Oct. 7 – Giacomo Leopardi speaks English thanks to the release in the U.S. and England – after seven years of work – of the first translation of “Lo Zibaldone.” The work is the personal diary of the literary genius, collecting his notes, written between 1817 and 1832. To translate it, a team of critics and linguists was called into action, as it’s not only a translation, but a real English “edition” that includes critical and philological notes, indexes, and a long introduction. The team of professional British and American translators worked together under the supervision of Franco D’Intino, a professor of Italian and Contemporary Literature at the Sapienza, also director of the “Leopardi Centre,” active since 1998 at the University of Birmingham, and Michael Caesar (of the University of Birmingham), under the auspices of the National Center for Leopardi Studies. Born in Rome, D’Intino graduated from the Sapienza University and received his Ph.D. from the Roma Tre University. He has taught at the Universities of Amsterdam and Birmingham, then at the University of Perugia, and finally at the Sapienza (since 2006). He has written and published works and essays on: Pirandello, Italian literature in the 19th century, on the reception granted abroad to 20th century Italian literature (Garzanti, Milano 2001), Defoe, Richardson, Rousseau, Goethe, Alfieri, Sade, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Novalis. D’Intino is a member of the Scientific Committee of the “National Centre of Leopardi Studies” and co-director of a Marsilio book series on Leopardi. The professor is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the “International Journal for Leopardi’s Studies.” The Zibaldone project in English was based on thorough research concerning two crucial theoretical problems associated with the composition of the text: the use of quotes; and Zibaldone’s status within romantic and post-romantic aesthetics. The research work and the two conferences that followed (respectively at the former Faculty of Oriental Studies of the University of Rome and at the University of Birmingham) were carried out within the award-winning research by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. The final edition is published in the U.S. by Farrar Straus & Giroux, and in Britain by Penguin Books (with the subtitle “The notebooks of Giacomo Leopardi”) and was positively reviewed by major British and American newspapers. The official presentation took place in New York at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies of Columbia University.
