Thoughts on the Translation of Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone (Europa, 2023)
by Oonagh Stransky
Starnone bends the rules in order to lead us into a world where there are no set rules.
Up until recently I considered my job as translator done after collaborating with the editor and proofreader on the final proofs. By the time the copies of the books due to me actually arrived in the mail, my thoughts were already deep in a new translation, my fingers yearning to be tapping away at the keyboard; I would spend a few minutes examining and admiring the physical objects I’d been sent only to realize, with some disillusion, that they already seemed dated. Books had become like mile markers, nothing more, announcing that it was time to update my website, add the publication to my CV, find a spot for the books on my shelf or send them to friends, and get paid. I had moved on.
I now believe that the way I used to see myself – and my work as a translator – was intrinsically shaped by the way our role was perceived in the marketplace back when I started out, around the year 2000. Because there seemed to be fewer translators then and because we had much less support, the bonds that grew between us were strong, inspiring, and pivotal. I think back fondly to animated meetings at the PEN American Center in NYC and in watering holes around the city; I recall lively ALTA meetings in dull hotels in different cities around the United States. Those connections meant everything to me. They allowed us to compare notes, kvetch, inspire each other, and dream big. We knew the work we did was special but, somehow, it was also “our little secret.” Legally, contractually, we plodded along on a work-for-hire basis. And this was the reality that shaped – or deformed – my perception of my role and contribution to literature.
Flash forward to today. Thanks to continued efforts by unquestionably more vocal colleagues and younger translators, and to a slow but colossal shift in perception, the role of the translator is now acknowledged in ways we once only dreamed of. Our names now occasionally appear on covers, in press releases, and in reviews; contracts regularly include copyright, there are major literary prizes for translated works, sometimes we even get fair remuneration, and professors even earn academic recognition for published translations.
But one of the most exciting novelties is that we are writing about our work. We are speaking out. No longer are we wallflowers or merely “very careful readers.” And we have an audience! People are listening to what we have to say. With each word that I write about the love I feel for my work, I am literally revealing something of myself, stepping out of the shadows, and coming into a new existence. With this essay, for starters, I want to explain why I made certain decisions in the translation of Domenico Starnone’s complex masterpiece, The House on Via Gemito. Starting now, with this book, which is due out in May, 2023, I am determined not to let my publications become mere mile markers.
At 420 pages, Via Gemito is the longest book I have ever translated. Every single day, at least seven hours a day for eight months, that house was my home. And to think that I spent almost an entire working day on one very complex sentence! I had to eventually put it aside because I couldn’t find a solution for it, but periodically I went back to it. I said it out loud when I was out walking the dogs, or at the supermarket, sotto voce. I repeated it in the shower. I even dreamed about it. Finally, like Goldilocks, I got it just right.
Via Gemito is the story of a man – a writer – and his struggle to come to terms with his oppressive father and the troubled relationship that existed between his parents. In broad brushstrokes I see the work as an exploration of toxic masculine behavior – how easily it can be passed down through generations and how difficult it is to change those patterns. It is also the story of a tormented artist; the father is a talented painter whose desire for acceptance is repeatedly thwarted by poverty, low social status, his need to work for the railroad in order to provide for his family. Frustrated by his condition, angry at his own parents, and horribly envious of others, the father strikes out violently, both physically and verbally, at everyone around him, and his wife first of all. But he continues to paint. The narrative voice mulls over his mother’s reasons (or lack of choice) for staying with him, and reflects on his own strategies for getting out alive. Essentially, the narrator has to detach from both so as not to wind up a victim, puppet, or replica of his father. With great skill, subtle irony, pathos, humor, tenderness, and deep rage, Starnone delivers a devastating, trenchant, and insightful work of autofiction.
Obscenities and Dialect
The swarm of swear words and obscenities in Neapolitan dialect represents one of the most conspicuous linguistic challenges I faced in the translation. Federí, the narrator’s father, uses them constantly to identify people whom he sees as obstructing his path, to promote himself, in his frequent bouts of rage, whenever he feels the slightest bit threatened.
