The Translator’s Invisibility

At other points, Tarchetti’s translation increases the Italian reader’s epistemological confusion by strengthening the mimetic register of Shelley’s fantastic discourse. The main characters are rechristened Vincenzo and Ortensia, two quite ordinary Italian names which remove the comic improbability suggested by an immortal called Winzy. Tarchetti’s strategy of mimetic amplification works by accumulating verisimilar details and explanations. When Vincenzo {172} recounts the tragedy of Cornelius’s “allievo che avendo inawertentemente evocato durante l’assenza del maestro, uno spirito maligno, ne fu ucciso” / “pupil who having inadvertently raised a malign spirit in his master’s absence was killed by it,” Tarchetti added another detail to the English passage to make the incident more plausible: “senza che alcuno avesse potuto soccorrerlo” / “before anyone could come to his aid” (I:115). The Italian version similarly enhances the psychological realism of the English text. When Winzy and Bertha part after their first falling out, he tersely states that “we met now after an absence, and she had been sorely beset while I was away” (220). In the translation, however, the meeting is much more histrionic, with Vincenzo physically expressing his passion for Ortensia and emphasizing the distress caused by their separation:

Io la riabbracciava ora dopo un’assenza assai dolorosa; il bisogno di confidenza e di conforti mi aveva ricondotto presso di lei. La fanciulla non aveva sofferto meno di me durante la mia lontananza.

I embraced her again now after a very painful absence; the need for intimacy and comfort led me back to her. The girl had not suffered less than me during my distance.

(I:117)

Because the translation tends to favor extreme emotional states, this sort of mimetic amplification easily turns a relatively realistic English passage into overwrought fantasy. When Winzy fearfully runs away from the allegedly satanic Cornelius, he turns to Bertha for consolation: “My failing steps were directed whither for two years they had every evening been attracted,—a gently bubbling spring of pure living waters, beside which lingered a dark-haired girl” (220). The Italian version infuses the landscape and the girl with Gothic overtones:

I miei passi si diressero anche quella volta a quel luogo, a cui pel giro di due anni erano stati diretti ogni sera, —un luogo pieno d’incanti, una sterminata latitudine di praterie, con una sorgente d’acqua viva che scaturiva gorgogliando malinconicamente, e presso la quale sedeva con abbandono una fanciulla.

My steps were directed that time as well toward that place, where for a period of two years they had been directed every {173} evening,—a place full of enchantments, a boundless expanse of grassland, with a fountain of living water which gushed with a melancholy gurgling, and beside which sat a girl with abandon.

(I:116)

Tarchetti’s strategy of amplification effectively reproduces Shelley’s feminist critique by further exaggerating the patriarchal gender images which shape the characters. When Winzy drinks what he mistakenly assumes is a remedy for his frustrated love of Bertha, he experiences a sudden fit of self-esteem and daring which comically confirms his psychological weakness, thus continuing the satire of male power: “methought my good looks had wonderfully improved. I hurried beyond the precincts of the town, joy in my soul, the beauty of heaven and earth around me” (223). The Italian version turns Vincenzo into a parody of the romantic individual, narcissistic, chest-thumping, Byronic: