This chapter is from the book “The Art of Translation: A philological approach”. The result of over 10 years of research, this manual that has not been published in full yet is designed to help beginner literary translators exercise more control in the translation process through a philological analysis model that ponders, with equal consideration, aspects of language, literary criticism, culture and politics in the approach to literary texts.

   Article by Gabriela N. Anderson

   COPYRIGHT PROTECTED 2009

1^st published on May 14,2010

Revised on March 08, 2026

The Art of Translation — a Philological Approach

Chapter 4  

Found in Translation: “Il Gattopardo”

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Translations       

into English “The Leopard” by Archibald Colquhoun

into French “Le Guepard” by Jean-Paul Manganaro

new translations to English and French by Gabriela Anderson

Dictionaries

Dizionario Inglese/Italiano, Italiano/Inglese, Ada Borrelli, Elio Chinol,  Thomas Frank, de Agostini, Milano, 1996

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, Massachusetts, 1997

French/English-English/French Dictionary, Helene Gutman, Ballantine Books, 1997

         There have been many opinions claiming, individually, to hold the absolute truth about the capabilities and limitations of the translation process. At various points in time, some have acclaimed a certain translated work and even held it to be better than the original work; meanwhile, on other occasions, other experts would skeptically shake their heads and deplore the inherent dilution in quality of the new version that occurs within every translation of a literary text, irrespective of the translator’s skill.

         No doubt that the act of translating any literary masterpiece should be considered an act of recreating word by (carefully-selected) word the literary masterpiece that has been entrusted by the author — face to face or beyond the grave — to the translator. Thus, the act of translation ends up being a fusion of intellectual and emotional energies, the energy of the writer and the energy of the translator, and many translators will confess to the painstaking efforts they must summon whenever various words or expressions from the source-language don’t meet exact counterparts in the target-language; not rare are the circumstances when the translator must research a vast area of lexical devices and even to  invent new words as the original text might indicate.

         Finding the most appropriate word in the process of translation has come to be accepted as a phenomenon enveloped in mystique In our age that acknowledges, with relativistic indulgence, the value of all works of art, in a globalist linguistic landscape that has expanded its pool of words beyond any previous imagination, a translator’s decision to choose one word over its multiple synonyms may be befuddling to those who have insufficient understanding of the source language or of foreign languages in general.

When faced with several translation versions, even if we are familiar with the source and target languages, we would find ourselves guessing which of the respective versions could be the “number 1”. The choice is made harder by the fact that, notoriously, many talented translators enjoy the creative power of their job and aim for text-recreation, i.e. leave perceptible (often, gratuitous) personal touches within the sentences upon which they are supposed to bring light.

         Certainly, in numerous cases, such as when translating rhythm and rhyme, poetry or folkloric literature, a translator’s lack of creative genius would make any genuine translation impossible. Intuitive expressiveness, then, becomes the #1 condition the translator has to fulfill in order to “free” the text from the constraints of linguistic barriers. (The New Philology school, for instance, emphasizes the importance of translating works from less accessible languages into major languages only after instructing the translator into the regional environment and history of the original work, as an acknowledgement that translations often require significant creative interpretation.)

           A translator’s focusing on the translation of a paragraph’s idea while overlooking the importance of each word (including the most banal), of each word’s musicality and rhythm apart from its meaning — in other words failing to apply utmost thoughtfulness to the original author’s word choice — will inevitably betray the original text and will prevent the translator from achieving his/her primary goal which is: producing a translation that would be as faithful as possible to the author’s text in its overall form: content, intention, and artistic temperament.

The actual imperative is that the translator could understand the text and achieve a sense of congeniality with the author of the text on levels that should extend far beyond the limits of ordinary reading and understanding. The role of the translator is not to be “creative” and “equal” to the author in the artistic world (as it is being promoted nowadays in celebratory gatherings) – but to become the perfect shadow of the author: the translator, in his/her aim, to be merely the humble vehicle in the perpetuation of the true author’s glory.

Regarding this aspect, it is the scope of classical philological training to prepare translators able to exercise — on one hand — the multilingual skills along with the perceptiveness and cultivation of  literary critics, and — on the other hand — the humility of a talented writer who, while engaged in the art of translating a text, would aim no further than to project the light of a different language over the unchangeable pages written by the original author. Ideally, whenever possible, the translation should imperceptibly weave itself across the body of the source-text in the attempt to become one with it on an alternate plan rather than to be merely an approximated (that is a subjective) version of it.

Probably that is why, usually, the best translations of novels and poetry are done by novelists and poets who innately know the creative experience and have respect for it.

         In this article, I am conducting a philological analysis of the translation process which includes some basic tools necessary to a translator when the job is to translate faithfully a complex work of literary prose.

I am basing my analysis on one of those extraordinary novels (written laboriously sometimes over many decades) and which, despite being the sole books of their authors, have achieved worldwide acclaim: “Il Gattopardo” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

The goal of my present philological analysis is to identify obscuring or message-altering, disproportions between the currently sole English translation existent on the market and the Italian novel. I am using a  comparison between the original Italian manuscript of 1957, the  English version by Archibald Colquhuon published in 1960, my own translation and interpretation of the texts and — for a 3^nd opinion, the French version translated by Jean-Paul Manganaro (a French-Italian translator, judging by the name) published in 1969. Occasionally, I will relate to a 3rd Romance language, my native Romanian, which presents significant similarities to both Italian and French, for a plus of support in the linguistic analysis.

The 4-language comparison is complemented by a critical analysis of the novel according to philological criteria. In this manner, I am providing an example of how the tools of classical philology — known from ancient times (and much at work for ever in religious exegeses and text interpretations) — can be used during the translation process in order to establish an unequivocal platform of lexical and syntactical orientation and of clarifying hierarchical levels of quality.

         It should be noted that this analysis introduces only a very basic philological model which avoids terminology and divagations. It attempts to put together several tools usually studied in separate specialized courses, and thus to reunite within one scope — that of the translator’s “well-rounded” perspective — information that (in the United States, for example) is most often to be found in disparate sectors,  since it is possessed by experts specializing in diverse fields: psychological interpretation, literary criticism, linguistics, writing studies, history, and – to a pitiable small degree – in the field of translation/ interpreting (ordinary foreign language study).

 In selecting translated paragraphs for analysis I did not exhaust all potential examples throughout the Italian-to-English translation, and have not focused on the Italian-to-French translation that could make the object of a separate analysis; this brief analysis only provides several obvious examples in support  a philological analysis model centered on the translation of the novel into English.

________________________________________________________________________

         In various exegeses starting with the biblical ones, and in some philological schools that still follow the Renaissance – Illuminist model of literary text comprehension, one will find that all literary texts, from the most complex to the least demanding, have been traditionally analyzed from the perspective of four levels of understanding. For the sake of simplicity, I am renaming these levels here, as follows:

Level 1: the Plain Story (the understanding of the actual plot and of the generic structure of the story)

Level 2: the Larger Context (the understanding of the text within its historical context, the impact it undergoes and it exercises in the historical, political, cultural and linguistic environment in which it was generated)

Level 3: the Psychological Analysis of all the Characters and of their interactions (the descriptions of characters including animals and inanimate objects of symbolical value and active recognition in the plot, depictions of  their roles and of the rhetoric, intrigues, motivations, and outcomes that surround such characters)

Level 4: the Universalist makeup (a comprehension of the core symbolism of the text, of its hermeneutical connotations, its parallelisms with universalist themes, along with the text’s philosophical and ideological roots and its clear and potential subliminal messages to the contemporaneity)

         Thus, a text is seen as a “round” structure where the nucleus, identified with the universalist level, is surrounded by layers of meaning which only a philologically initiated reader will be enabled to comprehend in all their complexity. The use of the word “round” should not be seen as farfetched: (con)centricity is a literary strategy frequently used in classical literature; it employs such writing devices as reiteration of structural patterns and events and words along the same “cycle” in a symbolical fashion that could be associated, in the literary universe, to the universality of the uroborus symbol. In other words, cyclicity is the technique of creating the underlying pattern of a story that, like an Ariadne’s thread, would guide the reader along a labyrinth of philosophical clues and rhetorical meanings, toward an “exit” that is the same with or similar to the “entrance” into the story, in terms of place and circumstances, for the goal of conferring the story an aura of completion and universalism.

         The conclusion of this description is that a translator who, in the process of translation, will be unable to focus enough on the 4^th  level of comprehension will miss important subtleties essential to the text and to the intentions of the original author, and — depending on the text’s complexity — his/her ignorance of the subtle symmetry incorporated in the text, which came from an inspiration uniquely belonging to the original author, and his/her desire to apply a personal touch to the text will change and perhaps even compromise the entire final product of the translation.

         While the 2nd and, especially 3rd levels are interesting on their own, within the scope my the present analysis they are important only toward preparing the reader/translator for the 4th level of understanding which will reveal the universalist core message the author might have encrypted in his/her text (either consciously or intuitively, as a result of his/her cultural formation).

In the case of highly complex works, the value of the original becomes evident only if there are no dilutions of meanings.

This analysis refers to the Level 4 of text comprehension and its relevance to the act of faithful translation.

For this analysis, I provided:

a.    excerpts from the Italian text

b.    their translation into English by Archibald Colquhoun

c.    my Italian-to-English translation based on philological tools to respect the 4-level appeal of the original text

d.    comparisons with the French translation (re-translated into English) to elucidate debatable meanings

    To facilitate the comparative reading of the three texts, I underlined parts to which the reader should pay specific attention, some of which are also analyzed above and under the a,b,c,d excerpts.

Found in Translation: “Il Gattopardo” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

A Philological Analysis of the Italian-to-English Translation

        According to Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, who signed the Preface to the Italian edition used for this analysis, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, himself a literary critic of French literature in the years 1926-27, “saw literature as a kind of ciphered diary-writing, and diary-writing as the only gnoseology; the work of art as the means through which a contingent human experience, from individualistic to downright egotistic, could become crystallized in a durable experience that would remain valid irrespective of what occasional circumstances might bring about.”

         Even if the novel were not known as a masterpiece, the above introduction to the personality of the writer should represent sufficient warning to any translator that the novel would require careful assessment of each sentence — and critical assessment of the entire text; the translator is well-advised to think of the potential stream of consciousness in such a “diary” (i.e. the author’s internal voice) and therefore to seek to re-analyzing previous paragraphs or chapters whenever encountering meaningful rhetorical devices  such as repetitions of words and analogies of ideas.

