by Domenico Starnone
translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
Lately, literary translators have been speaking up in the media about the need to have their work recognised, alongside that of the authors whose works they translate. The importance of the translator as the conveyor, in another language, of the original author’s thoughts, and the enormity of the creative effort involved in this exercise, is so obvious that it is surprising that there is any need to debate this matter at all. At the end of Europa Editions’ edition of Domenico Starnone’s Confidenza – “Trust” – its translator Jhumpa Lahiri provides an eye-opening afterword about her experience of the translation process, both with regard to this particular novel and more generally.
Lahiri’s relationship with Italian is interesting in itself. She was already an acclaimed writer in English – a Pulitzer winner, no less – when she moved to Rome in 2012. She has since written Dove mi trovo, her first novel in Italian, the language which she “has come to love most”, and translated another two Starnone novels – Ties and Trick – from Italian into English. The afterword reveals her alertness to the nuances of both languages and the choices she faced as a translator, including the central one – how to convey the novel’s title. Lahiri explains why she opted for Trust even though, as she admits, Confidenza has slightly different connotations – “the idea of a secret exchange, as opposed to the English sense of trust in one’s abilities, or certitude”.
Indeed, a “secret exchange” lies at the heart of this novel. From the very first pages we are immediately plunged into the narrative - Pietro Vella, the novel’s protagonist, embarks on a tempestuous affair with a bright and ebullient ex-student of his, Teresa Quadraro. Their love blows hot and cold, and in a strange bid to place their relationship on a more solid ground, Pietro and Teresa exchange each other’s worst secret. Such a shameful confidenza can only bind them closer together. Or so they think – only to break up a couple of days later.
This secret exchange is a McGuffin and – with apologies if this counts a spoiler of sorts – just don’t read this novel if your only incentive is a prurient curiosity or the expectation of a ground-shattering revelation. The confidenza of the title however serves as the link between Pietro and Teresa over both their lifetimes (and throughout the novel), surviving Pietro’s marriage with Nadia and his unlikely success as an author and intellectual.
I enjoyed this novel, even though it left me conflicted about its ultimate quality. Narratives which consist of a retrospective account of the protagonists’ lives are hardly new on the scene and seem to be particularly favoured by Italian novelists and filmmakers (I made the same comment in relation to Sandro Veronesi’s Il Colibrì). Moreover, Pietro’s story is often a relatively unexciting, humdrum one and this mundaneness sometimes rubs onto the novel itself. What struck me favourably, on the other hand, were Starnone’s psychological insights into an unusual relationship in which, from the very start, fear, power and control are as central as love, admiration and physical attraction. This concept is expressed obliquely through the (three) different narrative voices – whose identity I will not reveal, there is a limit to the spoilers I dare include in a review!
Lahiri
ends her afterword with a song of praise to Starnone: It is my engagement
with Starnone’s texts over the past six years that has rendered me,
definitively, a translator, and this novel activity in my creative life has
rendered clear the inherent instability not only of language but of life, which
is why, in undertaking the task of choosing English words to take the place of
his Italian ones, I am ever thankful and forever changed. In the view of this reader, it is a task
brilliantly accomplished.
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