasis, it concludes with movement and mutation, with those “tiny tremors … turning the nothingness into words.” Because the noun “nothingness” is chosen over “nothing”, the assertion becomes plainer. Interestingly, “nothingness” is closer to the Italian (“il nulla”) than the “nothing” of version one, which is open to the negative interpretation that maybe nothing at all will be changed into words. Line six introduces polyptoton to reinforce the sense of process and achievement (“time changing my unchangingness”) and ends on an unambiguous note of triumph.

Leighton’s commentary on the translations concludes: “Between strict and free renderings, adherence to sense and adherence to the makings of a poem in English, I have tried to catch something of the original, even if only ‘between’.” This idea of “between-ness” might be in your thoughts as you compare the two versions, and look back at the original.

Dost thou remember Sicily? The Sicily of Theocritus and Oscar Wilde? This week, we draw closer to the hic et nunc, to savour the haunting grace and melancholy autumnal colours of Sciascia’s poetry, and eavesdrop on a poet translator’s fascinating conversation with her different selves and her original text.