         The story initially has an apparent “plainness” that — according to Internet blogs I have researched — causes many contemporary young readers to look through the book with a sense of boredom. Lively action by the main characters is quasi-inexistent or unremarkable; most of the plot develops on the remote background of political changes inflicted by the proponents of unification during the Risorgimento in Sicily, and the events loosely span the time interval between May 1860 – May 1910.

Plainly put, the Prince of Salina, who is the character at the center of the story (“Il Gattopardo” being the feline figure depicted on his coat of arms), acts to facilitate the marriage between his beloved nephew, Tancredi, and the daughter of an enterprising shop-keeper turned revolution-supporter (a typical mafiusu – the term, not used at all by di Lampedusa, yet transparent from his references to the events of 1860, was made famous by Rizzotto and Mosca’s play “I Mafiusi di Vicaria” of 1863). The Prince’s ambitious hope is that such a clever marital arrangement within the new political class would preserve the wealth, prestige and aristocratic status of his ancient family under a new guise. Although Tancredi and the girl, Angelica, young and good-looking, seem a perfect match, their mesalliance remains an allegory of the social assimilation that ultimately would overwhelm old values of noble grandeur and impose new standards, morally lowly and esthetically ridiculous, leaving no room for archetypal feudal aristocrats like the Prince of Salina to flourish  in the burgeoning capitalist society.

         Towards the end of the novel the Prince dies disillusioned, though haloed by the same grandeur of spirit that had thrived on the family traditions with which he had lived; the love triangle, that had involved his own daughter, Concetta, as a potential marital option for Tancredi, dissipates itself into an ambiguous philosophical conclusion: at the end of the book, the author’s tone hints at the error of judgment that the Prince, in his passively strategic ambition had committed when he allowed Tancredi to stray away from his aristocratic class twenty years before.

         Seemingly uncomplicated and lethargic, on account of the highly refined metaphorical and philosophical pace of the narration, the story has a harmonious classical structure visible right away in the 2 grand balls — one initiating, the other one closing the plot — in the symbolic mentioning of Bendico, the Prince’s dog – similarly, in connection to the introduction and the conclusion of the novel, and in the numerous word parallelisms and philosophical analogies to be noticed throughout the novel.

         From a translator’s point of view, identifying early the structural symmetry and the logical intricacies of the narrative is useful because such meaningful structure helps with the selection of the correct epithets that links specific ideas. Many translators, having taken writing classes in which they were advised to avoid repetitions, may try to apply such advice to this text, and that would be an error.

In this text, maintaining the subtle lexical equilibrium intended by the author will invite the repetition of certain words in translation, for the purpose of hermeneutical consistency, and it is very important that the translator emphasize such analogies across the book chapters.

The analogies represent, in translation, the Prince’s stream of consciousness — as was the clear philological intention of the author, visible in his own semantic choices in the Italian text. (According to G.L. Tomasi, Giuseppe di Lampedusa had described the novel’s plot thus: “It’ll be about 24 hours from the life of my great-grandfather, the day of Garibaldi’s landing”, but later changed his mind “I can’t make the “Ulysses”).

         First, I am presenting the excerpt below for analysis:

a textul original

b translation by A. Calhoun

c my translation

a.       In quel momento, quei nuovoloni carichi di sollievo erano guardati da migliaia di altri occhi, avvertiti da miliardi di semi nel grembo della terra. “Speriamo che l’estate sia finita, che venga finalmente la pioggia” disse Don Fabrizio; e con queste parole l’altero nobiluomo cui, personalmente, le piogge avvrebero soltanto recato fastidio, si rivelava fratello dei suoi rozzi villani.

b.      At that moment, those clouds loaded with relief were being stared at by thousands of other eyes, sensed in the womb of the earth by billions of seeds. “Let’s hope the summer is over, and that the rains are finally here”, said Don Fabrizio; and with these words the haughty noble to whom the rain would only be a personal nuisance showed himself a brother of his roughest peasants.

c.       At that moment, those huge clouds that were carrying solace were being watched by thousands of other eyes, perceived by billions of seeds from the earth’s womb. “Let’s hope the summer is over, that the rain is finally coming.”, said Don Fabrizio; and with those words, the lofty nobleman, who, personally, would have found the rains to be merely a nuisance, was revealing himself a brother to his uncouth louts.

In this excerpt, the Italian synonyms “nobile”/”nobiluomo” have exact correspondents in English; however, the translator should notice the accent on “-uomo”/ man”/”human” implied by “nobiluomo” (as continuing an idea expressed in another paragraph where two of the Prince’s subordinates debated how different the nobles were).

By using “nobiluomo” instead of “nobile” in a juxtaposition with “villani” (villager, peasants, low-status human beings) the author implicitly concludes the earlier debate, subtly pointing out the humanity of the noble; hence there is a subtle justification to translate the word as “nobleman” instead of just “noble”.

An example of another cognate — the word “villano” — which does relate etymologically to “villain” (< Middle English “vilain”, “vilein”, Middle French, Mediaeval Latin < Latin “villa”) and the Italian dictionary defines it as “uncouth person”, “boor”, “peasant” — without the English connotation of “villain”/”evil person” we find in Shakespeare, in the contemporary movie character description, and in the French. The word  “villain” (wicked)  is also related to its English paronym “villein” meaning a common with nuances which are not being conveyed by the generic word “peasant”.

         In the English translation b. excerpt the word “villano” was translated with “peasant”, a more neutral rendition…. But in Italian the neutrally nuanced “peasant” would be “contadino” or “paesano”, focussing on regional location — whereas the noun “villano” implies qualificatives: “uncouth person”, “boor” and “rustic”, similar to the derived words: “villanata”/rude action, “villanesco”/boorish, rustic, “villanzone”/ill-mannered. I translated it with “lout”/crude or lowly person (<to lout/to bow down) based on this word’s etymology from Old English akin to Old Norse (“luta”/to bow down in respect, to submit) because it conveys the nuances of feudal serfdom and “bruttish” character, in keeping with the antonymical logic of di Lampedusa’s portrayal of the feudal microcosm. Any attempt by the translator to accommodate contemporary politics by ironing over words that might be frowned upon may help with the mass commercialization of the book, but it would diminish the author’s originality. And to those who believe that an artist’s inspiration is of a godly source, such a dilution of meaning would be perceived as a loss.

         Beyond any words, a logical visualization applied  to the semantic message of the paragraph can help, too: if the word “lout” evokes awkwardness and reluctant submissiveness through boorish manners, then a lout may be visualized, reasonably, as a tall heavy-built peasant comparable physically, antithetically as well, to the tall heavy-built lord (lofty – not “haughty”)– which then justifies the word “brothers” (fratelli) around which the entire allegorical paragraph is built.

The psychological analysis of Don Fabrizio would further reveal that “a man of his character and class” would likely not stand comparison with all his peasants, therefore translating “villani” with “peasants” diminishes the cameo effect of the narrator’s reflection:

d.      The French translator used the historically precise denomination “gentilhomme” (hereditary aristocrat) for nobiluomo; for “altero “, the epithet “hautain” meaning “lofty” as well as “haughty”; and for “rozzi vilani “paysans frustes” (“rough peasants”).

         The epithet “altero” poses a challenge due to the distinction in Italian between alterezza/pride (positive trait) and alterigia “haughtiness”, “arrogance” (negative trait), both derived from the root “alto”/”high”, “tall”. The psychological analysis will portray the Prince as tall, proud and occasionally – but not generally – arrogant, therefore I chose “lofty” instead of “haughty” to convey all meanings of “altero” including the antithesis with the epithet “rozzo”/pl. rozzi (considering also the antonymes: lofty – uncouth vs. haughty – humble).

         Another example of such dichotomies is the role assigned by the author to Prince Salina’s dog, Bendico, throughout the novel. As part of an anthropomorphic –  physiognomic symbolism subtly employed by di Lampedusa throughout the novel, (starting with the title itself).

The dog may stands for a social category that had stayed faithful and subservient to its masters for millennia before eventually becoming rebellious.

The symbolism of the “dog” — emphasized also through additional anthropomorphic and physiognomic elements — intermingles with other symbols throughout the novel.

The initial allegorical hint is seen from the start of the novel, whereby the reader learns that Bendico ravaged the Prince’s garden (the garden itself being an archetypal and religious symbol of the world). The lowly servant damaging the master’s garden is suggestive of “the underdog” undoing the work in God’s garden, an allusion to the revolutions unraveling throughout the 18^th-19^th century.

Any reader who would doubt such “coincidences” should note that the connotations of the word “dog” are reiterated during the scene of the verbal sparring within the love triangle at the first ball: the young aristocrats informally anticipated to become fiancés, Tancredi and Concetta feel suddenly alienated not only by Tancredi’s vulgar joke (he and his comrade soldiers intimidating the nuns at a monastery, in a  the dogs of war manner, one may infer) but also by Angelica’s vulgar laughter at the joke (like a “lupa” = she-wolf/prostitute). The juxtaposition of the old order (Concetta – the true feline/gattopardo scion) and the new order (Angelica and Tancredi – canine-like) brings with it the vision of an attack on the celestial sacred order previously intuited in the ravaging of the garden by the dog Bendico.

Not by chance, the vision of the dog dominates the very last scene of the novel in which a decade-old dead stuffed Bendico is thrown into the dustbin from Concetta’s high-level window.

Unlike many translators, some fiction writer and all poetry writers are highly sensitive to linguistic synesthesia  and to fluctuations of the language that remain imperceptible to the readers who then find themselves mesmerized without knowing why. So, because the author deliberately links these scenes through word reiterations, the translator should do the same. The French version complied with this aspect, unlike the English translation where, in one paragraph, the word “dog” is even used though it doesn’t appear in Italian, to the effect that it spoils the balance of the word’s symbolism created by the author.

a.       Seduto su un banco se ne stava inerte a contemplare le devastazoni che Bendico operava nelle aiuoli; ogni tanto il cane rivolgeva a lui gli occhi innocenti come per esser lodato del lavoro compiuto: quattordici garofani spezzati, mezza siepe divelta, una canaletta ostruita. Sembrava daverro un cristiano. “Buono Bendico, vieni qui”. E la bestia accorreva, gli posava le froge terrose sulla mano, ansiosa di mostrargli che la balorda interruzione del bel lavoro compiuto gli veniva perdonata.

b.      He was sitting on a bench, inertly watching the devastation wrought by Bendico in the flower beds; every now and again the dog would turn innocent eyes toward him as if asking for praise at labor done; fourteen carnations broken off, half a hedge torn apart, an irrigation canal blocked. How human! “Good! Bendico, come here.” And the animal hurried up and put its earthy nostrils into his hand, anxious to show that it had forgiven this silly interruption of a fine job of work.

c.       Sitting on a bench, he was contemplating inertly the devastations operated by Bendico across the flower beds; every now and then the dog would raise its innocent eyes to him as if to be praised for the completed  labor: fourteen carnations ruined, half a bush uprooted, a small canal blocked. Quite a Christian he seemed. “Good Bendico, come here”. And the beast was running, placing its earth-covered nostrils against the prince’s hand, eager to show him that his silly interruption of its fine finished job was being pardoned.

d.      Surprisingly, for the Italian word “Cristiano”, the French translation also uses “humain”/human (“One would have really thought it human.”). Without belaboring the two translators’ avoidance of using the word “Christian”, I would point out that the alteration is important.

