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Journal obtus
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Deborah Woodard, Roberta Antognini, and Dario De Pasquale. OBTUSE DIARY, published in 1990 as Diario Ottuso , is a collection of three "rational" prose experiments by one of Italy's most distinctive post-war poets. These early texts (1954-1968) by Amelia Rosselli reveal an "unintentional unity" through trilingual wordplay, experiments in syntactic structure, and the music possible in prose. The texts are deeply personal, awkward, and often startling--never simply a diary or an autobiography. Rosselli reclaims Italian on her own terms as she grapples with her felt experience as a "refugee." This bilingual edition includes an audio download of selections read in both Italian and English by translators Dario De Pasquale and Deborah Woodard.
"The three texts reveal that experimenting in prose is what attracts it is equally true and likely that more can be said in prose than in poetry, which is often mannerist or decorative."--Amelia Rosselli
"The three texts reveal that experimenting in prose is what attracts it is equally true and likely that more can be said in prose than in poetry, which is often mannerist or decorative."--Amelia Rosselli
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
2 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Amelia Rosselli
38 books22 followersAmelia Rosselli (Paris, 28 March 1930 – Rome, 11 February 1996) was an italian poet, organist ed etnomusicologist.
Daughter of the antifascist activist Carlo Rosselli, exiled in Paris, and of Marion Catherine Cave, activist of the British Labourist Party. In 1940, after the murder of her father and his uncle ordered by Mussolini, she lived in exile with her family; this experience had a heavy influence on her poetical works.
Amelia Rosselli lived in Svitzerland and later in USA. She studied literature, philosophy and music in England. In the 40's and 50's she wrote numerous musical and ethnomusical studies and became in touch with the roman intellectual circle and the future members of the avant-garde movement Gruppo 63.
In the 60's she entered in the Italian Communist Party and wrote on several reviews getting the attention of Andrea Zanzotto, Giovanni Raboni and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
In 1964 she published her first book of poems, Variazioni belliche, by Garzanti, and in 1969 Serie ospedaliera, with her famous poem La Libellula. In 1981 she published Impromptu, a long poem after a long period of writer's block. She also wrote poems in french and in english (as her next book, Sleep.
She lived in Rome sharing a house with the poet Dario Bellezza, she died on 11 February 1996 by suicide, the same day of her great ispiration, Sylvia Plath.
Daughter of the antifascist activist Carlo Rosselli, exiled in Paris, and of Marion Catherine Cave, activist of the British Labourist Party. In 1940, after the murder of her father and his uncle ordered by Mussolini, she lived in exile with her family; this experience had a heavy influence on her poetical works.
Amelia Rosselli lived in Svitzerland and later in USA. She studied literature, philosophy and music in England. In the 40's and 50's she wrote numerous musical and ethnomusical studies and became in touch with the roman intellectual circle and the future members of the avant-garde movement Gruppo 63.
In the 60's she entered in the Italian Communist Party and wrote on several reviews getting the attention of Andrea Zanzotto, Giovanni Raboni and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
In 1964 she published her first book of poems, Variazioni belliche, by Garzanti, and in 1969 Serie ospedaliera, with her famous poem La Libellula. In 1981 she published Impromptu, a long poem after a long period of writer's block. She also wrote poems in french and in english (as her next book, Sleep.
She lived in Rome sharing a house with the poet Dario Bellezza, she died on 11 February 1996 by suicide, the same day of her great ispiration, Sylvia Plath.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 18, 2017
Non avevo mai letto nulla dell'autrice e questo libro, anche se prosa e non poesia, mi ha lasciato piacevolmente sorpresa, specie l'ultima parte.
October 14, 2017
La prima parte, Prime Prose Italiane, è potente.
Mi hanno convinto meno le altre due, Nota e Diario Ottuso, in cui Amelia Rosselli si propone di "scoprire" un linguaggio che non sia poesia ma neppure prosa poetica e, secondo me, non ci riesce in modo convincente, con il risultato di sconfinare troppo nella prosa poetica.
