Face to Face. Holderlin in a New Italian Bilingual Edition

Poetry translations are now normally presented in the United States and Europe in bilingual editions, with the translated 'original' text printed on the odd pages of the book. In Italian, this form of editorial presentation is referred to as 'testo a fronte'. The two texts are printed face to face. This is also the case with translations of languages that are presumably unknown to the majority of readers, such as Chinese or Persian. But such has not always been the case. Poetry translations were for a long time published autonomously, without the reader posing the problem of a comparison with the starting text. The practice of producing bilingual editions is a relatively recent standard dating from only the last fifty years, and marks a significant change in the concept of poetry translation. In the eighteenth century, poetry translators still felt authorized to supplement the translated texts with their own compositions written in the style of the 'original'. This is the case, for example, in the edition of The Poems of Ossian, published by Michel Denis in Vienna in 1784 (Ossians und Sineds Lieder): a decisive book for the reception of James Macpherson's falsification in German, also read with enthusiasm by the youthful Hölderlin. It mattered little to the reader which original text was used, which verses were 'authentic', i.e. by Ossian and which by Denis. What mattered was the final result. But in the bilingual edition, the translation loses its autonomy. Its aesthetic and cultural value is based rather on the correlation it manages to establish with the starting text. It often has the simple scope of helping the reader to a better understanding of the 'original'. When the translated text and translation are printed together, as normally occurs today, the reader can easily move from one language to the other, opening up the possibility of reverberative effects. Not only does the translation become functional to the reading of the 'original', but the 'original' may help give a better understanding of the choices made in the translation. The starting text therefore also loses its autonomy: in bilingual editions it 'lives' by the translation.

I think every poem lives to be 'translated'; its linguistic uniqueness aspires to be declared. The final destination of a poetic text is the existential horizon of the reader. While the translation is never a one to one duplication, it does, however, shed new light on a text, infusing it with life. If it is true that the constituent density of the poetic expression is by its nature untranslatable—that is, unique—it is also true that an untranslated poem is tendentially dead. In the 'face to face' edition, the poem is called to a comparison, to justify itself. The translator does not 'find' a text, he seeks it.

A bilingual edition reproduces a previous single language edition whole, simply expanding it with the translation. The translator is almost always required to make choices of an editorial nature. He must necessarily consider the different context in which his work is placed. What may be taken for granted in one country, is not in another. But even if a previous text were to be wholly repeated, a bilingual edition would in itself be something different. Because the translation is not an appendix, but the object of the book itself, and changes the perspective in which the 'original' text is read. This difference is even more marked in the case of an annotated translation. The notes to the translation cannot be notes on the starting text. Anything in the 'original' requiring clarification can be already resolved in the semantic choices made by the translator. Furthermore, only the translation brings to light problems that on first glance are hidden. In order to write a genuine commentary, it would perhaps always be necessary to translate a text into another language and then ask what it means.

How, for example, should the German expression Vaterl&auml...