It is true that the word “Cristiano” can be used in some contexts as an equivalent of human(ly). Using the word “human” brings back to the picture the anthropomorphic role of the dog Bendico; unfortunately, this way the touch of sarcasm with regard to historical allusions which the Gattopardo/narrator seeks to impose in this paragraph. The French version also maintains the repetitions, the syntax, and employs: “bien accompli”/”accomplished”, “ostrue”/”obstructed”, “operait”/”operated” (< Webster: “produce an appropriate effect”; “follow a course of action that is often irregular e.g. by thiefs”; “exert power or influence”; “perform a military action”). Failing to transfer the elegance and sophistication of the Italian phrases into English – focusing on the “plain English” quality — ultimately renders the translated version a. significantly less captivating than the original text.

         Unlike in many texts, in this text the English syntax can easily reflect the Italian one; therefore the syntactic change in b. unnecessarily shifts the emphasis placed by the author on the words “sitting” and “contemplating”.

The deliberate Italian syntactic pattern alludes to the circumstantial powerlessness of the aristocracy, but is also links to the idea of passivity and “sleep” well in tune with the atmosphere of Sicilian lethargy that the author craftily builds throughout the novel. Deliberately, without doubt, di Lampetusa uses a subdued punctuation; a translator who interacted in real life with the Italian declamatory temperament might wonder about the absence of spirited punctuation in the novel and should feel compelled to pay attention to this paradox.

As seen above, the exclamation sign employed in b. is actually not used in the Italian version; thus, it should not have been used in the English version. Similarly, the tense change in English alters the melancholy effect of the Italian imperfect tense; the replacement of “Christian” with the generic term “human”, though logical, imposes a different nuance: it cancels the fine-irony tone of the remark (a staple of di Lampedusa’s style in this story), and it erases the fine threads that, for example, connect the mundane imagery of the dog’s doings with another image of devastation — evoked elsewhere in the novel — about the Salinas’ less-than-Christian feudal doings (and, then it is not by chance that the novel begins with a scene of family prayer gathering presided by the Prince).

         The repetition of “lavoro compiuto”/ literally “completed work” is missing in translation b. in the 2nd occurrence — however, in such a translation, it remains relevant to maintain the same syntagm, because on the psychological plan (our Level 3 of understanding, in this model) it emphasizes the Prince’s hope that the revolution was already over, a thought we find echoed in the excerpt below several chapters later:

a.       Il Principe era depresso: “Tutto questo” pensava “non dovrebbe poter durare; pero durera, sempre; il sempre umano, beninteso, un secolo, due secoli…; e dopo sara diverso, ma peggiore. Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni, quelli che ci sostituiranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti, Gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore, continueremo a crederci il sale della terra.

b.      The Prince was depressed: “All this shouldn’t last; but it will, always; the human “always”, of course, a century, two centuries…and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who’ll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, leopards, jackals and sheep, we’ll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.

c.       The Prince felt depressed: “All this” he thought “should not be able to last; but it will last, always; the humanly “always”, it goes without saying , a century, two centuries…; and afterwards it’ll be different, but worse. We have been the Cheetahs, the Lions, those who will replace us will be the little jackals, the hyenas; and all of us, Cheetahs, jackals and sheep, will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth.

d.      The French translation maintains the modal form (“non dovrebbe poter durare”/”should not be able to last”) and the definite article “gli”/”the”.

         In the example above I maintained the original definite article (“gli…”/”the little jackals..”) in juxtaposition with “the Lions…” which, rather than being generic, targets particular characters the Prince has in mind, i.e. “the jackal” is Don Calogero, the representative of the new leading class.

One could be reminded about the insights concerning Bendico in the previous paragraphs in this article and then ponder  the mentioning of “the jackal” which also belongs to the canis/dog category.

_________________________________________

    “Il Gattopardo” is written in a classical tradition, embracing a humanist-conservative theme upheld by many famous authors on the cusp of the 20th century whose books describe the revolutionary and social class changes emblematic to the 19th century. Some of these are: “Gone with the Wind” (Margaret Mitchell), “The Human Comedy” (Honore de Balzac), “The Calvary” (Aleksei Tolstoy), Duma’s royalist novels, “The Mysteries of Paris” (Eugene Sue), “The Mysteries of London” (Paul Feval), etc; from among Eastern European books of this genre, I would mention the Romanian novel “Ion”. What these novels have in common is the theme of 19th century social status transformations flowing out out of the French Revolution whose reverberations had spread tumultuously to the remotest corners of Europe and beyond.

         From a translator’s  point of view, the larger context is important to know with a view to eliminating potential biases — derived from the very origins of those conflicts — or extraneous convictions that have reached us in the form of contemporary politics, influencing our mentalities; in fact, the novel was rejected by several publishers and the narrative’s proposed truths about the Risorgimento (which its own characters acknowledge to be subjective) have been criticized by both left-wing and Catholic supporters.

         For example, Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, would hardly inspire any sympathy in the liberal minds of generations brought up to detect and detract any undemocratic attitudes.

A 21st century translator might find self-censure and even infinitesimal corrections necessary during the translation of controversial paragraphs, on the basis of personal political convictions (for instance, I noticed that the often repeated words “la classe”/”class” seemed to be deliberately avoided by the English translator). Equally, a dislike of anti-liberal perspectives might cause a translator to skip, distort, alter  — or even oppose, in translation — the emotional tone and the lexical texture of the narrative of a book that contravenes mainstream wisdom as di Lampedusa’s book amply does. Another danger is that of the translator’ style being, involuntarily, in counter-tempo with the writer’s own. In fact, instances of non-concordance as those described above were noticeable on many occasions throughout the English translation b. of the novel “Il Gattopardo”.

          Despite numerous changes in the American English vocabulary, the language used by 19th century — early 20th century belletrists has maintained many commonalities with contemporary academic English as far as comprehensiveness goes.

Thus, ideally a translator should not try to melt down long sophisticated paragraphs and uncomfortable words into a no-frills language that would appear more palatable to the generation Z. The language used by di Lampedusa seems to be deliberately “divine”, in a poetic sense, and it has about it a golden aura the alteration of which would significantly affect the core message of the story. This message consists in an invitation to the readers to follow step by step the stream of consciousness of a nobleman who is to be perceived as a unique kind of human being…. Much like Ashley from “Gone with the Wind”; or like Dumas’s royalist heroes with their vaporous cues and luminous wit promoted through a language that unrolls like a somptuous tapestry extricated from Versailles; or like the beautiful boyaress Dasha caught in the maelstrom of the Russian revolution from  “The Road to Calvary” — or, in some ways, like American Edna Farber’s “Giant” or Ayn Rand’s “Fountainhead” hero — Don Fabrizio is a pure aristocrat, albeit one who is contemplating the twilight of his glory. Therefore, because his authenticity is revealed through elaborate thoughts instead of actions, the language of his thoughts must be preserved intact by the translator.

Lambedusa’s language is quite academic and, as such, largely different from commonplace Italian, a matter that a translator — trained to think that good translations should avoid neologisms – might ignore at leisure.

Since the majority of English neologisms are Latin-based, an English translator might be tempted to translate with Anglo-Saxon-etymology words those Italian words for which there are English cognates. In the case of ““Il Gattopardo”” exercising that translation prerogative other than minimally would likely be an error because di Lampedusa (himself a literary critic and translator) seems to have deliberately employed words of Latin etymology that are present as identical-meaning cognates in Latin-based languages and in English. His is a subtly-concocted metaphorical phraseology which seems to have aimed at immortality by allowing European translators the ability to convert his text, almost word by word, into their languages.

The example below shows several debatable aspects, as underlined:

a)      Il sole che tuttavia era ben lontano in quel mattina del 13 Maggio dalla massima sua foga, si rivelava come l’autentico sovrano della Sicilia; il sole violento e sfacciato, il sole narcotizzante anche, che annulava le volonta singole e manteneva ogni cosa in una imobilita servile, cullata in sogni violenti, in violenze che partecipavano dell’arbitrarieta dei sogni.

b)      The sun which was still far from its blazing zenith on that morning of the 13th of May showed itself to be the true ruler of Sicily; the crude, brash sun, the drugging sun, which annulled every will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled in violence as arbitrary as dreams…

c)      The sun which, however, was quite far from its apex of blaze on that morning of the 13th of May, was revealing itself as the authentic sovereign of Sicily; the violent and shameless sun, a narcotizing sun, too, which annulled solitary expressions of will and maintained everything in a state of servile immobility lulled by violent dreams, by violences that participated in the arbitrariness of those dreams…

d)      The French text uses the equivalent of “its greatest ardor” where the English chose “zenith”, carries on the nuance of “lull”, and maintains the repetitive pattern.

The use of the word “zenith”, though logically correct (and used once, elsewhere in the narrative, by the author himself) lessens the Italian metaphor here; using words of Latin and Greek etymology, however (e.g. “authentic sovereign” instead of “true ruler”  — a more consonantal syntagm) can confer to the English translation the alliterative melodicity of the Italian text (i.e. vocalic and marked by the use of “l”).

Another example: “cullata” means literally “rocked” and “lulled”, and figuratively “deceived”, nuances that the adjective “cradled” does not pass to the reader.

In the Italian text, the repetition of “violent” three times and of “dream” twice is a deliberate rhetorical choice purposefully employed by the author; it echoes the preceding sentence — both words are emblematic throughout the entire novel — and such a parallelism certainly needs to be reflected in the translation.

         It has been considered that the character of Don Fabrizio di Salina was based on the author’s great-grandfather, the Prince of Lampedusa, however, since the novel is an exponent of the psychoanalytical genre that was gaining fame in that epoch (in fact, it has been compared to Proust’s prose), the entire plot is transmitted through the narrator’s leisurely observations and, for the most part, the narrator is, or is to be understood, as the Prince of Salina himself.

         Don Fabrizio is a noble of mixed Sicilian-German blood (a detail charged with anthropological significance in a European landscape accustomed to national and anthropomorphic stereotypes). His Northern character expresses itself for the most part through remarks developed in the solitude of his mind, leisurely monologues that engage the reader with observations about objects, individuals, atmospheres, and, occasionally, events.

