Swans Commentary » swans.com November 15, 2010  

 


 

Comparison
 

 

by Fabio De Propris

 

Poetry

 

English translation: Peter Byrne

 

 

(Swans - November 15, 2010)  

Vorrà pure dire qualcosa, no?
che il Mosé del grande
Michelangelo Buonarroti non
proferisca verbo, mentre
il burattino di Mastro
Geppetto (un artigiano, un praticone)
non solo parla, ma cammina,
pensa e addirittura,
come un uomo, sbaglia.*

          ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Can it mean nothing
that great Michelangelo
could not make his Moses speak
while Pinocchio,
plain Geppetto's handiwork,
not only speaks, thinks, strides
but puts a foot wrong,
like any one of us? *

 

* There is a legend about Michelangelo Buonarroti's statue of Moses in the Roman church of St. Peter's in Chains. When the artist finished it in 1515, he was angered by his work. A figure so full of life ought not to remain silent. He struck its knee with a hammer, shouting, "Why don't you speak?" This was the same statue that Sigmund Freud studied four centuries later.

 

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About the Author

Fabio De Propris is a Roman writer who has also lived in Istanbul. He has published three novels (Brenda e Plotino, Se mi chiami Amore, Nero Istanbul) and translated books from English (Markheim of R. L. Stevenson, Paradoxes and Problems of John Donne, An Anthology of William Hazlitt's Essays) and from Turkish (Two Girls of Perihan Magden, translated with Mehmet S. Bermek, The Clown and His Daughter of Halide Edip Adivar.) Fabio teaches in Rome and writes occasionally in Il Manifesto. He is presently at work on his fourth novel. His poems appear in the paintings of the group Artisti di Fortebraccio.   (back)

 

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Internal Resources

Poetry

Patterns which Connect

Europe

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Swans -- ISSN: 1554-4915
URL for this work: http://www.swans.com/library/art16/fabiop09.html
Published November 15, 2010



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