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ABSTRACT
This article illuminates the role that translation can play in the study of the history of publishing and culture. It analyses Einaudi’s strategies for publishing contemporary foreign poetry in 1960s Italy. Interpreting unpublished archival data from a Bourdieusian perspective, the article reassesses the role played by Einaudi in the political and poetic movements of the day, arguing that poetry translation was instrumental in modifying the publishing, literary and political field, and in redefining, transnationally, the intellectual identity of the Einaudi editors. The study of the history of publishing from the perspective of translation, in conjunction with a sociological methodology, not only discloses the position taken by the Italian publisher within the field, but ultimately provides an alternative historical account of how culture was shaped in post-Second World War Italy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Mila Milani is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick. Before joining Warwick, she completed her PhD at the University of Manchester in 2013 and was a postdoctoral research assistant on the AHRC-funded project “Mapping Literary Space: Literary Journals, Publishing Firms and Intellectuals in Italy, 1940–1960” at the University of Reading. She has published articles on poetry translation publishing in Italy, and on the relations between twentieth-century Italian poets and their European counterparts.
Notes
1 While the strategy of publishing foreign authors was similar, Einaudi focussed mostly on politically committed authors while Mondadori did not.
2 Along with contemporary poets (Wallace Stevens, Rilke, Pasternak, W.C. Williams), the series also included classic poets (Shakespeare, Donne, Virgil, Hölderlin and Novalis). Éluard was translated by Fortini and published in the series, whereas Brecht and Neruda eventually found a better place in the Universale Einaudi and Poeti series respectively.
3 Archive Einaudi [AE], State Archive, Turin, Bodini file, Bodini to Giulio Einaudi, 19 January 1957.
4 By the late 1970s, more than 160 titles had been published, half of them contemporary foreign poetry.
5 AE, reviews file, T.S. Eliot’s La terra desolata, 20 May 1965. “Un piccolo (soltanto di formato!) gioiello”.
6 AE, Luzi file, Giulio Einaudi [GE] to Mario Luzi, 8 October 1964.
7 AE, Melchiori file, Giorgio Melchiori to GE, 16 November 1964.
8 AE, Melchiori file, GE to Giorgio Melchiori, 11 November 1964.
9 AE, Spaziani file, Maria Luisa Spaziani to GE, 15 May 1965.
10 AE, Spaziani file, Guido Davico Bonino [later GDB] to Maria Luisa Spaziani, 2 October 1964.
11 AE, Praz file, Mario Praz to GE, 16 September 1964.
12 AE, reviews file, Beckett’s Poesie in inglese (1964).
13 AE, Praz file, GE to Mario Praz, 14 September 1964.
14 AE, minutes file, 17 January 1979, Franco Fortini.
15 AE, Sanguineti file, GDB to Edoardo Sanguineti, 4 October 1968.
16 AE, minutes file, 17 February 1965.
17 AE, minutes file, 17 February 1965, GDB.
18 AE, minutes file, 11 June 1969, Guido Neri.
19 AE, Tentori Montalto file, Francesco Tentori Montalto to GDB, 27 October 1968.
20 AE, Tentori Montalto file, Francesco Tentori Montalto to GDB, 28 June 1968.
21 Ibid.
22 AE, Tentori Montalto file, Paolo Fossati to Francesco Tentori Montalto, 24 May 1968.
23 Ibid.
24 AE, Tentori Montalto file, Paolo Fossati to Francesco Tentori Montalto, 21 June 1968.
25 According to the authors of the neoavanguardia, “the new poetry must oppose both the stifling effects of literary conventions and the escalating degradation of the word as a commodity as witnessed by the emerging consumer society” (Picchione Citation2004, 7).
26 AE, Porta file, GDB to Antonio Porta, 22 April 1969.
27 The full titles are: Poeti di Tel Quel, edited by Alfredo Giuliani (1968); Giovani poeti tedeschi, edited by Roberto Fertonani (1969); Giovani poeti sudamericani, edited by Umberto Bonetti (1972); Giovani poeti americani, edited by Gianni Menarini (1973); Giovani poeti spagnoli, edited by Rosa Rossi (1976), and Giovani poeti inglesi, edited by Renato Oliva (1976).
28 AE, Menarini file, GDB to Gianni Menarini, 8 March 1972.
29 Ibid.
30 AE, Bonetti file, GDB to Umberto Bonetti, 25 September 1970.
31 Ibid.
32 AE, sales figures, administrative charts provided to the author by Roberto Cerati, former president of Giulio Einaudi editore.