The author describes in a witty style  aspects from the Prince’s everyday life: mundane moments, the sight of familiar objects, glimpses into dining, hunting, strolling, star-gazing habits – all against the larger life tragedy that he part-witnesses part-senses unraveling in the background.

The character’s tragedy of slowly dying out, in body as much as in breed, is less lamented in words than it is to be felt as a constant atmosphere throughout the novel (critics called it — with political oomph — “pessimism”, when in reality it seems to be only a sort of Areopagal detachment — suggested also by the frequent references to antique and classical figures).

The tone of the narrative is distilled with a mixture of Meridional sensuality, Germanic spirituality and a strong dose of French intellectualism, which confers it an oneiric quality — the most important quality of Sicily, too, according to Don Fabrizio. The dreamlike atmosphere of the novel achieved through metaphorical analogies and parallelisms of words and ideas is suggestive of antique prophetic dreams (a reference to Cassandra is, actually, made in the novel) and it relies on the elaborate syntax and on witty rhetorics.

a)      Il sonno, caro Chevalley, il sonno e cio che i Siciliani vogliono, ed essi odieranno sempre chi li vorra svegliare, sia pure per portar loro i piu bei regali; e sia detto fra di noi, ho i miei forti dubbi che il nuovo regno abbia molti regali per noi nel bagaglio. Tutte le manifestazioni siciliane sono manifestazione oniriche, anche le piu violente: la nostra sensualita e desiderio di oblio, le schioppettate e le coltellate nostre, desiderio di morte; desidero di immobilita voluttuosa, cioe ancora di morte, la nostra pigrizia, i nostri sorbeti di scorsonera o di cannella; il nostro aspetto meditativo e quello del nulla che voglia scrutare gli enigmi del nirvana.  De cio proviene il prepotere la noi di certe persone, di coloro che sono semi-desti; da cio il famoso ritardo di un secolo delle manifestazioni artistiche ed intellettuali siciliane; le novita ci attraggono soltanto quando le sentiamo defunte, incapaci di dar luogo a correnti vitali; da cio l’incredibile fenomeno della formazione attuale, contemporanea a noi, di miti che sarebbero venerabili se fossero antichi sul serio, ma che non sono altro che sinistri tentativi di rituffarsi in un passato che ci attrae appunto perche e morto.

b)      Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them, even in order to bring them the most wonderful of gifts; and I must say, between ourselves, I have strong doubts the new kingdom will have many gifts for us in its luggage. All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish-fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the enigmas of nirvana. That is what gives power to certain people among us, to those who are half awake: that is the cause of the well-known time-lag of a century in our artistic and intellectual life; novelties attract us only when they are dead, incapable of arousing vital currents; that is what gives rise to the extraordinary phenomenon of the constant formation of myths which would be venerable if they were really ancient, but which are really nothing but sinister attempts to plunge us back into a past that attracts us only because it is dead.

c)      Sleep, dear Chevalley, sleep is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate those would try to wake them up, even if it were for bringing them the most beautiful gifts; and, to say it just between us, I have strong doubts about the new reign’s holding many gifts for us in its luggage. All Sicilian manifestations are oneiric manifestations, even the most violent ones; our sensuality is the longing for forgetfulness, our shootings and dagger-handlings, a longing for death; a longing for voluptuous immobility, which means still for death, is in our laziness and in our cinnamon or jasmine sherbets, too; our meditative alure is that of a nothingness that wants to look deep down into the enigmas of nirvana. From this derives the potency of certain individuals among us, of those who are half-awake; from this the famous century-long delay when it comes about Sicilian artistic and intellectual manifestations; novelties appeal to us only when we feel them defunct, unable to implant vital trends; from this derives the current incredible phenomenon of myths formation, contemporary with us, which would be venerable if their antiqueness were serious, but which are nothing else than sinister attempts at plunging us once more into a past that is appealing to us precisely because it is dead.

d.      The French text shows: “oneiric” (a familiar word in Romanian culture, too, and more used perhaps in Europe than in the United States), “arrogant power”/”prepotente”, “century-long delay”, repeats “dead”/”mort” instead of using “defunt”, “scrutinize”/”scruter” (meaning “to pry into”), and “sul serio/”truly” (“vraiment”).

         The underlined words above show the distinct alterations that exist between the Italian text and the translation b., including the use of the casual expression “in order to” containing what in this text is a particularly charged  word — “order” — which di Lampedusa employed purposefully elsewhere in the story (but not here).

         In the excerpt below, I used the word “oneiric”, instead of “dreamlike” (the actual connotation would be “somnambulic”), because of its unusual sound — its translation with “wish-fulfillment” is incorrect; “longing” seems more attuned to the romantic meaning than “desire” (which is more sexually charged);

         The word “regno” means both “kingdom” and “reign”, I used the latter to emphasize the revolutionary period as presumably seen by the Prince (for instance as in the expression “Reign of Terror” — the French Revolution);

“sorbeti di scorsonera o di cannella” was incorrectly translated in b.;

“void” in Italian would be “vouto”, I opted for the literal translation “nothingness”;

“power” is less than “prepotere” which implies a mixture of arrogance/bullying and power

Note the contrast: “ritardo”/”delay” (< Middle English, Old French) was translated with “timelag” (< Webster: an English word that comes into use in 1893) for an Italian text that emulates the vocabulary of an 1860’s conservative character;

the English text omits the word “sentiamo” – “we feel”, and repeats “dead” where the Italian text uses “defunte”/”defunct” (which has a slightly different phonetic impact and significance);

“correnti” means “currents” and “trends” — I used the latter as in artistic trends to  emphasize the deprecating tone of the character

In comparison to Italian and French, the verb “scrutinize” has acquired additional connotations in American English, i.e. administrative, etc (< Webster: scan, inspect, scrutinize the hospital bill, the specimens etc) that is why I replaced it creatively with the syntagm “look deep into” because the word “profondo”/”deep” and its synonyms are often used in the novel.

“sul serio” (different from “veramente”/”really”) means “with  seriousness” — a nuance implying the character of Sicilians rather than an impersonal observation: 

  

         The Italian language has a unique musicality and di Lampedusa’s intention seems to be that of presenting the plot under the barely-intuited requiem sounds of a grandiose ongoing ball at the end of which he will be exiting, like a warrior carried away by a Valkiria, at the arm of the veiled lady he has been courting all along: Death (the background ball-masque of the revolution is actually referred to at one point, while, according to critic Tomasi, the writer’s “use of the coma is musical rather than grammatical”).

That is why it seems to me that it would be impossible to translate the genuine musicality of the Italian novel into English unless the translator were to use Latin cognates as generously as the language transfer, the esthetics and the logical needs may allow it.

         Excerpt II seen below reveals some missing sentences in translation b.:

a.       Tancredi, inquieto, non volle che Angelica tocasse un armadio a muro del salotto; lo chiuse lui stesso. Era profondissimo e conteneva bizzarre cose: rotolini di corda de seta, sottile; scatolucce di argento impudicamente ornate col sul fondo esterno etichettine minuscole recanti in eleganti grafie indicazioni oscure, come e sigle che si leggevano sui vasi delle farmacie: “Estr. catch.”, “Tirch-stram.”, “Part-opp.” boteglie dal contenuto evaporato; un rotolo di stoffa sudicia, ritto in un angolo; dentro vi era un fascio di piccole fruste, di scudisci in nervo di bue, alcuni con manici in argento, altri rivestiti sino a meta da una graziosa seta molto vecchia, bianca a righine azzure sulla quale si scorgevano tre file di macchia nerastra; attrezzini metalici inspiegabili. Tancredi ebbe paura anche di se stesso, comprese di aver ragiunto il nucleo segreto centro d’irradiazione delle irrequeietudini carnali del palazzo. “Andiamo via, cara, qui non c’e niente d’interessante.”

b.      Tancredi, disturbed, would not let Angelica touch a cupboard on the wall of the drawing room, which he shut up himself. It was deep but empty, except for a roll of dirty stuff standing upright in a corner; inside was a bundle of small whips, switches of bull muscle, some with silver handles, others wrapped half way up in a charming old silk, white with little blue stripes, on which could be seen three rows of blackish marks; and metal instruments for inexplicable purposes. Tancredi was afraid of himself too.”Let’s go, my dear, there is nothing interesting here.”

c.       Tancredi, disturbed, would not let Angelica touch a built-in cupboard in the room; he closed it himself. It was very deep and contained bizzare items: little rolls of subtle silk cords; tiny boxes of silver, immodestly ornated and with minuscule labels displaying some obscure prescriptions in elegant script on the outer sides, similar to the labels one can read on jars in apothecaries: “Estr. catch.” “Tirch.stram.” “Part.opp”; small bottles with evaporated contents; a roll of soiled cloth, standing upright in a corner; in it one could find a bunch of little whips, of riding-whips made of ox tendons, their handles made of silver or half-covered in a very old and graceful silk, white with blue stripes, on which one could distinguish three blackish streaks; inexplicable metalic tools. Tancredi was afraid, also of himself, he understood that he had reached the secret nucleus, center of the carnal restlessness irradiating throughout the palace.  “Let’s go away, dear,  there’s nothing interesting here.”

d.      The French edition placed the entire paragraph in Italics, the only time in the novel it did so, as if to emphasize its nucleus value; the translation follows literally the original text.

The word “nucleus” suggesting the climactic psychological revelation in the plot: namely that, deep down in history (symbolized by “the cupboard”: “profondissimo”/extremely deep), the centuries-old customs of the aristocratic House of Salina had been built upon a mixture of  ruthless ways in whose framework the uncommon marriage in question was fitting rather well.

This point — suggested rather than stated — is summoned as a philosophy to justify the Prince’s decision to support Tancredi (and, implicitly, the new regime), but the point loses strength as the narrative advances, till it is ultimately denied in the concluding scene.

Note: the Italian “stofa”/”cloth”, “fabric” is a false cognate — was translated, in the approximated English b. paragraph, with “stuff”. Also, “graziosa” is a surprising epithet here, solemn and oxymoronic, meant to suggest the perfidy and, perhaps, the melancholy of the momentary revelation which is that, if in Garibaldi’s time the barbarous bite of the dogs was sinful, in the time of the Salinas the refined clawing of the felines had been equally sinful (the controversial word “Christian”, avoided before, is then understood in this ironical context). “Graziosa” was translated in b. with “charming” — which lacks the subtlety of the Italian choice; in French it was maintained as ” gracieuse”/ “graceful”.

