The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni: A Bilingual Edition

by Vittorio Sereni, Marcus Perryman (Editor), Peter Robinson (Editor)

One of the most important Italian poets of the last century, Vittorio Sereni wrote with a historical awareness unlike that of any of his contemporaries. A poet of both personal and political responsibility, his work sensitively explores life under fascism, military defeat and imprisonment, and the resurgence of extreme right-wing politics, as well as the roles played by love and friendship in the survival of humanity. The first substantial translation of Sereni’s oeuvre published anywhere in the world, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is a unique guide to this twentieth-century poet. A bilingual edition, reissued in paperback for the poet’s centenary, it collects Sereni’s poems, criticism, and short fiction with a full chronology, commentary, bibliography, and learned introduction by British poet and scholar Peter Robinson.

Genres: Poetry

368 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2006

About the author

Vittorio Sereni (27 July 1913 - 10 February 1983) was an Italian poet, author, editor and translator of Jewish heritage. His poetry frequently addressed the themes of 20th-century Italian history, such as Fascism, Italy's military defeat in World War II, and its postwar resurgence.

Born at Luino, Sereni graduated from the University of Milan in 1936. In 1938, he co-founded the literary review Corrente di Vita. In 1941, he published Frontiera, his first collection of poetry. He was drafted into the Italian Army during World War II: captured by Allied forces in 1943, he spent the rest of the war in POW camps in Algeria and Morocco. These experiences formed the basis for his second poetry book, Diario d'Algeria.

After the war, Sereni worked as a teacher and literary critic. From the mid-1950s until his death in 1983, he was literary director of the Arnoldo Mondadori Editore publishing house. His later collections of poetry included Gli strumenti umani (1965) and Stella variabile (1981). He was a prolific translator, rendering into Italian the works of Pierre Corneille, Paul Valéry and William Carlos Williams, among others. His collection of translated poems, Il musicante di Saint-Merry, was awarded the 1982 Bagutta Prize.

Sereni's works are collected in English in The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni: A Bilingual Edition (2006), translated by Marcus Perryman and Peter Robinson.

Reviews

[Edita]

The Disease of the Elm

If it matters to you it’s still summer
look here how on the river bank the tree
flakes its more tenuous leaves:
rosy-yellow petals of unknown flowers
—and to future memory the evergreens
motionless.

But it matters more the people step gaily,
the city rush to the river and a seagull,
ventured as far as here, be unleafed
in a flare of brilliant white.

Lead me, variable star, as long as you’re able. . .

—and the day casts the banks in honey and gold
and recasts them in an oily dark
until the teeming of lights.
It darts
out from that swarm,
the humming atom, hits me
with unswerving aim
where it most stings and burns.

Come near to me, speak to me, tenderness,
—I say turning back towards
a life until yesterday close to me
today so remote—drive out
from me the insistent thorn,
the memory:
it is never satisfied.

It’s finished—that shadow
murmurs a reply
in the last light—sleep now, rest.

You’ve
removed the thorn, but not
its burning—I sigh as I give myself up to her
in dreams with her already falling.

[Robert Walkley]

A gem. And a beautifully crafted paperback as well (U of Chicago Press). I had never ready anything of Sereni’s before picking up this volume (I had read other translations by Peter Robinson--that’s what got me interested in this book.) Now I hope I never stop reading Sereni’s work.I love his sensibility, his take on (his) life. In my book, he’s right up there with other major modernist Italian poets--Ungaretti, Saba, Montale, and others. . .

[Gina]

interesting