La radis pì ancreusa dl’ esistensa – Interview with Antonello Borra
scrivere nelle varie lingue d'Italia

La radis pì ancreusa dl’ esistensa – Interview with Antonello Borra

Elisa Guerri

ph.: Adriana Hoesle Borra

testo in italiano

 

“La radis pì ancreusa dl’esistensa” — the deepest root of existence — is what, borrowing a verse from Ël sens by Valerio Rollone, constitutes the leitmotif of the contemporary Piedmontese poetic experience collected in the anthology In Our Mother’s Voice. The volume, published last April by Fomite Press and edited by poet and professor Antonello Borra, brings together the voices of poets from different areas of Piedmont, with Italian and English translations, and twelve color landscape illustrations by Marco Vacchetti; it is “«a tribute of affection to a language threatened by extinction»”, a language that nevertheless continues to live on also in the writing and voice of its poets.

Born in Piedmont and Professor Emeritus of Italian at the University of Vermont, Antonello Borra is also a poet, with several collections to his name, including Erbario lapidario, Factory of Ideas, and Alfabestiario. In the anthology In Our Mother’s Voice: Poems from Piedmont, he turns his experience as an editor and translator to the service of the poetry of his homeland.

You were born in Piedmont, but you’ve been living and teaching in the United State for a long time now. What role did this geographical distance and this “outsider’s” perspective play in the conception of the book?  Has living far from Piedmont allowed you to view Piedmontese poetry (and the Piedmontese language) from a different perspective?

I’d like to point out that I’m also a native speaker of Piedmontese. And like most people from my generation who come from the same social background, I learned Italian in school. This, I think, complicates my answer somewhat, given that the language of my deepest emotions and the language of the official culture – which I taught for decades in the U.S. – are different. The problematic – or at least complex – relationship between an “outside” and an “inside” as they relate to the language one speaks, writes, and studies became apparent very early on. Naturally, I only became fully aware of it later, while studying foreign languages at the university, and even more so through the experience of emigration. I have lived in the Unites States for about thirty-five years, but I have always spent long periods of time in Italy, in Piedmont – periods that coincided with the academic calendar and were supplemented by sabbaticals dedicated to research. It was during my most recent sabbatical that I decided to focus on contemporary poetry written in Piedmontese. I would say I did so primarily for emotional reasons. I have never stopped speaking in Piedmontese daily – even if only for a few minutes on the phone with my parents – and the geographical distance has perhaps intensified a sense of nostalgia and a sense of belonging that, for obvious reasons, can only be partial. Living abroad, speaking other languages, and marrying an Italian German woman has undoubtedly heightened my awareness of an original split. Perhaps this is why, at a certain point in my professional life, I felt the need to do something for what is – and remains – my mother tongue. Since I, too, am a poet, it seemed natural to devote myself to what is being written today in Piedmontese verse. Incidentally, my first published poem was in dialect; I had written it for an annual contest held in my hometown, Carrù.

What prompted you to publish an anthology of poems in Piedmontese in a publishing contest like that of the Unites States? and how do you imagine a reader who doesn’t know the language might approach these poems?

As I mentioned, my original motivation was emotional in nature. Living in the United States, it was only natural that I would want to publish this work here, and Fomite Press – the small publisher that has released the four of my poetry books – immediately accepted my proposal, including the editorially costly decision to include twelve color plates by Marco Vacchetti in the volume. I presented the book here at the university and at a couple of other public readings with other poets. At these events, I read the original text in Piedmontese, and Dave Cavanagh, a poet friend of mine from here, read the various English translations – to which, incidentally, he had contributed corrections and suggestions in several cases. The book features the Piedmontese text, with Italian translation in the footnotes and the English version on the facing page. In addition, for some of the included texts, there is a QR code that allows readers to listen to the text read by the author, but we’ll discuss that later.

The title of the volume, In Our Mother’s Voice, links the survival of the Piedmontese language to the figure of the mother and to its transmission within the family. What does this voice represent for you? And what role can poetry play today in a language whose daily transmission, from one generation to the next, is becoming increasingly fragile?