The psychological analysis of characters helps the translator choose words that would best fit the character in translation, as well as the verbal style of the characters, for instance when a particular description has the appearance of being issued from the mind of the Prince, as in the examples below (note the colloquial “di lui”/”his”, “quella”/”that”):

a.       Conquistato da sempre dall’affetuosita beffarda del ragazzo, da pochi mesi aveva cominciato ad ammirare anche l’intelligenza di lui: quella rapida addatabilita, quella penetrazione mondana, quell’arte innata delle sfumature che li dava il modo di parlare il linguaggio demagogico di moda pur asciare capire agli iniziati che cio non era che un passatempo al quale lui, il Principe di Falconeri, si abbandonava, per un momento, tutte queste cose lo avevano divertito; e per le persone del carattere e della classe di Don Fabrizio la facolta di eser divertiti constituisce i quattro quinti dell’affeto.

b.      Conquered for ever by the youth’s affectionate banter, he had begun during the last few months to admire his intelligence too: that quick adaptability, that worldly penetration, the innate artistic subtlety with which he could use the demagogic terms then in fashion while hinting to initiates that for him, the Prince of Falconeri, this was only a momentary pastime; all this amused Don Fabrizio, and in people of his character and standing the faculty for being amused makes up four fifths of affection.

c.       Always conquered by the boy’s affectionate banter, over the past few months he had began to admire that intelligence of his, too; that rapid adaptability, that worldly penetration, that innate art of the smoke and mirrors which was giving him the means to speak the demagogic language then in fashion while nevertheless letting the initiates know that for him it was nothing more than a pastime to which he, the Prince of Falconeri, was abandoning himself for a moment, all those things had entertained Don Fabrizio; and for persons of Don Fabrizio’s character and class, the faculty of being entertained constitutes four fifth of affection.

         I used “entertained” instead of “amused” (both conveyed by “divertire”) in reference to the theatrical quality of Tancredi’s demeanor; and I attempted to render the haughty intonation by maintaining the Italian apposition which stresses the nominative “he, the Prince…”.   

 

  

a.       “E sono arrivate notizie dell’Principe?” “Il Principe” nella bella bocca di Angelica non era ahime! il vocabolo per designare lui, Don Fabrizio, ma quello usato per evocare un capitanuccio garibaldino; e cio provocava in Salina un sentimento buffo tessuto nel cotone dell’invidia sensuale e nella seta del compiacimento per il successo del caro Tancredi; sentimento, a conti fatti, sgradevole.

b.      “And what news of the Prince”? “Prince” in Angelica’s mouth did not, alas, mean him, Don Fabrizio, but the little Garibaldino Captain; and this provoked a strange sensation in Salina, woven from the warp of the crude cotton of sensual jealousy and the woof of silken pleasure at his dear Tancredi’s success; a sensation, when all is said and done, that was somewhat disagreeble.

c.       “And have there been any news from the Prince?” “The Prince” in Angelica’s beautiful mouth was not alas! the term to indicate him, Don Fabrizio, but one used to evoke a petty captain of Garibaldi’s; and that provoked in Salina a silly sensation woven from the cotton of sensual envy and the silk of self-congratulation for the success of beloved Tancredi; a sensation that was, after all, unpleasant.

d.      The French text kept the cotton-silk metaphor unchanged and translated the question with “are there any news?” and “a conti fatti” with the expression “tout compte fait”/”after all”.

         The English translation b. also omits the word “bella”/”beautiful” — translated elsewhere as “pretty” and “wonderful” (different nuances); “sgradevole” means either “unpleasant” or “disagreable”; the addition of “somewhat” in English b. doesn’t appear in the Italian text.

      The excerpt below contains an unusual metaphor that introduces the word “wolf (important — in the logical sequence with “dog”, “jackal” — in the vague physiognomic/ anthropomorphic context created by di Lampedusa), however, in b. the English translator felt the need to eliminate it, possibly in order to avoid some cultural misperception; but the suffix “-atta” (“lupatta”) implying “young” mellows the harsh effect in Italian and also in the English translation “she-wolf” (also slang for harlot).

Note the use of the imperfect tense in Italian that imposes a different pace to the description: similar to the use of slow motion by a movie director to accentuate certain memorable moments in time during the movie.

a.       Angelica, ancora appoggiata, rideva, mostrando i suoi denti di lupatta. Lo scherzo le sembrava delizioso; …la bella gola palpitava.

b.      Angelica laughed, still leaning on her elbow, and showed her pointed teeth. The joke seemed most piquant to her;… her lovely throat quivered.

c.       Angelica, still leaning, was laghing, showing her teeth of a young she-woolf. She was finding the joke delicious; …the beautiful throat was palpitating.

d.      the French translation is literal, with the exception of the pronoun “her” which is inserted, as in English b., in keeping with grammatical rules (though the Italian text could have used it, too – yet, obviously on purpose, it didn’t say “la sua bella gola…” ).

         The pronoun (“her throat”) is deliberately missing here, and frequently throughout the entire Italian text, though Italian is a language in which pronouns can be generally used as in English; this absence confers a particular personal tone to the description: creating a fragmentary effect (again, strongly imagistic, like in a movie where the camera would linger on the neck of a character to amplify the visual appeal).

         Misjudging the psychological profile of the characters can lead to erroneous translations. For instance, the conflict between Tancredi and Concetta is centered on the use of the word “dog”: he tells a coarse joke about nuns, and the girl, insulted, indirectly calls him a dog the next day (asks him to fetch a wood beam) when he asks permission to enter a convent. Below is the episode:

a.       “Tancredi, passando abbiamo visto un trave per terra, davanti la casa di Ginestra. Vai a prenderla, farai piu presto a entrare.”

b.      “Tancredi, as we passed we saw a wooden beam on the ground in front of Ginestra’s house. Go and fetch it, I’ll get you in all the quicker.”

c.       “Tancredi, as we passed we saw a branch on the ground in front of Ginestra’s house. Go and fetch it, you’ll get in sooner.”

         The English text b., possibly due to a grammatical confusion — (tu) farai/(ti) farei i.e. you will do/I will make you do — has the girl adopt a patronizing tone through the addition of “I will get you in”, when the Italian text implies her disengagement from him and uses only the pronoun “you”. The juxtaposition with the pronoun “I” is out of character here because the sentence “I’ll get you in” is inexistent in the original text. If the error is due to a grammatical confusion, it could have been avoided by considering Concetta’s psychological description provided elsewhere in the novel: that of a bashful and discrete young lady.

         Some words are repeated to create an effect that makes itself felt several chapters later, in a way that a director nowadays would use effects to project double faces on a science fiction (or thriller movie) character. The physiognomic/anthropomorphic suggestion is particularly important in the novel, however the translation b. generally overlooked it:

a.       …ritrovava Don Ciccio sorridente fra i baffi ingialliti mentre sacramentava  affetuoso contro i cani.

b.      …he would find Don Ciccio smiling into his yellowed mustache and swearing affectionately at the dogs.

c        …he would find again don Ciccio who would show a smile through the yellowed hairs of his whiskers while throwing blessings and curses, affectionately, at the dogs.

d.      the French translation employs: mustache and the verb “pester”(reminiscent of “peste”-plague) meaning “inveigh against” for the verb “sacramentare”.

         In the Italian dictionary, the verb “sacramentare” is not listed (<“sacramento” /”sacrament”) – through this verbalized noun, the author implies the invectives associated with religious words in profanities, but, ironically, does not actually use any of the Italian words for “curse”…, thus, in the anthropomorphic/physiognomic context, the sentence really alludes to Ciccio’s canine nature, a symbol of his ambiguous political loyalty. The Italian dictionary states that “baffo”/”moustache”, “whiskers”, with reference to a human being and generally used with the singular, means moustache; with reference to an animal it is always used in the plural “baffi” and it means whiskers.

The use of the word “whiskers” instead of moustache is encouraged by the Italian expression “fra i baffi” (“fra” means “between”, “out of” implying a face partly-covered by abundant hair growth, according to the fashion of the time, or perhaps just like Garibaldi’s).

However, it was translated in English b. and in French with common expressions related to “moustache”; the difference is subtly important because the word “baffi” appears twice in the novel, the second time being in the very last paragraph of the novel, where the English translation b. does render it as “whiskers” in a paragraph where “danzante” is also translated with “dancing” for the 1st time, and where both words refer to the dog Bendico. Using repeated words consistently in the translation, according to the Italian text’s requirements, would have created stronger effects in keeping with the original anthropomorphic-physiognomic symbolism:

a.       Pocchi minuti dopo quel che rimaneva di Bendico venne buttato in un angolo del cortile che l’immondezzaio visitava ogni giorno; durante il volo giu dalla finestra la sua forma si ricompose un instante; si sarebbe potuto vedere danzare nell’aria un quatrupede dai lunghi baffi e l’anteriore destro alzato sembrava imprecare.

b.      A few minutes later what remained of Bendico was flung into a corner of the courtyard visited everyday by the dustman. During the flight down from the window his form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air one could have seen dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, and its right foreleg seemed to be raised in imprecation.

         Equally, the word “dog” is part of the English expression below, but it does not fit the psychological types in this context, and it is not present in the Italian text; it has the effect of altering the anthropomorphic — and, thus, the thematic — parallelism created by di Lampedusa whose portrayal of the characters contains the kind of zesty irony one finds in fables .

a.       Vedi tu Falconeri, tu si che sei fortunato!

b.      You know, Falconeri, you really are a lucky dog!

c.       You see, Falconeri, as for you, yes, that’s luck! or You are lucky (fortunate) indeed!

d.      The French and Romanian languages allow for a literal apposition of “yes” in the sentence; the word “dog” (or any extraneous expression) is absent in the French translation.

         The author consistently avoids indelicate language even in dialogues, and the gratuitous use of the word “dog” with reference to Tancredi, just like Concetta’s earlier bitching, are an example of translation licentiousness resulting in a confusion within the physiognomic/ anthropomorphic microcosm created by di Lampedusa, an environment in which the two characters are clearly designated to be “dei gattopardi” (felines…pure aristocrats). The word “dog” used in translation, even if it is merely to color military officers’s talk, is again out of character, and the psychological analysis of Tancredi (and of his friend) based on the narrator’s description would have prevented that incongruity in the English b.

         Below, the excerpt presents an expression (“crowned him with laurels…”) that exists in  Italian (<Latin, “incoronato di alloro”) but which is not employed here by the author.

a.       Questa fu la sola parte de la lettera che don Fabrizio legesse con piacere, non soltanto perche essa confirmava le sue previsioni e gli conferiva l’alloro di profeta, ma anche perche lo stile, ribbocante di sottintesa ironia gli evocava magicalmente la figura del nipote, la nasalita beffarda della voce, gli occhi sprizzanti malizia azzurina, i ghignetti cortesi….la sua ammirazione per il tatto di Tancredi reggiunse lo zenith.

b.      This was the only part of the letter that Don Fabrizzio read with any pleasure; and not just because it confirmed his own previsions and crowned him with the laurels of a prophet, but also, (it would be harsh to say “above all”) because the style, with its hints of subdued irony, magically evoked his nephew’s image: the jesting nasal tone, the sparkling malice in his blue eyes, the mockingly polite smile….his admiration for Tancredi’s tact knew no bounds.

c.       That was the only part of the letter that Don Fabrizzio read with pleasure, not only because it confirmed his previsions and was conferring him a prophet’s laurels, but also because the style, overflowing with ironical subtleties, was magically evoking his nephew’s image, the mocking nasality of the voice, the eyes sprinkling a blueish malice, the courteous leers… his admiration for Tancredi’s tact reached the zenith.

d.      The French translation, too, is literal: “conferred the laurels”; and for “sprizzanti” it provides “jaillissait”meaning “spurting” (as in a liquid); however, in Italian the verb is a paronym of the adjective “sprezzante”/”scornful”: a witty hint at Tancredi’s psychological profile).

         Alternatively, sensitivity to the psychology of some characters, described by the author as uneducated or speaking with a heavy local accent, would be expected in the English translation, in which case the use of Latin cognates in English — when they are indeed commonplace words in Italian — would alter the effect of rustic Sicilian characters and their speech (by rendering it too intellectual), or would cancel their humorous effect – as evidenced in these examples:

Excerpt I

a. …Don Calogero racontava in pessima lingua ma con intuito sagace alcuni retroscena della conquista garibaldina della provincia; il notaio parlava alla Principessa del villino “fuori cita” (cioe a cento metri da Donafugata) che si faceva construire; Angelica eccitata dalle luci, dal cibo, dallo chablis, dall’evidente consenso che essa trovava in tuti i maschi attorno alla tavola, aveva chiesto a Tancredi di narrarle alcuni episodi dei “gloriosi fatti d’arme” di Palermo.

b. …Don Calogero told in bad Italian but with knowing insight some inside stories about the conquest of the province by Garibaldi; the notary told the Princess of a little house he was having built “out of town” (…missing text..); Angelica, excited by lights, food, Chablis, and the obvious admiration she was arousing in every man around the table, asked Tancredi to describe some episodes of the “glorious battle” for Palermo.

c. …Don Calogero was telling in the worst dialect but with sagacious intuition about some backstage events from Garibaldi’s conquest of the province; the notary was telling the Princess about the little villa he was getting built for himself “out of town” (that was a hundred meters away from Donafugata); Angelica, excited by the lights, the food, the Chablis, by the obvious consensus she was finding in all the males around the table, had asked Tancredi to tell her some episodes from the “glorious facts of arms” from Palermo.

d. The French translation is literal, similar to translation c.

         It is again worthy to note the noun “males” (translation b. uses “every man”) which has acquired new and more neutral connotations in recent decades; at the time when the novel was written, it had the stronger effect of emphasizing sexual (animalic) impulses, and thus here it is in tune with the narrative’s anthropomorphic/physiognomic hints (lupetta, little jackals, dogs, lions, etc); the original word “consenso”/”consensus”, also, has a different meaning than “admiration”, and the stress is on her personal perception “essa trovava”/”she was finding” instead of the description “she was arousing” – a sensitive difference emphasizing the growth in confidence the girl was experiencing at her debut in the society.

Excerpt II

         Hyperbola and apposition are used in this excerpt to create a comic picture of the mayor (as perceived by the annoyed Prince), however, in English b. the original caustic effect appears softened; note the elimination of the hyperbolas and the apposition, and the use of the word “heaven” for “cielo”/”sky” which is more commonly interchanged in English, yet still nuanced enough to alter inadequately the image of the shrewd liberal strongman; in Italian “heaven” would be “paradiso”.

a.       Perfettamente adequato quale manifestazione politica, si poteva pero affermare che, come riuscita sartoriale, il frack di don Calogero era una catastrofe. Il panno era finissimo, il modello recente, ma il taglio era simplicemente monstruoso. Il Verbo londinese si era assai malamente incarnato in un artigiano girgentano cui la tenace avarizia di Don Calogero si era rivolta. Le punte delle due falde si ergevano verso il cielo in muta supplica, il vasto colleto era informe e, per quanto doloroso e necessario dirlo, i piedi del sindaco erano calzati da stivaletti abbottonati.

b.      Though perfectly adequate as a political demonstration, it was obvious that, as tailoring, Don Calogero’s tailcoat was a disastruous failure. The material was excellent, the style modern, but the cut quite appaling. The Word from London had been most inadequately made flesh by a tailor from Girgenti to whom don Calogero had gone in his tenacious avarice. The tails of his coat pointed straight to heaven in mute supplication, his huge collar was shapeless, and, what is more, the Mayor’s feet were shod in buttoned boots.

c.       It could be said that, although perfectly adequate for a political demonstration, as a sartorial achievement, Don Calogero’s tailcoat was a catastrophe. The material was excellent, the style was recent, but the cut was simply monstruous. The Word of London had been made flesh quite wrongly in a taylor from Girgenti to whom Don Calogero had gone in his tenacious avarice. The tales of his coat were curving towards the sky in mute supplication, the vast collar was shapeless, and, however painful, it should be said that the mayor’s feet were shod in buttoned ankle-boots.

         The French translator, either confused by the suffix “-etti” (usually connoting small), or simply carried away by the hilarity of the depiction, adds to it by translating “stivaletti” with  “little boots” instead of  “ankle-boots” (“…the Mayor’s feet were shod in little buttoned boots.”). “Il Verbo londinese” emulating the religious expression “il Verbo di Dio”/the Word of God was literally translated with “Le Verbe londonien”; in English b. the sarcastic meaning is changed: “the Word…made flesh by the taylor” means that the Word became the inadequate coat, whereas the Italian text means that the Word became — wrongly — the taylor (translated correctly in the French text)…  a meaning that is yet another polemical hint that was lost in translation b.

a.       “Principe” disse, “so che quello che sto per dire non fara effetto su di voi che discendete da Titone imperatore e Berenice regina, ma anche i Sedara sono nobili; fino a me essi sono stati una razza sfortunata seppelita in provincia e senza lustro, ma io ci ho la carte in regola nel cassetto, e un giorno si sapra che vostro nipote ha sposato la baronessina Sedara di Biscotto; titolo concesso da sua Maesta Ferdinando IV sulle secrezie del porto di Mazzara. Debbo fare le pratiche: mi manca solo un attaco.

b.      “Prince”, he said “I know that what I am about to say will have no effect on you who descend from the loves of Emperor Titus and Queen Berenice; but the Sedaras are noble too; till I came along, we’d been an unlucky lot, burried in the provinces and undistinguished, but I have the documents in order, and one day it will be known that your nephew has married the Baronessina Sedara di Biscotto, a title granted by his Majesty Ferdinand IV for work on the port of Mazzara. I have to put the papers through, there’s only one link missing.”

c.       “Prince”, he said, “I know that what I’m going to say will not have much effect on you who descend from Titone the Emperor and Berenice the Queen, but the Sedaras, too, are noble; before me they’ve been a luckless lot buried in villages and with no spark, but I’ve got the regular papers in the safe, and someday it’ll be known that your nephew married the young Baroness Sedara di Biscotto, a title granted by his Majesty Ferdinand IV for the secrezie taxes in the port of Mazzara. I’ve still got to attack some issues, I’m missing just a link.

d.      The word “razza”, literally “race”, was maintained as such in French; in Italian and French the word “race”; while it can be controversial – as this is a profoundly conservative novel – the translator had the duty to keep it.

Regarding “attaco” the pun is lost in b. and in d. through the use of “attachment” ( Fr. “accointance”/”acquaintance”,  pejorative meaning “intimacy”) which has a double entendre but not the necessary oxymoronic one.

         Don Calogero’s speach is funny in Italian because of the oxymoronic pun “manca solo un attaco”. The noun “attaco” has a double meaning and creates an oxymoron between “attack” (i.e. harm) and “link” (i.e. attachment), again a subtle ironical sending, sensed by the Prince, to the background of social unrest, the lurking dangers and the duplicity of his new kinship with Calogero. I used a paraphrase covering both meanings, however, a more creative translation might be to use “hook”  for “attaco” (“I’ve got to finish the job, I’m missing just a hook.”) in the attempt to project the double nuance “to hit/to attach” and Calogero’s speculator dealings  (revealed by his  reference to the “secrezie”) and because it is also reminiscent of the suggestive English expression “by hook or by crook”. Note that the expression “la carte in regola” used here is synonimous with “la carte in ordine”, both meaning “documents in order, according to the law”; but because the author chose the former I sought an expression that doesn’t include the word “order” used in the novel only with the universalist connotation “(new) order of things”.

         Calogero’s rural diction is revealed, for instance, in the inversion “Titone imperatore, Berenice regina” (< literary It. “l’imperatore Tito e la regina Berenice”)/”Tito the Emperor…”, and the text b. reflects it by using the expression “from the loves of” which is, however, an extrapolation not present in the Italian text.

         Several character-related words are difficult to translate. For example, “zione” was translated as “uncle mine”, however, the Italian suffix “-one” has the connotation “great”/”big” (a literal meaning, too, since the Prince is described as an unusually tall heavy-built man), and does not stress the emotional appeal suggested by the pronoun “mine”; it could be better translated as “big uncle”. The comic appelative “Principone” with which Mariannina coxes the Prince (translated with “my Prince”) is, literally, “my big Prince”.

         The adjective “Gattopardesco” translated in English b. as “leopard-like” and “feline”: “rivolse a Tumeo un soriso Gattopardesco ma amichevole” might be translated with: “he gave Tumeo a heraldic-cheetah smile that was, nevertheless, amicable”; the difference is that “feline smile” carries a personal nuance (i.e. feline sensuality) — whereas Gattopardesco implies both the feline sensuality the Prince possess indeed, and the aristocratic heraldry connotation (i.e. a haughty, though amicable, smile). While in French the translation is literal, in English the adjectivization with the suffix “-like”  dissipated some of the Romance adjectival weight.

         The novel was praised internationally but has been at odds with many, particularly with the acolytes of the Italian Christian-Democrat coalition (whose involvements with the mafia I found denounced in an article from 1993 entitled “The Triumph of the Leopard”).

