Reading Stevens in Italian

Abstract

While Wallace Stevens never set foot in Italy, his poetry arrived there earlier than in any country except the United States and Britain. In January 1954 the first book of Stevens in another language, Mattino domenicale ed altre poesie, was published in Turin by Einaudi, a major publisher of left-wing leanings. This remains a milestone in the reception of Stevens because the editor and translator, Renato Poggioli of Harvard University, corresponded extensively with the poet, eliciting comments (especially on ‘The Man with the Blue Guitar’) that scholars have treasured ever since. Since Stevens’ comments were printed in English by Poggioli in the endnotes, Mattino domenicale can be described to some extent as a book co-authored by Stevens and published in Italy (see my ‘Stevens, Poggioli’). France, which occupied so large a place in Stevens’ thoughts, was slower in developing an interest in the great American Francophile: the first French translation in book form appeared only in 1963, and Stevens is still ignored by major publishers. This lucky Italian record was largely due to the foresight of Poggioli, who at Harvard had an inside view of what was what in American poetry, and whose aesthetic sensibility (he was a comparatist and Slavist by profession, educated in Florence before the war) responded to Stevens’ solemn aestheticism.