Reviewed by Gaetano Cipolla

Why translate Shakespeare into Sicilian? Why go to all the trouble and difficulty to lend Shakespeare a Sicilian voice? These questions may appear to be provocative and, in fact, they are. Would anyone think it strange if someone translated Shakespeare into French, as indeed many people have, or Spanish Russian or even Japanese, all languages that boast at least one translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets? Translating them into Sicilian, however, might strike some people as a useless exercise, a vain, self-pleasing effort for the translator. Their reasoning, of course, has to do with the fact that Sicilian is spoken only by a relatively small number of people. This limits the number of possible readers for the translation. There is also another and perhaps even more pernicious reason. Many people still consider Sicilian a dialect, not a language. Since a dialect is generally seen as a substandard medium, a corrupted form of a standard language—in this case, Italian—it is not deemed capable of expressing the whole gamut of emotions and complex ideas that a fully developed language such as English or Italian can. Dialects are good for many things, but translating Shakespeare into them is probably not one of them. I certainly agree with that. I can’t see anyone translating him into Brooklynese, for example, or Spanglish. Sicilian, however, is not a dialect and that is where the difference lies.

 Renzo Porcelli’s translation is important not only for the intrinsic value of such an enormous and challenging project, but also for the fact that it provides an additional proof, for those who still required it, that Sicilian is a fully developed language, capable of expressing every complex idea and nuance from another mature language such as English. This was no easy task for Porcelli. Shakespeare’s language and manner of expressing his ideas certainly would be a test for anyone who wanted to attempt what Jakobson called an intra-language translation, that is, a translation into English prose, for example, or modern English verse. Porcelli’s translation is even more remarkable because he does not know English that well. He relied on several Italian translations of the sonnets to distill what professional translators call the “kernel” idea contained in Shakespeare’s texts and rendered them into Sicilian with a faithfulness that is remarkable even though he does not aim for a word for word correspondence, which would have been doomed him to failure, nor does he attempt to follow Shakespeare in his abstract and sometimes unfathomable conceits. Porcelli simplifies, cutting to the core of the meaning of the lines and often succeeds in matching Shakespeare’s lines with equally memorable Sicilian lines. Let’s look at some of Shakespeare’s most memorable lines from the sonnets and see how Porcelli has rendered them. Let’s begin with the famous sonnet 71:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this wild world with wildest worms

                 to dwell

Quannu i cianciani di la cresia sonanu

a mortu, è signu chi lassai stu munnu

pi passari lu tempu cu li vermi.

Allura tu nun chianciri, ti pregu.

Or sonnet 130, a famous parody of the Petrarchan poetry that his colleagues imitated:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red

If snow be white, why then her breasts are

                 dun

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her

                 head.

L’occhi d’â bedda mia nun sunnu u suli,

lu russu di so labbra ’un è curaddu,

la nivi è bianca e griciu è lu so pettu

e i so’ capiddi sunnu crinu nivuru.

Shakespeare put great emphasis on the concluding couplets of his sonnets to leave the reader with a memorable conceit. Let us take for example the concluding couplet of sonnet 130 which makes the point that even if his woman is not like the Petrarchan model, she is still remarkable and dear to him:

And yet, by heav’n I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

E puru è cosa rara la me fimmina,

quantu chidda chi scanza ogni cuntisa.

The famous Sonnet 18 which begins with “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?,” which became “Paraggiu a un jornu d’astati ti fazzu?” ends with the following couplet:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see

So long lives this, and this gives life to

                 thee.

Si l’omu ci havi l’occhi, e lu respiru,

si campa a me palora arresti vivu.

Porcelli, like all translators, faced with the difficulty of the original, smoothes over the difficulties and makes the reading more pleasurable and accessible. A present-day reader will have fewer problems reading Porcelli’s version than he would reading Shakespeare’s, presuming, of course, that he understands Sicilian. Porcelli’s text, as a consequence of his having had to opt for a univocal interpretation, is less vague, less open to other possible meanings.

I don’t share the view that a translator is of necessity a betrayer (you know the old saying “traduttore=traditore”).The impossibility of achieving a perfect correspondence between the original text and its translation, makes the act of translating like that of riding a seesaw. Sometimes the translator pushes a bit harder and overshoots the target; sometimes his line falls somewhat short of the mark. A good translator is one who seeks to maintain his version on an even keel, without overshooting or under- shooting the line of the original. In this case, I think Porcelli has done an admirable job of maintaining his version as close to the original meaning as possible, while removing the difficulties of the original at the same time. It is quite a balancing act. I think you will enjoy the results.

Reviewed by Mario Gallo

“Stamu n spiranza ca veni dumani.” This is one of the examples to be translated into English in Introduction to Sicilian Grammar, by J.K. Kirk Bonner, edited by G. Cipolla for Arba Sicula in New York. This is not the first Sicilian grammar, but this much is certain: it is the first complete Sicilian grammar in English.

The interesting thing is that the author is an American scholar whose background is not Sicilian. From the study of Italian he went to study Sicilian and was so fascinated by it that he wanted to share his knowledge by writing a grammar enabling English-speakers, and why not, Sicilians too, to learn to speak it correctly.

It’s a serious work, fruit of detailed, passionate and documented reasearch, using rigorous scientific tools having as point of reference the study of Sicilian history and literature.

