Peter Dale on Erminia Passannanti's poems. Peter Dale's translation of "Macchina"

Erminia Passannanti is an esteemed Italian poet and poetry translator, renowned for rendering into Italian the works of figures such as Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, R.S. Thomas, and T.S. Eliot. As a translator of Dante’s Inferno rendered in terza rima, I first encountered her in 1996, when we embarked on a mutually enriching project of translating each other’s poetry. Passannanti’s poetic style is characterized by free verse that interweaves occasional rhyme, assonance, and consonance to accentuate structural nuances. Although her verse might seem at first to be governed by syntactical concerns, it is, in fact, a deliberate disruption of conventional syntax in the service of irony, elegiac lament, and even farce. Her work employs language from diverse registers and historical periods to craft striking juxtapositions, producing effects that are at times expressionistic and surreal. Cultural signifiers are deliberately scrambled and rearranged, subverting traditional tonal contexts and challenging the reader’s expectations. These subtle shifts and contrasts imbue her poetry with layers of meaning that often defy complete replication in another language. The poems, largely framed as dramatic monologues with distinctive, sometimes enigmatic personas, explore themes central to human individuality and freedom. They assert this right even as they acknowledge the constraints imposed by culture, history, religion, politics, and familial ties. Beneath this celebration of autonomy lies a more somber reflection on the inherent vacuity of human endeavors when confronted with the vast indifference of both the cosmos and society. When it comes to poetry translation, Passannanti regards the process as an act of creative interpretation. While she granted me, as her translator, a considerable degree of latitude, she insisted on maintaining the syntactical integrity of her lines. Even between languages as closely related as Italian and English, differences in syntactic preferences often necessitate careful editorial commentary to preserve the intended effect. Ultimately, her work suggests that, despite the variability and humor that characterize her poems, there exists an underlying, ineffable core of poetic rigor.

(Peter Dale)

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Erminia Passannanti

‘Machine’ 

("Macchina")

(translated by Peter Dale, 1999)

She runs the trolley

along the track of madness.

Slowly follows the rail.

Who knows

What happens

At dead of night!

(the trolley

along the track of madness

keeps me aloft).

Things happen in the small hour,

One must stay alert.

Better to avoid too much know-how.

(Doctors come and go, they keep on causing scars,

while my arm is dripping).

The say ‘Too many smells in this room!’

I haven’t notice it

At the distance I keep…

Just sounds striking my ear,

Pains, noises that are produced

By the machine.

Strange vibrations producing

Doleful notes during the night duty:

The machine is broken.

Much better to do without it.

I’d prefer not to be bothered.

They come and sabotage it on purpose.

There are those who

Sit and work at it

To stop those who owned the machine

Sitting and working.

Those who owned it struggle and despair.

They don’t want to baste linen any more.

I mourned life. Oh, yea, but now I laugh.

Because of it, that machine.

(Look how the scar meanders,

unnoticed, in the material).

I stood there, like a Lucifer,

My fair name cast by filthy suggestions.

Then they were erased.

I feel myself reborn.

If it vanishes, I can’t but weep. It it reappears,

I start feeling a rag, a beggar at my own door,

A mendicant in my own home,

My destiny instantly decided:

Trapped in the mechanism. Like this!

All of a sudden arose a noise that annoyed me,

An annoyance caused by someone

Who’d gone to the trouble

Of releasing the spring.

At night, it would not proceed.

I wanted to see how far

It would perform its task,

To show it to those who use it to stake

The living being that every day

Functions (thanks to it).

We are talking of the machine, a black machine

That I cannot operate any more – since its tools

Are missing. The tools useful to people like me.

And, tell me: if someone took

And used those them, to whom did she pass

The instruments essential to work that machine?

Did she pass them to someone without a machine?

Someone rampaging out of control,

Who is keeping my trolley without any right,

Flying off the handle while claiming, from me,

The hammer, the spring mechanism, everything

Required to get up with? Does it matter to anyone

My need of a pen, a pencil?

They keep me shut in this room

Together with a black contraption

That exploits my recourses.

The girl doesn’t know how to work it

And has moved the device elsewhere:

A small sewing machine

That distracts her thoughts.

If she pays attention, she will learn to use it,

…while I lose my way after simple basting.

I can no longer manage to thread a needle,

Turning the handle,

To feel myself humiliated, annihilated. ‘Poor me!’,

I said, ‘to feel myself at zero degree

In these irrelevant tasks

That anyone else can do and now I cannot.

No, I can’t see. I cannot.’

But I do know how to speak, express desires:

I’ll get a needle, take it by the window.

I’ll make it work.

I’ll make those

Who can’t read my thoughts

Gulp it down

Those marching or sewing a hem.

My machine works

With all the beauty of winter,

With those who perfected my hearing.

I know the beauties of winter

And believe they may be those

Which exalt the weaving.

Let all of them leave my house.

I don’t want typewriters around.

They come here pretending to be poets!

This annoying hammering

Reminds me of my broken window.

I think it might lead to the dissolution of my house.

Everywhere, works have began.

There’s no silence around here. No peace.

Hammering. Clacking. Endlessly.