Arsenio by Eugenio Montale. La traduzione di Mario Praz (1928)

We propose here the text and the commentary of the historic translation made by Mario Praz of Arsenio, a poem of the Cuttlefish Bones added in the second edition of 1928 (Ribet). The translation was published in the review «The Criterion» by T. S. Eliot in June of that year; his stylistic and structural features are the re-sult of the translator’s choice, which realize an independent poem and at the same time a particular inter-pretation of Montale’s one; the commentary sets itself the task of illustrating the points of contact, but even more to highlight those of difference, between the speech of Montale and the choices of Praz, who adopts the iambic pentameter of the English tradition and so is driven to translate anew also the expressive code of the Genua’s poet into an anglophone perspective