It is also, as Gaetano Cipolla pointed out, the first serious attempt to treat the various different forms of Sicilian as expressions of the same common language. This work, he added, is an invitation to Sicilians and Sicilian- Americans not to let the language of their forefathers disappear.

This is a concern that we share, convinced as we are that the Federalism that everyone talks about these days should find its primary application in the field of language: to know and to speak the common language, that is, the national language, but not to put down or worse to despise the local idiom. People should learn, teach and maintain for future generations the language that distingues them and gives them their identity, without bothering to go back to the Celts or some other fantastic progenitors.

“In Sicily,” says the author, “Italian is the language heard in schools, on tv; it’s the language Sicilians use when they write novels and shortstories; Italian is the language used in newspapers and Italian will eventually take the place of Sicilian, unless a concerted effort is made to keep it a living language.”

Reviewed by Joseph Trapani

Dr. Joseph Privitera, son of an orphaned illiterate Sicilian shepherd and a Sicilian mother, was born in East Harlem in New York City in 1914. He started life in a railroad flat that had no electricity, heat, hot water or toilet. In those days, East Harlem, like the Little Italy that flourished in downtown Manhattan around Mulberry Street, was a Mecca for Sicilian and other southern Italian emigrants. I don’t know of any accomplished scholar who had a more inauspicious start in life than Dr. Privitera. But Joey (as he refers to himself in the book) was a determined and smart kid with loving and hard working parents, so he eventually earned a Ph.D. degree and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He went on to become a university professor teaching French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at New York University and St. Louis University and later enjoyed a 31-year career with the US State Department where he headed The Voice of America‘s Italian broadcasts. He wrote some 15 books, including San Fratellan, the Mystery of the Sicilian Dialect, written with his wife, Bettina, Basic Sicilian, the first Sicilian grammar to be published since 1875, a two-volume English translation of Luigi Pirandello’s plays in Sicilian, and the just completed Canti Siciliani, a collection of original poems in Sicilian, with English translations.

Even though Dr. Privitera is into his late eighties, he writes with a passion about things Sicilian. The Sicilians covers a lot of ground in its 175 pages. The first half of the book covers Dr. Privitera’s early life in East Harlem. Since I grew up in that neighborhood a generation or so later and heard similar stories from my parents, I know that Dr. Privitera’s descriptions are right on. With humor and flair, he vividly describes what it was like in those days. His colorful descriptions include family meals, wine making, weddings, funerals, religion, street festivals, stickball, swimming in the polluted East River and colorful childhood friends. His description of his family life is especially telling. He describes how his father was the “boss” of the family, but how his mother also earned money, ran the household and handled all the family finances. My father was the same titular boss of my family. My father’s title meant only that he was served first at family meals. In all other respects, my mother ran things. Dr. Privitera writes with a Sicilian soul not only because he had Sicilian parents, but also because he was born and raised on 107th Street, where, in those days, Sicilian was the language of the home, the shops and the street. Where would we get such insights on the early life of Sicilian emigrants if not from first-hand accounts in books like The Sicilians? How many old timers are left to tell their stories? Unfortunately, most second and third-generation Sicilian-Americans learn only the distorted Hollywood version of what life was like for their parents or grandparents who, with nothing, scratched out a better life for themselves and their families.

In the second half of The Sicilians, Dr. Privitera takes the reader on a fascinating historical and cultural journey to Sicily. He artfully relates the essential historical facts and concentrates on Sicilian culture. He covers topics as diverse as Sicilian music, painting, the Puppet Theater, and the Arab influence on Sicilian cuisine. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of Luigi Pirandello. Dr. Privitera wisely followed his uncle Don Peppino’s suggestion that, “If you want to understand Sicily and its people, read every word that Pirandello has written.” His excerpts from Pirandello’s The Vise are not only moving and entertaining, but serve to illuminate the Sicilian character. The second half of the book also illustrates Dr. Privitera’s passion about the Sicilian language. He laments about what I learned first hand last year on my trip to Sicily—that most young Sicilians, especially educated ones, speak only Italian, even in family settings. He doesn’t mince words. He states that “since, for two millennia, without remission, it has been invaded, pillaged, beaten, massacred, raped, overtaxed, kept in ignorance, uneducated and illiterate…Sicily suffers from a mammoth inferiority complex”. He then goes so far as to chastize Sicilians for abandoning their language and of being “unaware that a language reflects the thought, psychology and mores of its people. Sicilians have conspired with their detractors to ignore it [the Sicilian language] and finally to have it disappear without a satisfactory record.” Strong stuff, but how, with the indubitable decline of the Sicilian language, can one fault him for his ardor?

Dr. Privitera’s passion about the language turns poetic when he discusses Sicilian poets. His discussion is peppered with excerpts and English translations from beautiful Sicilian poems. The anonymous Sicilian love song, Canzuni D’Amuri, is a bitter-sweet lyric love poem that dates back to 1200. He translates an amusing 17th century love dialogue between a man and woman. And he includes the passionate and moving Cantu D’amuri Sicilianu, (Sicilian Love Chant) which is one of his very own. All of these illustrate how beautifully expressive the Sicilian language is.

The Sicilians is highly readable and erudite work by a knowledgeable and gifted Sicilian scholar.

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