Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 40: August 2000

Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 40: August 2000

Kierkegaard in the Italian Language

by Ettore Rocca

In this short essay I will offer a history and assessment of the translations of Kierkegaard’s works into Italian. Not surprisingly, this history also reveals a great deal about Kierkegaard’s reception in Italy.

Judged in terms of sheer quantity, Italian translations of Kierkegaard are impressive. Indeed, almost all of Kierkegaard writings have been rendered into Italian. Some works have been translated several times.[i] And Cornelio Fabro's edition of the Journals is as comprehensive as any edition save that of the Hongs. Unfortunately, however, the quality of Italian translations is not as impressive as the quantity.

Up until quite recently, most translations of Kierkegaard’s works were translations of selections from one or another book. Worse yet, these renditions were often drawn from French, German, or English translations of Kierkegaard’s writings. Even today, while a complete translation does exist of Either-Or, it is possible to purchase a volume entitled Aut-Aut in which only Equilibrium between the Esthetic and the Ethical in the Development of the Personality is translated and without any indication that this is a pseudonymous writing. For another example, when I decided to translate The Lily in the Field, I discovered that there were already three translations of this work, two of which dated from 1945. To my great surprise I then found that these three works were translations not of The Lily in the Field but rather of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. No one had noticed this before. And I continue to run into important Italian scholars who ask me: “Wasn’t The Lily in the Field already translated in 1945?” This, however, is not to say that all Italian translations of Kierkegaard’s works are of poor quality. Take, for example, the philological meticulousness of Alessandro Cortese’s translation of and commentary on Either-Or, or the translation and critical edition of Repetition by Dario Borso.

As regards chronology, the first Italian translations appeared in the early 1900's. From 1907 to 1912 the following were translated: The Unhappiest One (the very first work to be translated), Diapsalmata, The Seducer’s Diary, The Esthetic Validity of Marriage, The Immediate Erotic Stages or the Musical Erotic, In Vino Veritas. Once again, all of these early translations were published without a hint that they were pseudonymous works. As a result, the first impression that Italy gleaned of Kierkegaard was that of an aesthete. The first translation made of an entire work was, curiously enough, the collection of Øieblikket. Translated from the German, this book appeared in 1931 with the subtitle “Charges against Christianity in the Kingdom of Denmark.”

At first glance the publication of Øieblikket might have been interpreted as an attack on Protestantism; however, the translation came forth from the inner circle of Italian Protestantism. It is important to remember that 1931 marked the middle of the fascist period in Italy. Furthermore, it was in 1929 that the Lateran Pact was signed allowing Italian Catholics to once again participate in politics. Thus, publishing a book which pointed an accusing finger at collusion between Church and state could easily have been interpreted as a gesture of oppostion to fascism and the Catholic Church. Incidentally Walter Lowrie, who was the rector of St. Paul’s American Church in Rome from 1907 to 1930, played a part in Kierkegaard’s reception in Italy. While he had nothing to do with Italian translations, Lowrie wrote an article in 1935 for the Italian magazine Religio in which he suggested that Kierkegaard was a potentially important source for reinvigorating Catholicism. Later, during the Second World War, the first two editions of The Concept of Anxiety appeared. The first of these was published in 1940; it was incomplete and had been translated from German. The second edition appeared in 1942.

In 1948 Cornelio Fabro’s impressive work of translation got under way with the publication of over 1500 pages of from Kierkegaard's journals. At that time, this was the widest selection of the Papirer A to appear in any foreign language. Fabro accompanied his translation with a series of exegetical writings aimed at including Kierkegaard in the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition. In this way, Fabro sought to bring Kierkegaard closer to Catholic culture – one might say, almost to lay claim to him. Kierkegaard’s own pietism made it easy for Fabro to connect Kierkegaard and Catholicism , for according to Fabro, pietism was a surrogate form of Catholicism.[ii] Fabro failed, however, to win Catholic culture over to Kierkegaard. In 1952, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, included a review of the diaries which pressed the question, Is it "worthwhile for a philosopher like Father Fabro to spend so much time and effort on a non-Catholic thinker, one who has been called the father of existentialism, which some consider to be a pseudo-philosophy, which others consider to be irrationalism with negative foundations, and which Christian and Catholic theologians and philosophers view as the liquidation of essentialism and therefore anti-metaphysical, to the extent that it has earned an explicit reproach in the recent Enciclical Humani Generis”. According to L’Osservatore Romano, Kierkegaard did not recognize the Church, denied the sacraments and distorted dogma.4

Italian existentialist and phenomenologists such as Enzo Paci, Remo Cantoni, Nicola Abbagnano gave Kierkegaard a much warmer reception than the Vatican. Paci had Kierkegaard in mind when he founded the philosophical review Aut Aut which remains the most widely read philosophical periodical in Italy today. Still, no new translations emanated from the camps of existentialism and phenomenology. After a period of stagnation in the 60's, which coincided with what, by now, was Cornelio Fabro’s monopoly on Kierkegaard studies, the pace of translations resumed in the 70's with Alessandro Cortese’s translation of Either/Or . And in the last decade of the century, Dario Borso translated The Concept of Irony, Prefaces, A Literary Review, and Upbuilding Discourses of 1843. None of these writings had hitherto been translated into Italian.

This new wave of translations has not, however, been accompanied by a similar effort at the critical level, even though there are clear signs that Italian culture is almost in need of Kierkegaard. Let us take for example a long review of The Lily in the Field, which recently appeared in L’Osservatore Romano: “In moments of intense reflection, when each of us feels how flimsy are all the artifices supporting the illusion of existence, it is then that we feel the pangs of nostalgia for truth, for wisdom, for words of authenticity. It is then, perhaps, that we seek out the company of the classics, of masters of the spirit who point out the arduous paths of virtue and the ideals of an authentic life.”5 The reviewer recommends that readers should take The Lily in the Field along with them on vacation and “meditate on it intensely”. Wide excerpts of The Lily in the Field were also read over Vatican Radio. It is clear that we have progressed beyond the wholesale rejection or annexation that marked Kierkegaard’s reception in Italy after World War II.

But it isn’t only the Catholic reception of Kierkegaard that has changed. Secular thinkers are now beginning to ponder Kierkegaard's more overtly religious writings. The Lily in the Field was the first collection of religious writings published by a non-confessional publishing house. One of Italy’s most important writers and scholars, Claudio Magris, recently called The Lily in the Field the most important book to appear in 1998. Magris concluded his review with the following words: “Perhaps today, even more so than 150 years ago, faith may be able to liberate the human being, restore strength, and pleasure to him and teach him not to worry about tomorrow”.6

After the hegemony of neo-idealism, the Marxism of the nineteen sixties and seventies, and the supremacy of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein during the eighties and nineties, a genuine interest in Kierkegaard has begun to arise in Italy. I believe that this new and vibrant interest in Kierkegaard has taken form because Kierkegaard more than anyone else has given expression to the most pressing need of the present age-- the need for faith. Perhaps Kierkegaard’s maieutic function is only now beginning.