VITTORIO SERENI TRADUTTORE DI EZRA POUND

My dissertation focuses on Vittorio Sereni\u2019s translations of eight poems from Pound\u2019s "Lustra", and investigates the influence that these translations exercised on Sereni\u2019s own poetry. The first chapter outlines the context in which the translations were conceived. I detail the main inputs through which Sereni approached Pound\u2019s poems in the early 1950\u2019s: Luciano Anceschi and the group of young poets \u2014 later organized in the Neo-Avant-Gardist \u201c63 Group\u201d \u2014 who considered Pound as a master; the praise for Pound that T.S. Eliot had stated on several occasions; and the \u201cPound case\u201d, which stimulated political and poetical discussions among Italian intellectuals after his arrest, extradition and internment. In this context, Sereni translated some poems from Lustra at the insistence of Pound\u2019s main Italian publisher, Vanni Scheiwiller. The second chapter concerns the critical edition and a commentary of Sereni\u2019s translations. In this section I collate the manuscripts, drafts and editions curated by Sereni and I record the author\u2019s variants, which show the creative process preceding the final text. An overall interpretation of each poem is followed by a detailed analysis of Sereni\u2019s stylistic choices and his translational attitude, which fluctuates between the assimilation and rejection of Pound\u2019s technique. The last chapter reveals how the translations of Pound\u2019s poems inspired Sereni\u2019s own poetry. While searching for a renewed poetic language, Sereni was deeply intrigued by Pound\u2019s poems because of their original aesthetic paradigm. I identify several textual elements which show Pound\u2019s influence on the poems that Sereni wrote immediately after his translations \u2014 such as the combination of different languages, the extension of the verses\u2019 measure, the assimilation of rhetorical devices as the iteration, and also, according to Pound\u2019s aesthetics habit, the insertion of literary references. These stylistic features are not present in Sereni\u2019s writings which precede Pound\u2019s translations, and they characterize Sereni\u2019s third book, "Gli strumenti umani" (1965). In conclusion, my research reveals the contribution that the translations from Pound\u2019s early poems gave to the poetical development of Vittorio Sereni, and it represents a significant case study of the impact that Anglo-American modernist poetry had on the Italian post-hermetic poetic progress