(toSkanews) – It was the novel that gave Philip Roth fame but, in a certain sense, even what persecuted him throughout his life, almost tightening him in a cage. Today, 56 years after the first edition and seven after Roth’s death, Portnoy’s Complaint returns with a new Italian translation that cancels the Lament and leave only Portnoy. We met Matteo Codignola who oversaw the new version for Adelphi.
“The illusion of having a virgin eye on these things is ridiculous – said the writer to askanews – but the book needed to be a little looked at as if nothing had happened, to be a little blunted by everything that inevitably had deposited over 60 years of life, a very intense life then. So the only way in my opinion was to try to pretend not to know him, to give him a guise, a form, which spoke today to today’s reader, not much more than this ».
Codignola is a brilliant intellectual and plays a little to hide, but his work, as well as to refresh Roth’s language, was also focused on returning his deepest dimension to the novel, that linked to the literary comedian. “Especially in Italy – added the translator – there is a kind of atavistic distrust of the comedian, the Italians have a strange relationship with what makes you laugh, which makes you laugh voluntarily, because then there is a voluntary comedian that is another one. So I tried to pull out what the book has, I didn’t invent it. “
Obviously many have wondered why to give up that Lament In the title, which for the Italian reader is an essential part of the same experience as the novel. “Roth had a complicated relationship in this book, not friendly let’s say -concluded Matteo Codignola -. He said there was something that irritated him in the Italian title, because he had translated the term with lament Complaintthat in English denotes is something judicial, both something psychiatric and something linked to the seventeenth -century lyric for a lost, unrequited and so on love. And then the term also has a meaning as in Italian, but it is accessory. So maybe leave the name only it seemed to me a sensible choice ».
Just as sensible is to continue reading Roth, for his dramatic strength, for his lucidity, for the awareness of the futile and the Shakeasperian depth of his heart as a writer. For all its contradictions, the same that make a character like Alexander Portnoy unforgettable. (Leonardo Merlini)
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