I opted to leave the longer phrases such as ocazzochecacàto, peretasanguégna, stupplecèss, mannaggiacchitemuòrt, figliesfaccímm in Italian for three reasons: translating them literally would strip them of their musicality and meaning; translating them figuratively would seem random; and finally, since they appear in dialect in what is otherwise a standard Italian text, causing even the Italian the reader to slow down and reflect on their meaning, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t do the same to the reader of the English language version – in moderation. Enter: italics.
The conventional rules regarding italics are pretty straightforward. When the word in question is not in the English dictionary, the Chicago Manual of Style says that foreign words should be italicized the first time they appear but not in later instances. However, translating Starnone is anything but linear: what about the obscenities that have multiple declensions? While the root word might be one and the same, the meaning of the invective changes according to its context and form. We see this at work with a word like chiavica, but not only. While I was working through the many phases of editing, it occurred to me that the fairest way to deal with this dynamic is to italicize all the non-translatable, Neapolitan words; a choice that grants them the dignity (paradoxical, since we’re talking about obscenities) of their otherness, protects them from acts of cultural appropriation, and makes of them precious visual cues for the English-language reader (i.e., if you read Starnone like Linus does The Brothers Karamazov, you just bleep right over them).
With regards to the shorter obscenities and epithets – in particular ones that are used so frequently that they become adjective-noun pairings, such as quei pezzi di merda dei parenti – I stayed away from using terms from a specific subset of culture (such as Italian-American English) to avoid banalities, preconceived notions, and stereotypes, and instead used more generic terms like “piece of shit,” “goddamn,” “son of a bitch,” “bastard,” and so on. This way they become part and parcel of Federí’s idiolect, while allowing his more graphic and colorful offenses to stand out, as in the original.
When it comes to the ubiquitous phrase di questo cazzo, which the narrator first uses on page 75 and then delightfully explains for the reader on page 98, I negotiated a middle ground: I left the phrase in Italian, in italics, only after it has been fully unpacked. Each time those words are used before page 75, I translated it with something analogous. While this might sound excessive, as though I’m coddling the reader, it both is and is not. I went back to thinking about the original experience of reading the Italian; translating the early phrase into something comparable lets the later lines deliver their true punch. Or, put differently, translating the early phrase into something equally as incisive didn’t detract from the tone, meaning, or flow of dialogue, while leaving it in standard Italian (i.e. non-dialect) would have been clunky.
Just to be perfectly clear, when it comes to merda and variations on the theme (the most frequently used obscenity, coming in at seventy-five times in the original), I didn’t think it was necessary to use the Italian version of this word. I reserved that privilege for the more creative profanities in Neapolitan dialect.
There are certain non-Neapolitan words that I consciously chose to also leave in Italian, however. Two that come to mind are padreterno (and various spellings) and gemito. I left the former in Italian since it is one of Federí’s preferred invocations and helps the reader “hear” him blaspheme, and the latter (which appears late in the book) because of its relevance to the title, which would have eluded the reader had I translated it.
Finally, when it comes to dialogue that appears in dialect, I felt it was important to use standard English. I did not use any kind of slang or localized ways of speaking; I did not use words like “gonna,” “wanna,” or “shoulda” because – as with the colorful obscenities – I wanted to steer clear of stereotypes. There are other ways of relaying what it means to be Neapolitan, and Americanizing them is not one of them.
Direct and Indirect Speech
As the reader soon discovers, Federí’s rants dominate, cut off, collide, and even blend with the son’s story. Often it is unclear who is speaking, or where one person ends and the next begins. How does Starnone achieve this? First of all, by placing all speech within paragraphs. Dialogue is not set off from the rest of the text in a conventional manner; it is part of the narrative of autofiction. Then, the author opts to use quotation marks to indicate spoken utterances in an inconsistent manner.