This book is dedicated to my mother, Agnese Gandolfi, who passed away in 2023, as well as to my friend, the writer and publisher Mark Estrin, who passed away last year. The presence of death permeates the entire first section of the volume, titled “Loss”, but it also appears later in the book. The first section consists of two poems by Remigio Bertolino that mourn the loss of his mother and one by Barbafiore in which a widow speaks. This was no random choice. I would say that this ominous presence is, in a way, the defining feature of this book, which – like all books – seeks to pass on the memory of someone or something to the future. Furthermore, the term “mother tongue” is used for the obvious – yet not insignificant – reason that we learn to speak first and foremost from our mothers. Perhaps we sometimes forget, or pretend to forget, that it is women even before men, who pass on their language and culture to no generations. I find my mother’s voice in everything I do, say, and write, even when I express myself in Italian or another language. It is to her that I trace my attitude toward language. No one can predict the future, but it’s hard to imagine that the various dialects – if we want to call languages like Piedmontese that – will it survive much longer in the face of the major changes and population shifts we are witnessing. Writing in dialect is a form of resistance.

The anthology brings together poets from different areas of Piedmont, and thus speakers of different variants of Piedmontese. How significant were these local differences in the compilation of the volume? Were you interested in presenting a panorama that was as representative as possible of contemporary Piedmontese poetry, or in highlighting precisely the differences that run through the language and its territories?

On closer inspection, all the poets I’ve included live between the provinces of Cuneo and Turin; or, if they reside elsewhere – such as Valerio Rollone, who lives in the Vercelli area – they were nonetheless born in Turin. And despite a pronunciation that varies somewhat depending on the author, they all inevitably continue to adhere to the standard spelling based on the Turin dialect, which was once considered the most prestigious variant. I am a dialect speaker but not a dialectologist, and I had no intention of providing an exhaustive overview of Piedmontese poetry. There are other excellent books that already do so in relation to specific areas – one province or another – or to all of Piedmont. In any case, the authors I have chosen are all already recognized at the regional level and included in the most important anthologies currently in circulation.

The anthology is also very diverse in terms of themes and forms column how did you choose which texts to include? Were you primarily interested in representing the variety of contemporary Piedmontese poetry, or were there poems that particularly struck you and that you absolutely wanted to include?

I’m very pleased that you’ve highlighted the thematic and formal variety of the included texts. But, once again, I wanted to create a work that differed from existing anthologies. For this reason, for example, I adopted a thematic rather than a chronological approach to organizing the material. You’ll also notice that the number of texts included for each author varies – in a more or less direct correlation – with the number of books each has published. I’ve tried to ensure that my selections are as representative as possible of each poet’s style and personality, I hope I haven’t pigeonholed anyone into an interpretive framework that’s too rigid. In any case, a single author may appear in more than one of the eleven thematic areas I’ve identified. And it goes without saying that my personal tastes have played a role in my choices. 

The volume pairs the Piedmontese text with an Italian translation and the English translation. What balance did you strive to maintain between linguistic fidelity, poetic rendering, and accessibility for readers unfamiliar with Piedmontese? And what, in your opinion, are the greatest challenges in translating a poem written in dialect? I’m thinking not only of the meaning of the texts but also of the sounds and local expressions that can be lost in translation. Are there aspects you consciously chose not to render fully, accepting that part of the linguistic experience would remain tied to the original?

