known as Doctor, whether or not he has a university degree. And Ingravallo, being a southerner, is known not only as Doctor Ingravallo but also as Don Ciccio.
When it originally appeared in Letteratura, this novel was enriched by many long and discursive footnotes which Gadda removed when Il pasticciaccio came out in book form. For the benefit of non-Italian readers, the translator has added a certain number of footnotes of his own to this English version. Il pasticciaccio takes place under the stifling years of Fascism, so that there are many references, direct and indirect, to the personages, the ukases, the slogans and customs of the regime, references which even to the Italian reader (especially if he is under thirty) are obscure.
A word on the special problems of this translation. The question of rendering dialect in another language is a particularly tormented one. Several years ago an American poet made a brave, but disastrous attempt to re-create the Roman-dialect sonnets of the great Gioacchino Belli in Brooklynese. The result was ingenious, but wholly lacking in the wit and elegance of the original. To translate Gadda's Roman or Venetian into the language of Mississippi or the Aran Islands would be as absurd as translating the language of Faulkner's Snopses into Sicilian or Welsh. So the English-speaking reader is therefore asked to imagine the speech of Gadda's characters, translated here into straightforward spoken English, as taking place in dialect, or in a mixture of dialects. Other aspects of Gadda's language were easier to transpose, but in a few cases, where untranslatable puns underlie a passage, the translator has inserted an explanatory footnote.
The present translation was made from the seventh Garzanti edition of the novel (October 1962), which contains a few variants on earlier editions, variants made by the author, of course. The translator wishes to express his thanks to the author, for help and encouragement, to his friend Ariodante Marianni, who explained a number of Roman terms and customs, and to the critic and Gadda scholar Giancarlo Roscioni, who read the translation in manuscript and generously furnished innumerable elucidations and suggestions. Of course, the translator himself assumes full responsibility for the final result and, especially, for the general approach to the daunting, but infinitely rewarding task.
WILLIAM WEAVER
Rome, January 15, 1965
THAT AWFUL MESS ON THE VIA MERULANA
I
EVERYBODY called him Don Ciccio by now. He was Officer Francesco Ingravallo, assigned to homicide; one of the youngest and, God knows why, most envied officials of the detective section: ubiquitous as the occasion required, omnipresent in all tenebrous matters. Of medium height, rather rotund as to physique, or perhaps a bit squat, with black hair, thick and curly, which sprang forth from his forehead at the halfway point, as if to shelter his two metaphysical knobs from the fine Italian sun, he had a somnolent look, a heavy, lumbering walk, a slightly dull manner, like a person fighting a laborious digestion; dressed as well as his slender government salary allowed him to dress, with one or two little stains of olive oil on his lapel, almost imperceptible however, like a souvenir of the hills of his Molise. A certain familiarity with the ways of the world, with our so-called "Latin" world, though he was young (thirty-five), must have been his: a certain knowledge of men: and also of women. His landlady venerated, not to say worshiped him: for and notwithstanding the unfamiliar complication of every telephone trill and every sudden telegram, and night calls, and hours with no peace, which formed the tangled texture of his time. "All hours! He works around the clock! Last night he came home at daybreak!" For her he was the "distinguished, single gentleman, government employee" she had long dreamed of, the gentleman preceded by a discreet "to let" in Il Messaggero, evoked,
When it originally appeared in Letteratura, this novel was enriched by many long and discursive footnotes which Gadda removed when Il pasticciaccio came out in book form. For the benefit of non-Italian readers, the translator has added a certain number of footnotes of his own to this English version. Il pasticciaccio takes place under the stifling years of Fascism, so that there are many references, direct and indirect, to the personages, the ukases, the slogans and customs of the regime, references which even to the Italian reader (especially if he is under thirty) are obscure.
A word on the special problems of this translation. The question of rendering dialect in another language is a particularly tormented one. Several years ago an American poet made a brave, but disastrous attempt to re-create the Roman-dialect sonnets of the great Gioacchino Belli in Brooklynese. The result was ingenious, but wholly lacking in the wit and elegance of the original. To translate Gadda's Roman or Venetian into the language of Mississippi or the Aran Islands would be as absurd as translating the language of Faulkner's Snopses into Sicilian or Welsh. So the English-speaking reader is therefore asked to imagine the speech of Gadda's characters, translated here into straightforward spoken English, as taking place in dialect, or in a mixture of dialects. Other aspects of Gadda's language were easier to transpose, but in a few cases, where untranslatable puns underlie a passage, the translator has inserted an explanatory footnote.
The present translation was made from the seventh Garzanti edition of the novel (October 1962), which contains a few variants on earlier editions, variants made by the author, of course. The translator wishes to express his thanks to the author, for help and encouragement, to his friend Ariodante Marianni, who explained a number of Roman terms and customs, and to the critic and Gadda scholar Giancarlo Roscioni, who read the translation in manuscript and generously furnished innumerable elucidations and suggestions. Of course, the translator himself assumes full responsibility for the final result and, especially, for the general approach to the daunting, but infinitely rewarding task.
WILLIAM WEAVER
Rome, January 15, 1965
THAT AWFUL MESS ON THE VIA MERULANA
I
EVERYBODY called him Don Ciccio by now. He was Officer Francesco Ingravallo, assigned to homicide; one of the youngest and, God knows why, most envied officials of the detective section: ubiquitous as the occasion required, omnipresent in all tenebrous matters. Of medium height, rather rotund as to physique, or perhaps a bit squat, with black hair, thick and curly, which sprang forth from his forehead at the halfway point, as if to shelter his two metaphysical knobs from the fine Italian sun, he had a somnolent look, a heavy, lumbering walk, a slightly dull manner, like a person fighting a laborious digestion; dressed as well as his slender government salary allowed him to dress, with one or two little stains of olive oil on his lapel, almost imperceptible however, like a souvenir of the hills of his Molise. A certain familiarity with the ways of the world, with our so-called "Latin" world, though he was young (thirty-five), must have been his: a certain knowledge of men: and also of women. His landlady venerated, not to say worshiped him: for and notwithstanding the unfamiliar complication of every telephone trill and every sudden telegram, and night calls, and hours with no peace, which formed the tangled texture of his time. "All hours! He works around the clock! Last night he came home at daybreak!" For her he was the "distinguished, single gentleman, government employee" she had long dreamed of, the gentleman preceded by a discreet "to let" in Il Messaggero, evoked,
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