Italian writer and translator Fernanda Pivano, better known among her friends as Nanda, died the other day.
Fernanda was an icon for many generations of Italians: she discovered the Beat writers, promoted their work and translated many of their books into Italian.
Nanda didn't write about fashion, but about culture and literature, and I want to pay her a tribute on this blog with a post that contains some of the stories she once told me when I visited her in Milan, in her flat full of books, papers and documents.
Born in 1917 in Genoa, Fernanda Pivano soon understood the limitations and restrictions imposed by Fascism.
“When I was a young girl, I lived in a fascist country where you couldn’t publish anything,” Nanda explained me when I first met her. “My grandfather was British, actually he was Scottish, and was the founder of the Berlitz School. He came to Italy to introduce the school in the country. I was educated in a Swiss school, following rules that were at the time very different from those supported by Fascism. The first democratic ideas I heard came from America: at the time Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and he was very fascinating for us. Through the underground Italian anti-fascist movement I read his 1941 'Four Freedoms' address to the Congress in which he mentioned as the fourth freedom, the freedom from fear. This liberty was very important for us because we lived in a regime that spread fear and we lived with the fear of being arrested at any time. Roosevelt talked about freedom and for us, for the people who were then fighting against fascism, he truly embodied the American dream.”
Nanda started her career as translator in 1943, with a translation of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, but it was in 1956, when she first went to the States, that a new world opened up for her. She got in touch with the Beat writers and, from then on, her life changed: she started translating new and revolutionary authors, then brought them to meet Italian editors and wrote beautiful introductions to their books. When Nanda spoke it was a bit like seeing many of her American icons coming back to life: Marilyn, as Nanda used to remember with loving affection, was a little darling; Kerouac a handsome man, Bukowski a man with a temper whom she fondly admired, with a wife, Linda, who had fallen in love with Nanda’s green shoes.
"What struck me the first time I went to the States was the space. America was so big, so large to my eyes. We were coming from a small country and I suddenly found six lines of cars coming from the airport," Nanda told me, "I was really really amazed! I found at the airport waiting for me Hannah and Matthew Josephson. Hannah was the librarian of the American Academy and Matthew was an important author, he had written Zola's biography and he had also published in 1934 The Robber Barons, a marvellous books, one of the first volumes written against Wall Street. They showed me The New Yorker on which there was an article about Edmund Wilson that mentioned a piece I had written about him in Italy. 'America is welcoming you with this article’ Matthew told me, but I didn’t think it was such a great or important thing at the time. Indeed, one of the most important things that happened to me when I visited the States was my encounter with Norman Mailer. Mailer was very bold, handsome with beautiful blue eyes. He was also a little insolent, but I really liked him and Adele was a very beautiful woman. I remember Adele telling me 'If you want to get an elegant dress in the States, stay thin and don't eat!' She taught me the first American rule of beauty! Adele was very sweet!"
During her life, Nanda also worked as research assistant for the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Turin, but this experience was probably one of the most negative in her life. "I think the academic world is horrible," she told me when I was still a student, "it is conservative, it prohibits and forbids any kind of new way of thinking, it is against reality. Academics only speak about the past, they don't know anything about the present. When they ask me what's the difference between my job and the job of academics I usually say that I work like an ethnographer, I work on the field. That's why I always tried to meet the authors and find out who they were and what they wanted. When I first started promoting the work of American writers it was the Fascist regime that held Italians back from reading these American authors, then it was the fault of many academics. Yet I knew that the books I translated were beautiful books and these new writers were beautiful writers. They had to be published! When I met the Beats they were nobodies, they were young, they were perhaps 18 years old boys. Once they revealed to me 'We were really surprised by the fact that such an elegant woman like you had come to meet us, you seemed to be the only one who knew what we had written when nobody had ever heard about us'. At that time Allen Ginsberg hadn't even published 'Howl'. The first time I heard of 'Howl' was when I was in Puerto Rico with William Carlos Williams, we were at a party and he said that he was going to introduce a young poet from Paterson, since he came from the same place. He told me he thought this young poet was brilliant. Then, in 1957, I went to Paris and I saw the second issue of the 'Evergreen Review' and I found 'Howl' inside it. That was the beginning of something important for me as I wrote Gregory Corso and he came to meet me. Gregory was the ambassador of the Beats. He was completely nuts, my God! He arrived in Milan from Paris, so I asked him 'Do you want to take a shower?' and he replied 'What do you mean, do I smell?' And from then on, while Gregory was staying at my house, all my rules were completely broken, I really had to change my entire life. I decided that offering him coffee wasn't the right thing to do, so I used to ask 'Do you want a joint?' even when I didn't have one and he would reply 'Yes, I think that would be a great idea!' I guess the Beats really changed my life. After Gregory paid me a visit, he met Kerouac and told him 'She's pretty, she's not a prude!' so Kerouac started calling me at four o'clock in the morning - you couldn't even think of explaining the time zone to him - asking 'what time does the plane to Milan leave? I want to come and meet you!' This is my 'Beat Story'. I miss all the Beats, but I miss most of all Ginsberg, Kerouac and Corso, because they were three 'monsters'. You know, I used to work with Ginsberg for hours on end. He came on purpose to work with me, to assist me in the translation of his poems and we enjoyed working together. The best thing of working with such writers was that I could understand them and see how different they were from the image the media had created of them."