The Italian translations are done by the poets themselves, who generally published their works in bilingual editions for obvious reasons. As for the English translation, my goals were readability and fidelity to the original. Translating verse “poetically” into a language that is not one’s own is, to say the least, a risky endeavor – regardless of one’s level of proficiency, even if it is very high level. I never set out to render the selected poems in anything other than language that is as clear as possible, but I did seek the advice of American poet friends and literary scholars to review the texts and offer guidance on the register or the effect that a particular phrasing might have on native-speaking readers. Clearly, the selection of texts to include took their translatability into account. I avoided poems in which ambiguity or word play were central to the work, or that contained elements requiring footnotes for readers unfamiliar with Piedmont or Italy. I also do not believe that dialect poetry is generally any more or less difficult to translate that poetry written in standard language – in any language. Furthermore, there are poets who express themselves in more or less closed forms, which can either complicate or simplify the translator’s task. But the problem always remains that of translating poetry as poetry, if it is true that poetry consists of a “hesitation between sound and meaning” as Paul Valéry wrote – though in the original French the phrasing is even more compelling than in Italian.

Some poems are accompanied by a QR codes that allow readers to listen to them being read aloud. How did the decision come about? And in your opinion, how important is the oral dimension for a reader who is not from Piedmont – or even not Italian? What can the voice convey that the written page alone cannot?

This is the most innovative aspect of the book. It was my wife Adriana’s idea she’s more tech- savvy than I am. The QR code leads to my website www.antonelloborra.org, where I’ve posted a series of videos in which the poets are filmed reading their own work. On the web page, next to each video, you’ll find the text of the poem in the original Piedmontese, the Italian translation, the English translation, and a brief biographical note about the author in English. Leaving aside the complex discussion about the fundamental importance of orality in poetry, it seems to me that in this case, those who know neither Piedmontese nor Italian can first and foremost get a sense of how the language sounds and what the rhythms of the original poetic text are – aspects they wouldn’t have access to through the English translation. Those who do know Italian – or another dialect, natural language, minority language, or vernacular, whatever one wishes to call it – can also reflect on similarities and differences. Furthermore, seeing and hearing an author read their own work is a richer aesthetic experience. It is not an experience that stands in opposition to an individual, silent reading of the texts, but it is certainly a different experience and can prove to be rewarding. In an age when superficial and chatty visuality reigns supreme, giving poets – particularly those who express themselves in dialect – a voice and a face can constitute, and I want to emphasize this, a beneficial and peaceful form of cultural resistance. I’d also like to mention another aspect of the book that in my opinion enhances its value. These are the beautiful color landscape illustrations by Marco Vacchetti, which we’ve placed at the beginning of each thematic section to help set the tone of the texts and visually convey the atmosphere of the Piedmont region.

I’d like to conclude by returning to the overall purpose of the project. Beyond the preservation of a language and the promotion of a literary tradition, what does In Our Mother’s Voice hope to leave its readers? And, looking to the future, what role do you think poetry can play in keeping this language alive, especially in relation to the younger generations?

I have sought to contribute to the preservation of a way of life and culture – that of my people – and thanks to the English translation, to bring poems that are every bit as good as those written in Italian to a wider audience. Of course, we should not get our hopes up too high or forget that the audience for poetry is limited. But as Giovanni Raboni – a remarkable poet and a highly discerning critic – argued, it’s better to frame the issue in diachronic rather than synchronic terms. Then we’ll see a vast crowd of enthusiasts stretching out across the centuries. As I mentioned earlier, the number of Italians who speak dialects is declining, and it would be naive to think that immigrants – or even the new generation of Italians – want to or should learn dialects. And it is even more naive to think that they would turn to poetry to do so. That said, the oldest surviving examples of now-extinct languages are almost always in verse. That must mean something.

[The interview was translated into English with the help of Google Translate and DeepL Translator].

 

L'autore

Elisa Guerri
Nata nel 2000 a Città di Castello, Elisa Guerri si è laureata in Lettere moderne con un lavoro sul vocalismo del dialetto tifernate e ha proseguito con una laurea magistrale in Studi italiani, classici e Storia europea. La sua tesi, «Testi quattrocenteschi di Città di Castello e del contado. Contributo allo studio storico-linguistico di un volgare alto-mediano» (rel. prof. Giulio Vaccaro), esplora le radici linguistiche della sua città. I suoi interessi di ricerca riguardano la lingua nelle sue molteplici manifestazioni, con particolare attenzione alla dimensione dialettale, specchio di identità.