E io non sopporto questo genere letterario.
ps
6 refusi in un librino di 24 pp. !
Mi hanno convinto meno le altre due, Nota e Diario Ottuso, in cui Amelia Rosselli si propone di "scoprire" un linguaggio che non sia poesia ma neppure prosa poetica e, secondo me, non ci riesce in modo convincente, con il risultato di sconfinare troppo nella prosa poetica.
E io non sopporto questo genere letterario.
ps
6 refusi in un librino di 24 pp. !
March 22, 2023
Really, really captivating. Woodard, Atognini, and Pasquale have done an impressive job at translating a very difficult set of prose. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around Rosselli, around her interests and her range. It's challenging, and mysterious. In many ways, there is no "right" way to understand her, and in many ways, that openness moves analysis into unimaginable, almost fantastical territory. The reader is malleable. Rosselli, in knowing herself, knows this.
September 21, 2023
To judge the veracity of a translation in a language like Italian I can’t decipher, even with a fair knowledge of latin roots, is a fool’s errand. Either I trust the translators with their craft or I start reading it and quit because I lack the perspicacity to continue indulging in writing that doesn’t feel authentic. But these translations do. Indeed, this is challenging material but worth every moment of the reader’s effort.
Obtuse Diary is the last of three pieces that are presented chronologically. The first, called appropriately First Italian Prose, was written in 1954. From her first mention of “black land” I recall memories of my father describing Europe in the early 1950s when he and my mother lived in Rome and The Hague. Rosselli’s memories of war naturally start in black, but soon we are absorbed by white and gray, a place where “charities melt vices”. Yet the scent of death remains. “How cute you are little river little cadaver”. I feel the trauma.
The second piece, Note, takes place during 1967-68, the heart of that social/political revolution. Rosselli traverses a philosophical geography that roams across various paradox, where “scattered materials fumbled to distinguish true from false, false from the crude, crude from the beautiful, desire from goodness!” She has intimations of paradise but is pulled/carried by uncertainty. The body as a source of production is important; she menstrates and has migraines. Her relationship to her body builds.
Obtuse Diary, the third text,presents this simple question: “Why wasn’t I able to understand life.” She continues with oppostions, such as cleanliness and filth… and perhaps a death wish.
I experience her alienation and fascination with the void, which she Italianizes as voido. And “with a fine spirit” she cuts both her hands, a movement that suggest the slashing of wrists. At one point she says she castrates herself, and of course she presents further paradoxical juxappositions: “…they made of the scuffle a new reason to love one another without thinking of loving and without knowing they were involved in a lesson on love”. There is a painful disappointment in idealism here. Yet she refuses to yield to her enemies who wield “corrupt and pliable instincts”.
This is not a simple bit of reading, but if you read it to yourself, the sounds yield a plantive cry. Sometimes I found myself intentionally trying not to make sense of the text so as to let its sensabilities come to me because on the word level it is magical.
Once the reader’s mind is open to the language the mystery unfolds. “An evil that is a vanity of good the way good is a yearning for evil”. It’s hard for me to imagine how difficult expressions like these were to unpack as translations, and I applaud these translators. This is no easy-chair read, but if you have time and patience, you will most certainly be rewarded with the great depth to be found here.
Obtuse Diary is the last of three pieces that are presented chronologically. The first, called appropriately First Italian Prose, was written in 1954. From her first mention of “black land” I recall memories of my father describing Europe in the early 1950s when he and my mother lived in Rome and The Hague. Rosselli’s memories of war naturally start in black, but soon we are absorbed by white and gray, a place where “charities melt vices”. Yet the scent of death remains. “How cute you are little river little cadaver”. I feel the trauma.
