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'Benito Cereno' Herman Melville

of Nicola D'Ugo

[ Melville, Herman , Benito Cereno , Einaudi, Torino 1997, XXXII- 220 pp. Translated by Cesare Pavese.]

the wake of the great novels of adventure and the sea, a visit to the captain of the Bachelor of Joy, the American Amasa Delano, the English ship San Dominique becomes an adventure encapsulated in the woods that are home to strange characters, whose behavior and warn of making peace each time the mind of the protagonist. The great adventure in the open sea is substituted here, surprisingly, the adventure of a mere courtesy visit and help Delano presents Don Benito Cereno, a young South American commander of a vessel in distress, full of African slaves and free of large part of their crew in the 'year 1799', which seem full of symbolic evocations.

Melville's pen draws us, very successful with similarities drawn from readings and other adventures, in a long journey for the interpretation of outward signs of further contradictions, fears and horrible relief childish, as interpreted by the logic of abductive Captain Delano. Melville leads us, in this novel of 1855, in the thoughts and speculations of a man, disappointed in the labels seamanship, in judging the moral character that the protagonist has the misfortune to meet and, ultimately, in the backdrop, the ship's anomalous status Delano's mood tends to accentuate its disturbing aspects. The lucidity of Melville is in telling us about the difficulties of interpreting the signs of real life that accompanies the changing nature of our feelings, fancies aroused by the slightest thing, the similarity between subtly imperfect truth and falsification.

adventure, described by a lexicon and a language snellissimo wealthy, brings together the features of the adventure novel of the Gothic and the yellow one. The translation of Cesare Pavese, Einaudi now proposed to be compared with the English text, could not be happier. More than a translation, the Italian version seems to come out directly from the pen of the great narrator of Piedmont, as if Pavese, in 1940, had written on his own. The language he adopts is rich seafaring words, but what counts most in lexicology Pavese is that his wealth is accompanied by a feeling that brings the flexibility of the Italian language in its territory most delightful and charming, with each syllable sounds to repeat the meaning of the sentence, to give soul to the narrative, affidandosi a una interpretazione del romanzo di Melville che appare perfettamente passata da uno scrittore nell'altro.

Una traduzione che si va ad affiancare ai grandi classici della letteratura, come lo Sterne tradotto da Foscolo, e in cui un «etc.» inglese, perché dia il senso dell'originale, non pare talvolta superfluo renderlo con «ecc. ecc.» (p. 171, par. 1). Una lezione di come si possa scrivere un italiano colto, scorrevole e ricco di rimandi simbolici, senza ricorrere a involuzioni di frasi, termini astrusi e simbolismi enigmatici che cercano la loro singolarità in originalità poco studiate.

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[posted in: Events No X/25, July 2, 1997, p. 66. ]