The ideological affiliation of the novel might surprise the unadvised reader trying to make sense of a plot about lovely social events and a lord caught between his interest in the celestial spheres and his rustic concerns all the while leisurely reconciling his human passions with the respect for prelates.

         Though some (like the author of the above-mentioned article) might push it as a political manifesto, the novel’s universal appeal resides in its emphasis on a particular kind of humanist freedom imperturbable vis-a-vis any politics, extraneous opinions, or the tides of time.

Above all, its characters, and especially its symbolism, dared to make a philosophical verdict in a world overwhelmed by purported liberal ideologies: that matters would change again, and that “everything would be as it once used to be”… and the verdict was proffered not on a bellicose tone but on one of — unforgivable! — signorial detachment. Obviously, this message was bound to irk the totalitarian “progressives” worldwide.

         The translator should look for the historical symbolism, especially for the interplay of historical ideologies and literary connotations, and should analyze the cumulus of rhetorical effects provided by each word in the text, with the goal of ensuring that the invisible structure of the plot, its deeper meanings and hints, and its original phonetic appeal will not be perturbed, for instance, by uninspired choices of epithets from the multiple synonyms available in the dictionary, or by alterations and undesirable eliminations/additions of words.

          Each literary text presents a personal, unique atmosphere breathed into it by the spirit of its author.

Thus in ““Il Gattopardo”” there is a particular poetry – a cadence, a rhythm and a rhyme of analogies and alliterations,  created subliminally through the use of parallelisms of ideas and words, a net of fine irony, puns, synesthesia and synesthetic metaphors, along with a meaningful use of epithets — some repeated some intertwined to carry on an idea introduced chapters before… —  toward the effect of shifting the reader/translator from the realm of the narrator’s prosaic observations, conversations, descriptions and appearances into the realm of the Prince’s subconscious: his reflections about himself, about his world’s degradation, the collapse of his wealth, status and family, his dreaded approaching end after a life he feels has not been fully lived — that is into a quietly troubled subconscious that basks only in the hope that the new regime would fail someday and in the secret apotheosis of his last true passion stirred by Angelica.

Largely, the rhetorical means employed by di Lampedusa are:

* metaphorical analogy: allegory, metonymy, synechdoche, anthropomorphic/physiognomic references

* the stream of consciousness: syntactical and lexical parallelisms, juxtaposition

* word symbolism: synesthesia, alliteration, pun, repetition, epithet, synonym, antonym, paronim, oxymoron, hyperbola

* poetic use of verbal constructions, pronouns, and articles

         For example, in the excerpt below the Prince’s recently-assuaged fear of the effects of the Risorgimento is alluded to through his allegorical dinner-time contemplation of a favorite dessert. As such, the tower-shaped dessert stands for the Risorgimento and punctuates a sequence from the Prince’s stream of consciousness whereby the word “multicolor” links his present thought to an earlier remark he made about the ugliness of the revolutionary red, green and white flag. The collapse of the dessert-tower stands for the future dismantling of the newly-created state which he prefigures with agony and satisfaction (the word “goduto” meaning “enjoy”, “delight in”, “getting satisfaction from” can imply, in Italian, also pleasure at an enemy’s fall, a nuance less conveyed by the word “enjoy” used in English b.).

         The Prince’s hope that the devastation will be over before it has affected his son, Paolo, is capped by a last — poetic — sentence apprehensively stating the fading away of the royal tradition, too (the initials F.D.). The allegorical meaning of all the previous sentences prefigures, on the contrary, not the hoped-for devastation of the tricolor supporters, but the dismantling of the royal-aristocratic power — suggested by the words “Marsala wine” — hinting at Garibaldi’s landing at Marsala — “rimasto”/”remained”, “nette”/”clean/empty” are an example of the significance that di Lampedusa attaches to each word and sentence .

Note the use in English b. of “his family’s (appetites)” — inexistent in the Italian text — which affects wrongly the allegorical allusion:

a.       Si presentava minacciosa, con quella sua forma di torrione appoggiato su bastioni e scarpate, dalle pareti lisce e scivolose impossibili da scalare, presidiata da una guarnigione rossa e verde di ciliege e di pistacchi; era pero transparente e tremolante ed il cucchiaio vi si affondava con stupefacente agio. Quando la roccaforte ambrata aggiunse a Francesco Paolo, il ragazzo sedicenne ultimo servito, essa non consisteva che di spalti cannoneggiati e di blocchi divelti. Esilarato dall’aroma del liquore e dal gusto delicato della guarniggione multicolore, il Principe se la era goduto assistendo allo smantellamento della fosca rocca sotto l’assalto degli appetiti. Uno dei suoi bicchieri era rimasto a meta pieno di Marsala; egli lo alzo, guardo in giro la famiglia fissandosi un attimo piu a lungo sugli occhi azzuri di Concetta e “a la salute del nostro caro Tancredi” disse. Bevve il vino in un solo sorso. Le cifre F.D. che prima si erano distaccate ben nette sul colore dorato del bicchiere pieno non si videro piu.

b.      It was rather threatening at first sight, shaped like a tower with bastions and battlements and smooth slippery walls impossible to scale, garrisoned by red and green cherries and pistachio nuts; but into its transparent and quivering flanks a spoon plunged with astounding ease. By the time the amber-colored fortress reached Francesco Paolo, the sixteen-ear-old son, who was served last, it consisted only of shattered walls and hunks of wobbly rubble. Exhilarated by the aroma of rum and the delicate flavor of the multicolored garrison, the Prince enjoyed watching the rapid demolishing of the fortress beneath the assault of his family’s appetites. One of his glasses was still half full of Marsala. He raised it, glanced around the family, gazed for a second into Concetta’s blue eyes, then said, “To the health of our Tancredi”. He drained his wine in a single gulp. The initials F.D. which before had stood out clearly on the golden color of the full glass were no longer visible.

c.       It was showing itself threatening, shaped as it was like a tower relying on ramparts and heights, with smooth slippery walls impossible to escalate, presided by a red and green garrison of cherries and pistachio nuts; it was, however, transparent and tremulous and the spoon could plunge into it with astonishing ease. By the time the amber-and-rock-like fortress reached sixteen-year-old Francesco Paolo, the last to be served, it didn’t consist of anything more that shelled bastions and uprooted blocks. Exhilarated by the aroma of liquor and the delicate taste of the multicolor garrison, the Prince had rejoiced watching the dismantlement of the fortress under the assault of the appetites. One of his glasses was left half-full of Marsala; he raised it, looked around at his family, his eyes staring for a second longer into Concetta’s blue eyes, then he said ” To the health of our dear Tancredi”. He drained his wine in one gulp. The letters F.D. that before could be distinguished cleanly upon the golden color of the full glass could be seen no more.

d.      The French translation, following word by word the Italian paragraphs coincides, in minute details, with translation c. as if there were no other alternatives…which supports the supposition that di Lampedusa wrote the novel with a view to easy and exact translation into Latin-based languages. Though the expression “no longer visible” is natural in English, the point of this novel is never to sound merely natural — but, on the contrary, to sound like a prophetic text.

         Again, visualization can help (although I actually used the exact dictionary correspondents, with the exception of “amber-and-rock-like fortress” which, literally, should have been “the ambered stronghold”): e.g. the sentence “it consisted only of shattered walls and hunks of wobbly rubble” is an approximated translation by comparison to the literal “it didn’t consist of anything more than shelled bastions and uprooted blocks”.

With gastronomic aplomb, one may try to see, through the Prince’s eyes, the silver spoons (shells) attacking the gelatine tower’s “bastions” (elaborate decorations) and removing slices (“uprooted blocks”). In b. the translator, possibly in another attempt to make the political analogy more obvious to readers, used the noun “rubble” which relates semantically to “roccaforte” (literally “stronghold” < “rocca”/”stone”) from the same paragraph, yet it slightly shifts the reader’s perceptions toward a picture that in English shows more devastation and disorder than in Italian. I maintained “gusto”/”taste” because there is a small difference of nuance between “flavor”/ “sapore” and “gusto”/”taste” if we are to imagine Don Fabrizio’s facial expression like that of a cheetah who has just tasted the blood (liquor) of several red-green-and-white-clad sentinels.

         At the other pole of the Prince’s psychological disposition which, throughout the chapters, oscilates from increasingly anxioux to reassured, then up to the point of aggressive thoughts of opposition and down to growing disillusion, is his fear of and obsession with death, an obsession that will be time and again stirred by apparently mundane imagery.

The important syntagm “new order”, repeated throughout the text appears under various translations in English b. for example:

a.       Tancredi…egli avvrebe potuto essere l’alfiere di un contrattaco che la nobilta, sotto mutate uniformi, poteva portare contro il nuovo ordine politico.

b.      Tancredi …he would be the standard-bearer of a counterattack which the nobility, under new trappings, could launch against the new social State.

c.       Tancredi…he might be able to become the standard-bearer of a counter-attack which the nobility, under converted uniforms could launch against the new political order.

         The interlinked ideas are clear in the two excerpts below:

Excerpt I

a.       Perche morire per qualche d’uno o per qualche cosa, va bene, e nell’ordine; occore pero sapere o, per lo meno, essere certi, che qualcuno sappia per chi o per che si e morti; questo chiedeva quella faccia deturpata; e appunto qui comminciava la nebbia.

b.      Dying for somebody or for something, that was perfectly normal, of course; but the person dying should know, or at least, feel sure, that someone knows for whom or for what he is dying; the disfigured face was asking just that; and that was where the haze began.

c.       Because dying for somebody or for something, that’s fine, it is in order; however, one has to know why, or at least to be sure that someone will know for whom or for what one has died; that’s what that disfigured face was asking; and precisely there the fog was starting.

         In Excerpt I, the Prince’s comments refer to the corpse of the royalist soldier found in his garden in the 1st chapter, whose wounds resemble those of the rabbit described in the 3rd chapter; in fact, the soldier’s corpse is defiled verbally, too, through an anthropomorphic pun (“carone” meaning “carcase”  and “swine”) uttered by one of the characters.

         In the excerpt below, I chose “dumbfounded” instead of its synonim “astonished” to convey the double meaning of the soldier’s suggested dumbness (to die for nothing, unknown, alone, defiled), and of the rabbit’s mute amazement.

    Similarly, the repetition of the idiom “order of things” (altered by the English translator in Excerpt I, though it appears unchanged several times in the Italian novel) and the word “cassaca”/”tunic” (the rabbit’s fur metaphorically likened to a soldier’s uniform — see above: “mutate uniformi”/ “uniforms muted into…”), as well as the parallel images of the defaced human and animal, are important as subliminal link words.