The second piece, Note, takes place during 1967-68, the heart of that social/political revolution. Rosselli traverses a philosophical geography that roams across various paradox, where “scattered materials fumbled to distinguish true from false, false from the crude, crude from the beautiful, desire from goodness!” She has intimations of paradise but is pulled/carried by uncertainty. The body as a source of production is important; she menstrates and has migraines. Her relationship to her body builds.
Obtuse Diary, the third text,presents this simple question: “Why wasn’t I able to understand life.” She continues with oppostions, such as cleanliness and filth… and perhaps a death wish.
I experience her alienation and fascination with the void, which she Italianizes as voido. And “with a fine spirit” she cuts both her hands, a movement that suggest the slashing of wrists. At one point she says she castrates herself, and of course she presents further paradoxical juxappositions: “…they made of the scuffle a new reason to love one another without thinking of loving and without knowing they were involved in a lesson on love”. There is a painful disappointment in idealism here. Yet she refuses to yield to her enemies who wield “corrupt and pliable instincts”.
This is not a simple bit of reading, but if you read it to yourself, the sounds yield a plantive cry. Sometimes I found myself intentionally trying not to make sense of the text so as to let its sensabilities come to me because on the word level it is magical.
Once the reader’s mind is open to the language the mystery unfolds. “An evil that is a vanity of good the way good is a yearning for evil”. It’s hard for me to imagine how difficult expressions like these were to unpack as translations, and I applaud these translators. This is no easy-chair read, but if you have time and patience, you will most certainly be rewarded with the great depth to be found here.
October 31, 2018
Robe che ti metti a leggere il diario ottuso della Rosselli, che è una prosa interiore di quelle che non ci capisci una sega fino a quel punto in cui ti accorgi che stai piangendo da sola con il libro in mano e ti senti messa a nudo e fragile e come se qualcuno avesse preso tutti i tuoi pensieri, quelli più intimi e negativi, e li avessi stesi lì sulla carta, in un modo che, credo, neanche tra mille anni sarei capace. Robe del genere...
"Non ho argine per i miei pensieri dunque è meglio ch'io non coltivi i miei pensieri, pensò slacciandosi dai pantaloni che ormai la punzecchiavano. Ora non ho più cervello, né pensieri, ora debbo accasarmi, maritarmi, fare il volere di Dio, pensò ancora non accorgendosi di ancora costruire giudizi, o di pensare ancora come fosse sola al mondo, e disgiunta oltre a ciò, dal mondo. Ora non sarò più sola al mondo, pensò, e rimase più sola di prima, cercando di non essere sola più di prima, come prima, e diversamente di prima. Ora non vorrò essere nessuno, pensò, e fu subito salutata come nessuno era stato salutato prima, come se lei stessa fosse la sua subdola nemica".
"Non ho argine per i miei pensieri dunque è meglio ch'io non coltivi i miei pensieri, pensò slacciandosi dai pantaloni che ormai la punzecchiavano. Ora non ho più cervello, né pensieri, ora debbo accasarmi, maritarmi, fare il volere di Dio, pensò ancora non accorgendosi di ancora costruire giudizi, o di pensare ancora come fosse sola al mondo, e disgiunta oltre a ciò, dal mondo. Ora non sarò più sola al mondo, pensò, e rimase più sola di prima, cercando di non essere sola più di prima, come prima, e diversamente di prima. Ora non vorrò essere nessuno, pensò, e fu subito salutata come nessuno era stato salutato prima, come se lei stessa fosse la sua subdola nemica".
April 18, 2025
“[…] Non ho un mondo pronto per me e così parto per un mondo meno pronto per me che vorrà farmi soffrire severamente per le pene che non ricordo d’aver sofferto, e per la mia presunzione: io ho sempre la
vecchia colpa di non aver saputo essere nessuno. […]
vecchia colpa di non aver saputo essere nessuno. […]
February 11, 2019
"E così fu luce esatta: si convinse d'aver trovato la sua dimensione vitale: il non sapere, il non vedere, il non capire."
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews