A quest for vision. Giorgio Manganelli’s translations of Yeats. 1949-1984

"Il traduttore è l’unico autentico lettore di un testo"; if this affirmation by Gesualdo Bufalino holds some truth in itself, then it has to be maintained that Giorgio Manganelli was an extremely competent reader of Yeats, having presented one translation and various essays on Yeats and Irish poetry to the Italian public in the span of forty years. In this essay, I will analyse the only published translation out of those commissioned by the Italian publishing house Guanda to Manganelli in the mid 1940s. A rendition of Sailing to Byzantium, it is contained in one of the aforementioned essays, I simboli assediavano Yeats («La fiera letteraria», March 6th, 1949). Such analysis will be the stepping stone to outline a general framework of Yeats’s reception in post-war Italy through the work of Manganelli. Therefore, while providing a systematization of Manganelli’s work on Yeats, I will sketch out a sample survey of the possible influences these translations had on Italian post-war poetry; chronologically speaking, I will be dealing with post World War II Italy – the period immediately following the «fascist phase» of Yeats’s reception in Italy.