Monday 20 March, 6pm
Giovanni Pascoli’s Convivial Poems: an ancient language for the modern world.
Poetry reading with music.
Elena Borelli presents a complete poetic English translation of a masterpiece of European Modernist literature: Poemi Conviviali (1905), by Giovanni Pascoli, one of the most influential authors of late nineteenth-century Italy.
Giovanni Pascoli was one of the most famous poets of fin de siècle Italy. His works are inspired by French Symbolism and by Decadentism, as well as drawing on the classical tradition so alive in Italian culture.
Although better known in the English-speaking world for poetic collections such as Myricae and Canti di Castelvecchio, Poemi Conviviali represents one of Pascoli’s highest achievements. It can be rightfully compared to other Modernist works of the early twentieth century which revisit the classical world in order to make it a symbol for the condition of the modern man, such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Poemi Conviviali consists of twenty poems, each of them devoted to a classical figure, fictional or historical. Ulysses, Helen of Troy, and Alexander the Great, among others, are the protagonists of these stories, but they are also signifiers for themes such as desire and the quest for identity in the modern universe deprived of God. These exquisite sketches are written in a language that at times replicates the forms of Latin and Greek, thus encoding the past into the present and blending the old and the new in a typical Modernist style.
Marco Gambino will read selected poems from the English translation, published by Italica Press in June 2022. The reading will be accompanied by traditional and original tunes played by Elena at the Celtic harp.
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Elena Borelli holds a degree in Classics from the University of Bologna and a Ph.D. in Italian Literature from Rutgers University (USA). From 2012 to 2016 she was Assistant Professor of Italian Literature at the City University of New York (USA). Her research focuses on the literature and culture of Italy at the turn of the twentieth century, with a focus on Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D’Annunzio.
Currently, Elena teaches courses of Italian language and culture, and in Intercultural Studies, at King’s College London (UK), where she is Deputy Team Leader for Italian, Latin, and Linguistics at the Modern Language Centre.
Elena is a translator, working for journals such as Journal of Italian Translation and Reading in Translation. Together with James Ackhurst, she has published a complete translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s Poemi Conviviali, (Italica Pres, 2022), and translations from selected poems by Valentino Ronchi, Gabrizio Ferreri, and Gianluca D’Andrea. She is currently translating Pascoli’s Canti di Castelvecchio in collaboration with American poet Stephen Campiglio.
Among Elena’s interests are languages (she speaks French, English, Spanish, German, and Swedish), and music, as she plays the Celtic harp focusing on medieval and traditional music of the British Isles.
Marco Gambino is an Italian actor living in London who’s been working extensively in the Uk and abroad. His career spans from theatre to television and films.
Marco has appeared in some of the most popular Italian and British television series including Young Montalbano, Emmerdale, The Boss of the Bosses, Squadra antimafia, Romolo and Giuly.
Films include the International, Il Traditore and most recently Finalmente l’alba by Saverio Costanzo and Il Giudice T. by Pasquale Scimeca
Marco is also known for a number of monologues which he interprets in more than one language amongst which Words of Honour, Othello’s Guilt, Maria Callas the Black pearl.
His most recent radio work includes BBC radio productions: Pinocchio, Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage, Blood and Bronze.
For more information visit
www.marcogambino.com