Selected Poems

by Cesare Pavese, Margaret Crosland (Translator)

Cesare Pavese was born in 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, a village in the hills of Piedmont. He worked as a translator (of Melville, Joyce and Faulkner) and as an editor for the publishing house Einaudi Editore, while also publishing his own poetry and a string of successful novels, including The House on the Hill and The Moon and the Bonfires. Never actively anti-Fascist himself, he was nevertheless sent into internal exile in Calabria in 1935 for having aided other subversives. He killed himself in 1950, shortly after receiving Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Cesare Pavese was born in a small town in which his father, an official, owned property. He attended school and later, university, in Turin. Denied an outlet for his creative powers by Fascist control of literature, Pavese translated many 20th-century American writers in the 1930s and '40s: Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner; a 19th-century writer who influenced him profoundly, Herman Melville (one of his first translations was of Moby Dick); and the Irish novelist James Joyce. He also published criticism, posthumously collected in La letteratura americana e altri saggi (1951; American Literature, Essays and Opinions, 1970).
A founder and, until his death, an editor of the publishing house of Einaudi, Pavese also edited the anti-Fascist review La Cultura. His work led to his arrest and imprisonment by the government in 1935, an experience later recalled in “Il carcere” (published in Prima che il gallo canti, 1949; in The Political Prisoner, 1955) and the novella Il compagno (1947; The Comrade, 1959). His first volume of lyric poetry, Lavorare stanca (1936; Hard Labour, 1976), followed his release from prison. An initial novella, Paesi tuoi (1941; The Harvesters, 1961), recalled, as many of his works do, the sacred places of childhood. Between 1943 and 1945 he lived with partisans of the anti-Fascist Resistance in the hills of Piedmont.
The bulk of Pavese's work, mostly short stories and novellas, appeared between the end of the war and his death. Partly through the influence of Melville, Pavese became preoccupied with myth, symbol, and archetype. One of his most striking books is Dialoghi con Leucò (1947; Dialogues with Leucò, 1965), poetically written conversations about the human condition. The novel considered his best, La luna e i falò (1950; The Moon and the Bonfires, 1950), is a bleak, yet compassionate story of a hero who tries to find himself by visiting the place in which he grew up. Several other works are notable, especially La bella estate (1949; in The Political Prisoner, 1955).
Shortly after receiving the Strega Prize for it, Pavese took his own life in his hotel room by taking an overdose of pills.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

to sit there and listen to life and think that the sea
was there, beneath the sun still fresh from sleep.
*
But the windy night, the limpid night
that memory only touches lightly, is remote,
a memory. There exists an astonished calm
made of leaves and nothingness. From that time
beyond memories there only remains a vague
recollection.
*
There are no memories. Only a murmur,
the sea’s voice that now is a memory.

[arjn]

With poetry, it always feels like 'cheating' shelving a book as Read. I may be done with it but it's not done with me, and won't be for a long time to come.

I picked this up because I learnt Pavese was writing anti-fascist poetry in fascist Italy, putting his life at great risk. He eventually served time under house arrest.

In this collection, across multiple poems, he uses the evocative phrase 'smoke in the air' as a metaphor for fascism. There are poems critical of the impotent anti-fascist movement too. But what struck me most was the simplicity of his images, his restrained realism, his deep attention to the landscape. Whether he's talking about protests, peasants, or prostitutes, the grounded pastoralism of his verse never fails to perfume the page.

Favorite poems: Grappa in September, A Mania for Solitude, Hard Work (1), Deola Thinking, Friend Sleeping

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of poems is conveniently and wisely prefaced by two key essays The poet´s craft and Concerning certain poems not yet written written by Pavese himself.

Most of the poems in in this anthology, as is usual with most Pavese anthologies, come from Lavorare estanca, a book Pavese first published in 1936 and later corrected and roughly doubled in 1943. It is a poetry that breaks with most of the so-called hermetic poetry being written at the time; it is built on colloquial and sparse language and is blunt, hard, stony, earthy and harsh, and clearly points the way towards neorealism. It is poetry about the everyday hardships endured by peasants, prostitutes, drifters and workers living in the presence and memory of the hard piedmontese hills and under the harsh and oppressive fascist regime. For example, for The drunken old woman

The dead are young in her live memory

and in Earth and death:

You are the dark room
he always remembers

In Green wood, which has been read as a despairing lament for premature and not well thought out resistence to fascism, a recently released political prisoner watches:

...the peasants strike their spades
as they strike an enemy, and hate each other with
murderous hate. But they have one joy: this piece of cultivated land.
[...]
But the smell of earth which reaches the city
knows nothing of peasants any more[...]

Or in This generation:

Boys still go to play in the fields
at the end of the streets. And night is the same.
As we walk past we can smell the grass.
The same people are in prison. And the women are
still there, they have babies and say nothing.

