Reweaving the Tapestry of Intertextuality. The Italian Translations of Keats's "When I Have Fears"

As Percy Bysshe Shelley pointed out in “A Defence of Poetry” (1821), all translations inevitably result in a loss. In particular, much is at stake in the case of poetry, insofar as meaning is tightly connected with form, and rhythmical and metrical patterns are predominant both as semantic and thematic choices. Besides, echoes and cross-references pose an even tougher challenge. Translating intertextuality is especially complex in the case of “culturally specific texts”. On the one hand, translating always moves from an individual hermeneutic process, and the translator should possess wide literary knowledge in order to detect the intertextual network that lies under the surface of the source text. On the other hand, cross-cultural barriers may hinder the reproducibility of this network within the receiving cultural context. To some extent, the translation of intertextuality may be conceived as a “translation of a translation” (Papagyriou). This paper intends to explore the (un)translatability of intertextuality by focussing on the Italian translations of John Keats’s (1795-1821) “When I Have Fears” (1818). In this sonnet it is possible to trace echoes and allusions, at once explicit and indirect, to Shakespeare’s poetical works, and in particular to his sonnet XII. The metrical, syntactical and semantic solutions adopted by different translators over a span of fifteen years will be analysed in an attempt to establish whether and to which extent intracultural and intertextual references may be effectively transferred to a different linguistic, literary and cultural context.