One of the most important stories that Nanda used to tell was about Hemigway: “Italian publisher Einaudi gave me a contract to translate A Farewell to Arms. At that time the book was forbidden by Mussolini, but Einaudi had already started preparing the book, because we all knew that Mussolini would have fallen. Einaudi and I were very much involved in the whole thing, but then the Nazis arrived and, while I remained in Turin, Einaudi went to Rome. The Nazis arrested me after an enquiry they made at the publishing house where they found my contract. As I said Hemingway was forbidden, so they had a reason to arrest me. They wanted to know where Einaudi was hiding. The first interrogation started in the morning at 7 o'clock, then there was another one at midnight. I was playing around with them, saying 'How could I have ever done something like that, I'm so young! A girl like me? It's impossible!' This went on all day, then the terrible moment came in the morning when they wanted me to say that I wasn't the translator, but the publisher and they wanted me to write down that I was the ‘Herausgeber’ and not the ‘Übersetzer’. I knew the difference between the two words and I refused to comply. When they found out that I knew the difference between the two words they said I didn’t need an interpreter anymore since I knew Germans. In fact I didn't know enough German and I was really frightened because they could have sent me to a concentration camp. It looked like it was the end. But then they let me go, but assigned me a German officer, a soldier that had to follow me around to check what I was doing. In 1948 Hemingway arrived in Italy and sent me a postcard saying 'I want to meet you, come to Cortina'. I thought it was a joke, so I didn’t pay any attention to it. After a week he sent me another postcard in which he added 'If you don't come to Cortina, I will come to Turin!' It took me nine hours to reach the place, since you had to take the train that ran through the mountains, but I eventually managed to arrive. I was dirty when I arrived at the hotel because the train was coal-fuelled and there were no windows in it. I got into the dining room where Hemingway was having dinner, he immediately understood that it was me, so he came towards me with his open arms and I nearly fainted, he gave me a big hug and said, with his slightly stammering voice, 'Tell me about the Nazis'. I still don't know how, but he had heard the full story. That night he made me sit next to him at the table and we spent the night talking. At that time Mary had rented a villa named “Villa Aprile” and I stayed there for a while. We collaborated together translating his works from 5 a.m. till 11 a.m., he was sober then and that made a big difference. He often explained me why he threw away things that he wrote or why he cut this or that bit out. Working with him was difficult, but it was like living in a dream, it was really fascinating. Like working with Ginsberg, but Ginsberg wasn't a genius like Hemingway."
From the '40s on, Nanda translated a lot of authors, including William Faulkner, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright, to mention a few of them. When I first met her I had started translating a book from Italian into English. "When you translate a text, you have to completely forget yourself," she suggested me, "you must try to mould yourself into the page that you have to translate."
Nanda often used to joke, especially if you asked her about her future plans, “When someone asks me 'What would you like to do in the future?' I always answer 'I want to be a whore!” she told me, “I also say it in a movie about my career and, usually, when people in the audience hear it they go crazy and start clapping. If you ask me what I would really like to do, then I'll tell you that I would like to write three lines that people will remember forever.”
Nanda used to claim she hadn’t written those three lines yet. Maybe she didn’t write them but she left behind some great teachings, fighting through her writings and translations for freedom and speaking of peace and love. Maybe these are her three unforgettable final lines.
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