Let’s examine why he does this. Starnone’s manipulation of these conventions makes it possible for the book to become an attentive archaeological exploration into self and memory. We, together with the narrator, come to ask ourselves how – and what – we remember. How do our memories change over time? How do memories flood the plains of our thinking, inform our actions, and shape our behavior?
Starnone bends the rules in order to lead us into a world where there are no set rules. We have no clear-cut answers to these questions. We can only give ourselves over to the experience.
If we, as readers, do manage to let go, Starnone’s writing brings us face to face with even more fascinating struggles: how are we shaped by our parents and by our memories of them? By their pasts, with all the violence they saw and trauma they witnessed? How do toxic masculine behaviors get passed down through generations? To allow these questions to come to the surface so that the reader can see them and ponder them, Starnone’s stylistic choices need to be respected. Consequently, I did not clarify or alter them. I surrendered, and lived to tell the story.
Punctuation, Pronouns, and Doubling Effects
And yet, not all conventions carry equal weight. For example, Starnone often uses a speech tag and colon to introduce spoken language. While this flows well in Italian, in English it creates an undue awkward hesitancy. Consequently, in the translation, I found it necessary to shift the position of the tags so that they follow the utterances and, for the most part, did away with the colon. Another convention that Starnone likes to use (to set off fragments of thought) is the em-dash, which I fully respected. Similarly, when Federí goes on a rant in a long, run-on sentence, I took pleasure in recreating his blustery braggadocio in English.
Going back to the experience of reading the original Italian, there are numerous instances where the reader wishes there were more clarity. With regards to pronoun usage, it’s hard to know sometimes who is speaking: father (Federí), son/narrator (Mimì), or someone else altogether. Sometimes I wondered if I should clarify who was speaking: should I leave the reader somewhat confused? Does the reader need a little help? Why destabilize the reader any further? I decided to leave the ambiguity under the premise that the writer wrote it that way for a reason. (Personally, I think that Starnone is saying that our parents encroach on us in amorphous, indistinct, and endless ways, just as they can also inspire us.) I took the same approach when dealing with the radical, sudden, and strangely beautiful tense shifts. There’s a reason behind them and we have to be open to it.
While we, in English, tend to steer clear of repetition, every few pages Starnone relies on a technique of doubling, mirroring certain words and phrases. The effect of this is twofold: the repetitions create patterns, and these patterns steady the reader and stabilize the opus.
Eventually – when I was close to the end of the translation – I came to see Via Gemito as a kind of Guernica, with Starnone’s book hammering home in words the same anguish and rage that inform Picasso’s visual masterpiece. Both works of art are explosive and yet contained; both leave the viewer stunned, confused, looking for meaning, and in awe. Both artists decry the violence of mankind and god’s absence; both compress and manipulate their own art form. The list could go on… The key difference, however, is that Starnone’s work is also filled with warmth and moments of humor. These episodes save the book, save the narrator, and save us. We walk away from this narrative feeling both wonder and tragedy, yes, but also with the flicker of love.
“…I felt happy. It wasn’t the utter joy of a few minutes earlier, not even a happy carefreeness. It was congeniality: a blend of syllables, colors and musical notes that I feel to this day when I’m working on something I love and the weather is good.”
The harmony the narrator experiences as a child when he obtains hard proof that his father is indeed a vainglorious tyrant is the same feeling he has an adult when he is in the throes of writing, and it is this very feeling that I experience when I am translating (on a good day). And so we come full circle, and back to the beginning of this essay, which was about endings. Starnone’s Via Gemito is about life, and it begins at the end. My work of translation may have come to its conclusion, but the book’s life, and in some ways my own, is just beginning.
Oonagh Stransky’s translation of Domenico Starnone’s Via Gemito – The House on Via Gemito – is available from Europa Editions (May 2023).
Oonagh Stransky is a translator of Italian literature. In addition to Via Gemito, she has also translated Starnone’s The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan, forthcoming in 2024, and works by authors as varied as Montale, Lucarelli, Saviano, Spaziani, Pope Francis, and Pontiggia.
Originally published on Hopscotch Translation
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
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