L'anno scorso ho tradotto tanti poesie, ma non tutte, del questo libro. Mi sembra come T.S. Eliot, magari, della solitudine, della citta, etc.
I read Lavorare Stanca in Italian, and translated maybe six of the poems while listening to my wife at her cello lessons in Providence, RI. The heart of the book takes place in a country town; part of its curse seems to be the Italian suspicion of anything but a real city. I found the speaker desolate, modern for sure. "Indisciplina" follows a drunk down a hot street where women don't look at the men, but everybody looks at the drunk, disapproving.
"All seem to fear
In another moment a raucous voice
Will burst into an aria."
"The drunk doesn't sing,
But he keeps to the street and its only obstacle,
An air* heavy with song."
The title poem ends the section, "Città in campagna." Here the man alone doesn't raise his eyes,
"He feels only the paving stones, that other men set
With calloused hands, like his.
It's not right to stay in an empty square.
Surely that woman will appear in the street,
Give you a hand to her house."
Wonder how Arrowsmith or Brock translates this pun on "aria."
On being alone and isolated, Pavese knew also the isolation of prison, put there by the fascists in 1935, as was his publisher Einaudi.
I've also read in Pavese's translation of David Copperfield (did I review that?), and am currently (2021) reading his novel, Prima che il gallo canti.