Cultures in Contact: Translation and Reception of I promessi sposi in 19th Century England ed. by Vittoria Intonti and Rosella Mallardi (review)
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Cultures in Contact: Translation and Reception of I promessi sposi in 19th Century England fills a void in Manzoni studies by considering translation and reception together in one volume. This compilation of essays, edited by [End Page e-3] University of Bari English professors Vittoria Intonti and Rosella Mallardi, focuses on translations across languages and in comparison to Manzoni’s original, and related decisions to omit, condense, and change certain passages. This important volume, which delineates the history behind relevant translation theories, reveals the inter-textual relationship of translations from various languages as well as the intercultural dynamic between target and source literatures.
A volume that examines the history and theory of translation studies is appropriate when we consider Manzoni’s lifelong passion for questions involving language. Fluent in both the Milanese dialect and in French, Manzoni constantly translated from one cultural context to another beginning at an early age. Towards the end of his life, he headed the commission on language for the newly unified Italian state. The document issued by that group, L’unità della lingua italiana e i mezzi per diffonderla/On Linguistic Unity and the Means of Promoting It (1868), identified Florentine—the spoken language of the educated elite, not the language of the medieval writers Dante and Boccaccio—as the national language for Italy. Manzoni’s historical novel provided another occasion to work with language: he edited his own work as he transformed the first version of the novel, entitled Fermo e Lucia (1823), into I promessi sposi (1827). The writer’s visit to Florence in 1827 allowed him to “wash” the pages of the second version in the waters of the Arno so that the definitive version of I promessi sposi, which appeared in print in 1840, was free of Manzoni’s Lombard dialect.
The premise of I promessi sposi is the re-writing of a Baroque text the author had discovered. Hence the raison d’etre of this book is another book, which the narrator has decided not to transcribe but rather to re-write in a language accessible to the contemporary reading public. The narrator’s work mirrors that of the translator who must first unravel the meaning of the original and then re-state it in words that a reader from another time period, or of another mother tongue in the case of a translation, can comprehend. The critical distance between author and text allows the writer to critique his own work from an outside or “foreign” perspective. Manzoni, as narrator, exercises this option when he interjects opinions that emphasize the differences and similarities between two distinct cultural moments, Spanish-ruled Milan of the 17th century and the author’s own 19th century world.
This volume considers Manzoni’s writing in the greater European context. It describes the importance of the Grand Tour and the presence of Italian émigrés abroad for the dissemination of the novel on the continent and in Britain. Manzoni, whose plays and famous ode on the death of [End Page e-4] Napoleon in 1821, “Il cinque maggio,” transcended national boundaries, was actively engaged with the promotion of his texts both inside and outside Italy. His prominence in the international literary community resulted in contact between cultures in the nineteenth century. This volume points to the near simultaneity of translations; French, German, and English editions of the novel appeared within weeks of one another. Manzoni’s knowledge of French allowed him to converse with translators of his novel in that language. As Cultures in Contact demonstrates, these conversations not only influenced translations but also informed subsequent versions of the novel. Since Manzoni did not have the same facility with English as he did with French, translations in that language did not include the author’s intimate knowledge of his text.
When we read of Manzoni...
