A Translator's View of Gadda's Language: The 'Pasticciaccio'

This artdcle is dedicated to the memory of Bob Dombroski main reason is translation.Aside from a few short pieces buried in the QUADERNI d'italianistica.Volume XXIII, No, 1, 20(12, 133 Robert de Lucca back issues of reviews, only two of Gadda's works have appeared in English: That Au^ful Mess on Via Merulana, William Weaver's 1965 version OÏ Querpasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (which appeared in Italy in 1957), and, in 1968, Acquainted with Grief (Weaver's tide for the 1963 L^cognit^ione del dolore).Leaving aside other considerations concerning the English reception of Gadda's work, my claim, shared by many other Gadda schol- ars, is that Weaver's version of the Pasticciaccio is inadequate.This study demonstrates some aspects of his version and compares it with my own translation and that of the French version, which appeared in 1963.I also attempt to explain some features of Gadda's writing which might appear to defy adequate translation.1.General observations The most easily observable, and probably the most easily describable, trait of the Pasticciaccio (but also of most ofGadda's writing) is its lexical richness and variety.Such variet}^in the Pasticciaccio is favored by a double foundation of Roman dialect (though there are present in lesser measure napoletano, molisano, abruzzese, milanese or lombardo, veneziano and others, not to mention a heav}' presence of foreign borrowings) and an ItaUan which is elevated, or literary, or to put it more precisely, scholasdc, meaning heav}' with elements G. Contini calls "di una cultura nobilmente liceale" (83)an Italian which, in general, raises the register of Gadda's prose far from the lingua d'uso.So the page in the Pasticciaccio gathers together dialectal words (of many regions), and pan-ItaHan words, the latter coming from extremely dissimilar phases, varieties and applications of Italian, such as trecento terms and contemporary terms; formal, colloquial and trivial Italian; or the sectorial: the scientific, bureaucratic, or technical.In other words a kalei- doscope of varieties which one can attempt to classify with the diasys- tematic information of the kind often given in dictionaries, when they indicate whether or not a word or expression belongs to the unmarked standard "core" of the language that can be used at all times and places.^Diachrony Gadda pays particular attention to diachronic variet}^("Vita storica del vocabolo e del modo espressivo.Impossibilità di astrarre da un riferimen- to storico della lingua parlata e scritta", 3: 492): to the historical development of language, including outdated or former lexical, orthographical, syntactical or grammatical forms.In the Pasticciaccio, diachronic variety usu- ally takes on the form of archaic terms {sitire, cemeteriale, redimito, parvolo, -134 -A Translator's View of Gadda's Language: The Tasticciacoo' aulire, etc.), but also outdated svntactical-grammatical constructions (nel di lei ani/m, laniando capra, resosi defunto, etc.).Geographical variety "I dialetti.Il diritto di alcuni modi più ricchi, o più vigorosi, de' dialetti stessi... a entrare nell'elenco dei padri e coscritti.Dò palla bianca ai meteci e inserisco in una mia prosa il ligure galuppare (per sciroppare, francese bouffer) e il romanesco gargarozzo.",Gadda writes in his essay "Lingua letteraria e lingua d'uso" (3: 492).Linguistic conditions determined by space, or geography {diatopic variation) are notoriously exploited by the author; these include dialects (linguistic systems tied to a specific region, without "officially" standard orthographical or grammatical rules) and col- loquialisms linked to place (such as in the case of laborers who, at eight in the morning, son già dietro da tre ore a sudare, Italianized form of a Northern dialect expression corresponding to the progressive).Roman dialect, together with elevated or scholastic Italian, makes up the "background" texture of the Pasticciaccio: not only in the speech of the "collettività fabulante", but in the narrative sections and in the many-layered polyphony of free indirect discourse.The contribution of G. G. Belli, "uno dei più gran- di ed autentici 'poeti' del nostro Ottocento, e di tutti i nostri secoli in genere" (4: 1 145), is evident in such words as haccajà, paino, fojetta and so on.

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