         The word “bestia” has multiple meanings in Italian which coincide with those from English, French and Romanian: animal, beast, brutish person, dunce. Seemingly with the purpose of maintaining the ambiguity human/animal brought about by the use of anthropomorphism and physiognomic allusions, di Lampedusa   chose to use “bestia”/”beast” and “bestiola”/little beast with reference to animals in his text, instead of using the word “animale”/”animal”, hence the translator should accept that difference, too.

Excerpt II

a.       Era un cognilio selvatico: la dimessa casacca color di creta non era bastata a salvarlo. Orrendi squarci gli avevano lacerato il muso e il petto. Don Fabrizio si vide fissato da due grandi occhi neri che, invasi rapidamente da un velo glauco, lo guardavano senza rimprovimento ma che erano carichi di un dolore attonitto rivolto contro tutto l’ordinamento delle cose; le orecchie velutate erano gia fredde, le zampette vigorose si contraevano in ritmo, simbolo di una inutile fuga; l’animale moriva torturato da un ‘ansiosa speranza di salvezza, imaginando di poter ancora cavarsela quando di gia era ghermito, proprio come tanti uomini; mentre i polpastrelli pietosi accarezzavano il musetto misero, la bestiola ebbe un ultimo fremito, e mori.

b.      It was a wild rabbit; its dun-colored coat had not been able to save it. Horrible wounds lacerated snout and chest. Don Fabrizio found himself stared at by big black eyes soon overlaid by a glaucous veil; they were looking at him with no reproof, but full of tortured amazement at the  whole order of things; the velvety ears were already cold, the vigorous paws contracting in rhythm, still-living symbol of useless flight; the animal had died tortured by anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape when it was already caught, just like so many human beings. While sympathetic fingers were still stroking that poor snout, the animal gave a last quiver and died.

c.       It was a wild rabbit: its meek tunic the color of chalk had not sufficed to save it. Horrible wounds had lacerated its muzzle and chest. Don Fabrizzio found himself fixed by two large black eyes which, rapidly invaded by a glaucous veil, were staring at him without reproach but which were full of dumbfounded pain turned against the whole order of things; the velvety ears were already cold, the vigorous paws contracting rhythmically, symbol of a useless flight; the animal was dying tortured by an anxious hope of salvation, imagining it could still take off when it had already been snatched, just like so many men; while compassionate fingertips were caressing its wretched muzzle, the little beast gave a last shudder and died.

d.      The French translation shows: “deux grands yeux noirs”/”two large black eyes”, “stupefaite”/”stupefied”, and “bestiole” for “bestiola”/”little beast”.

         Again, translation c. does not attempt to be a different version, but to be as close as possible to the original text: the difference between it and translation b. resides in  avoiding text simplifications (that common “wisdom” of Anglo-American cultures) and instead using the exact grammatical tense, article and plural/singular choices of the author. Such faithfulness to the text is necessary in order to pinpoint the subtle semantic interconnections within the rhetorical devices and the psychological framework of the entire novel.

 For example, for the sake of nuances, it is important to translate “uomini” with “men” — instead of “human beings” as it is in version b. (the Italian counterpart, then, would have been “esseri umani”. Such a distinction is necessary because it hints  at the Prince’s thoughts: the latter’s obsession is not so much with humanity’s fate, as it is about the dead soldier found in his yard and therefore about the potential death of his beloved Tancredi during the fight, and — on the universalist level — about his own death as a man of another time. The word “two (eyes)” is missed in b.; possibly it was considered redundant by the translator, yet even though it is indeed redundant in ordinary speech, it has a certain effect in an allegorical scene like this one — the author used it to increase the effect on the viewer of the dying creature’s stare (cinematographically — Hitchock-style — it is paralleled by another scene in the novel in which a child’s head mutilated by local criminals is described as having staring eyes…).

Also, here the pronoun (“gli avevano…”/had… its muzzle and chest) is present in Italian and needs to be translated in English, in contrast with the deliberate absence of the pronoun in other paragraphs.

         Often, a comfortable way to approach the 4th level of understanding through philological analysis is to ponder the title of the text.

In this case, it has been pointed out that “The Leopard” is an incorrect translation of the title ““Il Gattopardo””, because the actual animal, a small feline that used to exist but is now extinct in Sicily, would have been a small one in the family of wild cats – the word “gatto” means cat.

While still from the leonine family, the word should have deserved proper translation, probably as “the gattopard”. Since this extinct Sicilian animal is different from the African serval, I will take the liberty of calling it “the gattopard” in this article in the hope that it will one day be added to the dictionary.

The novel’s translator must have pondered the difference before deciding for the word “leopard”, a frequent heraldic emblem, in fact interchangeable with that of the “lion”. The leopard or lion passant guardant is a frequently used charge in heraldry. The heraldic leopard differs from the real-life leopard. A lion rampant is depicted in profile standing erect with forepaws raised. The position of the hind legs varies according to local custom: the lion may stand on both hind legs, braced wide apart, or on only one, with the other also raised to strike; the word rampant is often omitted, especially in early blazon, as this is the most usual position of a carnivorous quadruped and seems to be the one described in the novel as “il Gattopardo danzante”/”the dancing Gattopardo”.

          Nevertheless, an impression of questionable confusion between the two terms remains for the reader because of the special importance the author repeatedly attaches to the noun “gattopardo” and the adjective “gattopardesco” meant to symbolize the ancestral qualities of his main character; it is a subtle wit thus lost in translation, for the two felines are quite different.

         The writer, most likely, knew well the difference, and the English translator couldn’t have possibly ignored it — but the latter was faced with the dilemma that “The Leopard” may sound more heraldic in English than “The Cheetah” which is a word of Indian/Sanskrit origin (in French the translation was closer to the original: “Le Guepard”, “Ghepardul”).

         The word “gattopardo danzante”/ “dancing cheetah” was translated in most paragraphs as the “prancing leopard” which is logical but eliminates the analogy created by the double use of the word “dance”: as a metaphorical epithet (dancing cheetah emblem) and as as an allegoric scene (the last dance of “Il Gattopardo” with Angelica). Moreover, the word “danzante”/”dancing” may have been chosen on purpose by di Lampedusa as an ironical clue (the wild animal, once prancing ready for attack has become a domesticized one playing the worldly dance). Because the narrative is presented mostly through the ironical eyes and mind of Don Fabrizio, the translator should maintain invariably the word “dance” to support the metaphorical and conceptual symmetry from the beginning till the end of the novel. Both the beginning of the novel and the end contain a parallelism between his dog, Bendico, and the heraldic Cheetah while the very last scene contains the symbolic allusion to the brief interchangeability between the dog and the emblematic feline.

         The symmetry of the plot is established by the two balls: the 1st one providing the entrance for Angelica (symbol of what is good about the revolutionary change: freshness, vitality, natural quality), the 2nd one a background for the exit of the Prince whose last dance with her — the aristocrat and the “shepherdess” (as he had called her before) —  is the emblem of the democratic class-levelling world to come.

         The physiognomic/anthropomorphic message about an earthly universe divided between predator-like and herbivorous-like humans is built on the mentioning of the following animals: cheetah, lion, dog, jackal, wolf, hiena, swine, rabbit, and sheep. It is paralleled by other references in the novel, and one amusing pun is lost in translations b. and d.: the Prince calls Garibaldi “un cornuto” — meaning both “horned” (like a goat) and “cuckold” as he simultaneously compares the revolutionary man with the god Vulcan and identifies him as only a puppet to more dangerous (i.e. predator) masters. The word was imported with one meaning into English (Webster, “cornuto”/cuckold <1598) and was translated with “cuckold” in b., and in French with its equivalent “cocu”– however the expression carrying the intended double meaning of herbivorous animal and masculine insult would be “a horned one”.

         The metaphorical self-identification of the Prince with the heraldic cheetah (the oldest and fastest feline) — a way of suggesting to the reader the arousal of terrified instincts of self-preservation that the suavely serene Prince actually feels in this quasi reverse-fable about the revolution — can be found in other several important scenes: his lowering himself to negotiate the mesalliance is likened to the proud feline’s being forced to eat, in disgust, a frog; he makes a quick coalition with Tancredi, for self-preservation, but is not interested to climb either in the favors of his Bourbon king or on the newly-offered social scale (adaptability, eating anything, climbing, are all abilities specific of a leopard, but not of a cheetah).

          In many books, the characters’ names are purposefully selected by the authors for their meaningfulness, to support the symbolic, psychological, and universalist value of the texts. In ““Il Gattopardo””, the Prince’s name Salina means salt-mine (a meaning also alluded to: “continueremo a crederci il sale della terra” /”we’ll continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth”) a symbolic essential mineral which also has a religious significance.

         The names of other characters in “Il Gattopardo” may be understood to be charged with symbolic relevance:

* Angelica, the angelically beautiful and socially elevated heroine — Her name invites a subtle parallelism between Angelica, the newly-enriched peasant girl and Angelina, the peasant girl and priest’s dishonored niece (who till recently had been on an equal footing with Angelica) and thus between the 2nd, rustic, matrimonial negotiation and the one just settled in the Prince’s palace; it is used, perhaps, to slighlty parodize the deal. (The parallelism of the girls’ names is actually pointed out through a Prince’s remark in the novel.)

* Father Pirrone, the priest < It. “pirone” (“’peg’, as in nail on the cross, or a fact/opinion used as a support/pretext”) — It may be viewed as an allusion to the stabilizing role that the Christian religion had played vis-a-vis the aristocratic power.

* Mayor Sedara, Angelica’s father < It. “sedare” (“to sooth”, “as a patch to a wound”) — His name is suggestive of how his fortune and influence are seen by the Prince and Tancredi.

Tancredi < (< Fr. Tancrede/Engl. Tancred, a historic hero of the 1st Crusade, his story bears resemblance to the novel’s plot; also the main character of plays by Tasso and Voltaire). By extrapolation, it can be noted that the Italian version of the name, Tancredi, consists of “tan-” (< It. “tano”/den, as in lion’s den) + “credi” (< It.”credere”/”believe”) which may suggest the Prince’s belief that the young man’s newly-acquired position will be a backup or refuge for his class.

Bendico (<perhaps It. Sicilian dialect “ben’dire” < “dico bene”/”I say well” — to laud to be grateful for)  — The dog’s name, too, supports the anthropomorphic role discussed in this analysis.

         Ultimately, the universalist value of the novel resides in the courage of its author to encrypt a personal political opinion (and bold prophecy) within the delicate construction of a story that attracts us, at 1st contact, only through its mesmerizing metaphors, its sensual pace and its philosophy of superior intellectual detachment.