In spite of the obvious pains Margaret Crosland takes to provide the translations, most of them misfire. A snort of frightened laughter is turned into a "glare of terror", a bloody face needlessly becomes "a big, bloody face". Pavese takes great care in explaining how he works with imaginative associations, but unfortunately in poems such as Autumn Moon, she manages to lose many of the associations. In this poem, in a couple of masterful lines Pavese manages to associate a couple with "shudders of cold" (the wind coming from the sea over the mountain) and even the hills themselves but by translating a key line as "as when they rippled across the sea of grain", rather than "as when they ran across..." the association is lost and the poem misfires. Sometimes the translation misses the colloquial as when "forever" is turned into "from ancient times" in Deola´s return.

I have read many of the poems in both English and Spanish translations -if you are fluent in both languages I would recommend you read the Spanish translations, of say Cósimo Madrillo -either he is a better translator or there is less linguistic distance for these poems between Italian and Spanish than between Italian and English.

[Ayça · Rating 4 out of 5]

"gece de sana benziyor,
suskun ağlayan uzak gece,
yüreğinin derinlerinde,
ve yorgun geçiyor yıldızlar."

[Alejandra Ramos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cesare Pavese lo amo, descubrí a partir de Alejandra lo que transmites, materializar tus palabras, dilucidar tus colinas, tus casas, tus ciudades. Ese gris sombrío, esas mujeres sobrias, ese sentimiento.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most important Italian poets.

[ehk2]

verra la morte e avra i tuoi occhi
olum gelecek ve gozleri gozlerin olacak

[Mehmet]

"Aynı aydınlığı soluyoruz ikimiz de"

[Simão Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Com Cesare Pavese temos acesso a uma conceção de poesia diferente daquela poesia com que tradicionalmente contactamos. Poesia que se afasta da escrita no instante e de génese nos momentos de inspiração espontânea. Assume a forma de poemas em prosa, narrativos e de construção contínua ao longo de dias, semanas e até meses.
Todos eles se constroem em torno de uma temática antropocentrista, conhecedora e observadora dos sacrifícios e esforços do Homem banal em viver os seus dias. Por vezes de forma misógna e outras vezes misteriosa, Pavese reflete o impacto da mulher no homem, escreve também poemas bucólicos sobre o norte de Itália e poesia que não se distancia das suas opções comunistas num espaço social e temporal monopolizado por movimentos totalitários.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

故事讲得很赞（但不讲故事的时候还是不怎么看得懂= =）。作者自杀的副作用就是读他的东西总忘不了是一个自杀的人写的……

[EIJANDOLUM]

There's something about him. Abysmal and unfathomable. He lived. Cesare lived.

[Myhte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duft von Erde und Wind umfängt uns im Dunkel

Schweigen ist unsere Tugend.

Und du lauschst. Die Worte, die du hörst,
berühren dich kaum. Im ruhigen Antlitz steht ein klarer
Gedanke, der das Meerlicht um die Schulter
dir legt. Im Antlitz hast du eine Stille,
die das Herz beschwert mit weichem Fall,
und uralter Kummer tropft aus ihr,
wie der Früchte Saft, die damals fielen.

Hinaus in die trübe Sonne tritt der Mann und wandert
meerentlang, achtet nicht auf die feuchten Schäume,
die sich ans Ufer wälzen und keinen Frieden finden.

Der Gipfel ist nah, ringsum wächst das Schwirren und Pfeifen des Windes.

und wir atmeten wach
in dir unterm Himmel,
der noch in uns ist

Eines Morgens wird man erwachen, einmal für immer,
in der Wärme des letzten Schlafs: der Schatten
wird sein wie die Wärme. Durchs weite Fenster
wird ein weiterer Himmel das Zimmer füllen.
Von der Treppe, einmal für immer bestiegen

Verändert sind die Farben der Welt. Nicht mehr
reicht das Gebirg in den Himmel, die Wolken
ballen sich nicht mehr wie Früchte; durchs Wasser
schimmert kein Kiesel mehr. Eines Menschen Leib
neigt sich nachdenklich dort, wo ein Gott Atem holte

Auch die Sonne geht fernhin
über errötende Küsten.

Ich fand mich selbst und damit auch Gefährten.

und das Leben war ein andres, aus Wind, aus Himmel, aus Blättern und Nichts.

Viele Früchte
sah ich fallen, süße, auf vertrautes Gras
mit weichem Fall. So bebst auch du
beim Schlag des Blutes.

Auch das Luftmeer lebt nicht wieder auf im Windhauch.
Ergeben beugt sich der Mund des Menschen
zu einem Lächeln über die Erde.

Erinnerung wird die Flamme sein,
die gestern noch stach ins erloschene Auge.

in Frieden
den Morgen atmend

Kaum wagt der Knabe im Dunkel
sich zu betrachten, doch weiß er genau,
daß es nötig ist, in die Sonne zu tauchen
und an die Blicke des Himmels sich zu gewöhnen

jemand wie du harrt dem Lichte entgegen,
forscht still in deinem Gesicht.

schwirrend wird schlagen das Herz
wie die Wasser der Brunnen -
dies wird die Stimme sein,
die deine Treppen ersteigt

ein stummer Schrei, ein Schweigen.
So siehst du sie jeden Morgen,
wenn du im Spiegel dich einsam
über dich selbst neigst. O liebe Hoffnung,
an jenem Tage wissen auch wir,
daß du das Leben, daß du das Nichts bist.