Translation and concealment: the lost voice of Lucia Rodocanachi

Dunnett, Jane

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.4.2.37

Dunnett, Jane

Journal of Romance Studies (2004), 4, (2), 37–53.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.4.2.37
Language: English
Pages: 17

Abstract

This article discusses and documents the case of Lucia Rodocanachi, a hitherto neglected Italian intellectual who corresponded with some of the leading literary figures of her day. She also collaborated with several well-known writers – amongst whom were Eugenio Montale and Elio Vittorini – on the numerous literary translations which they were commissioned to prepare during the 1930s and early 1940s. Despite their repeated promises to credit her, they never publicly acknowledged Lucia Rodocanachi’s work; indeed, at the time, they insisted on absolute secrecy. To this day, the Italian versions of classic novels by authors such as D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner are still attributed to Montale and Vittorini alone. Although Lucia Rodocanachi’s involvement was finally revealed in 1981, a few years after her death, critics have often considered her contribution to be a minor one, assuming that she did no more than produce a ‘literal translation’ which was then reworked by the writers. This view is largely based on the evidence of a one-sided correspondence between Lucia Rodocanachi and her ‘translation-partners’: whilst the letters of Montale and Vittorini survive, all her letters to them have disappeared, making it difficult to assess fully the part which she played. Drawing on published as well unpublished letters written by Lucia Rodocanachi in the postwar period when she worked on and signed her own translations, the author argues that the tendency to minimize her role is due to the false dichotomy that persists between ‘literal’ and ‘free’ translation as well as to the gender stereotyping inherent in the writer/translator hierarchy.

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