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Ithaca forever :
Penelope speaks / Luigi Malerba ; translated by Douglas Grant
Heise ; introduction by Emily Hauser. - Berkeley :
University of California press, 2019. - 184 p. ;
21 cm.
ISBN 978-0-520-30368-3
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UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA PRESS :
After twenty years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, but instead of
receiving the homecoming he had hoped for finds himself caught in an
intense battle of wills with his faithful and long-suffering wife
Penelope. When Penelope recognizes him under the guise of a beggar, she
becomes furious with him for not trusting her enough to include her in
his plans for ridding the palace of the Suitors. As a result,
she
plays her own game of fictions to make him suffer for this lack of
faith, inspiring jealousy, self-doubt, and misgivings in her husband,
the legendary Homeric hero.
In this
captivating retelling of the Odyssey,
Penelope rises as a major force with whom to be reckoned. Shifting
between first-person reflections, Ithaca
Forever reveals
the deeply personal and powerful perspectives of both wife and husband
as they struggle for respect and supremacy within a marriage that has
been on hold for twenty years. Translated by PEN award-winner Douglas
Grant Heise, Luigi Malerba’s novel gives us a remarkable
version of
this greatest work of western literature: Odysseus as a man full of
doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength.
| ❙ |
Luigi
Malerba (Luigi Bonardi, 1927–2008) was a major
twentieth-century
Italian novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer. He was one of
the most prominent writers of the Italian avant-garde literary
movement, Gruppo 63, along with founding member Umberto Eco. Among
other awards and honors, he was awarded the inaugural Prix
Médicis
étranger in 1970 and the Premio Grinzane Cavour in 1988. |
| ❙ |
Douglas
Grant Heise is a literary translator who lives and works in Levanto, on
the Italian Riviera. He is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Grant for the
English Translation of Italian Literature award. |
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JUDITH
OBERT : […]
Dans
son roman, Malerba ne prend en compte ni les aventures
d’Ulysse
ni celles de Télémaque pour se concentrer sur le
moment
clé du retour d’Ulysse (chapitre 13 de l’Odyssée),
celui de la reconnaissance (chapitre 23) et surtout sur la figure de
Pénélope dont il fera le cœur du roman.
Une
Pénélope plus rusée que son mari et
qui use la
mètis à des fins particulières.
Si Malerba choisit de
réécrire une partie de l’Odyssée,
c’est d’une part pour croiser le plaisir
d’une
relecture d’un classique avec le goût de la
variation mais
aussi pour donner une nouvelle dimension au personnage de
Pénélope, la sage et fidèle
épouse
qu’il veut rendre moins passive, pour créer une
nouvelle
voie/voix en donnant la parole aux deux personnages
(Pénélope et Ulysse qui sont les deux narrateurs)
et
enfin pour réfléchir et inciter à
réfléchir sur le rapport entre fiction et
réalité, vérité et
mensonge, vie et
écriture et enfin sur la notion
d’identité.
Autrement dit, sa Pénélope
métissée qui
tient entre ses doigts le destin de son Ulysse vagabond, est
l’occasion pour Malerba de revisiter, depuis un point de vue
autre, à travers la reprise d’un texte
éternel, des
obsessions personnelles.
[…]
☐ « La
Pénélope métissée de Luigi
Malerba », Cahiers
d'études romaines | 27 | 2013 [en
ligne]
|
| EXTRAIT |
(…)
I still don’t know if this land is my native Ithaca, or some
other little island adrift in the ocean, or simply some unknown
coastline. I don’t know if this land is inhabited by
hospitable men or by giants with a single eye in the middle of their
foreheads. I look around but still don’t know if I am home.
I ask myself how this arid and wild land can be the homeland that I
dreamed about for nine long years of war and another 10 years of
treacherous and adventure-filled voyages. I know that the memory of
home can be unreliable indeed. During the years I was away and in times
of danger, I imagined my rocky island to be as green and full of
flowers as a garden, though in truth it is only good for nourishing
flocks of sheep and goats that graze on dry grasses growing between
hard rocks, and for herds of pigs that grow fat on the acorns that fall
in the wooded highlands. I have finally learned that you should never
try to make dreams match up with reality.
But I am not telling the whole truth when I say that the years under
the walls of Troy were long for me; in truth, they were the fastest
years I have ever lived. Hard, happy years. And I can even boast of how
I personally was decisive for the victory of the Achaeans. I call it a
victory, but who knows if victory is the right word for the destruction
of a city and the atrocious events that took place beneath its walls,
and which I myself have recounted as moments of glory a hundred times
during the stops on my long voyage back.
I left dressed in the robes of the king of Ithaca, and now
I’m going to re-enter my house dressed in the rags of a
beggar that I found in this cave at the edge of the sea, and which will
allow me to observe secretly–and, thus,
truthfully–what has been going on during my absence. To learn
if what I have heard is true, that my house is full of admirers vying
for the hand of Penelope, hoping to take my place in my palace and in
my bed. How Penelope behaves with these admirers. How Telemachus has
grown since I left him behind as a baby. What condition my lands are
in. How the servants and handmaidens have been acting in my absence.
(…)
☐ extrait
cité par le traducteur, Douglas Grant Heise
— Pen
America | September 2017 [en ligne] |
|
| COMPLÉMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE |
- « Itaca
per sempre », Milano : Mondadori, 1997
- « Itaca
per sempre » introduzione di Marco Corsi, Milano :
Mondadori, 2016
|
- Homère,
« Odyssée »
éd. présentée et annotée
par Philippe
Brunet, trad. de Victor Bérard, Paris : Gallimard
(Folio
classique, 3235), 2003
|
→ « From Ithaca forever by
Luigi Malerba », Pen
America |
September 2017 [en
ligne]
→ Judith Obert,
« La Pénélope
métissée de Luigi Malerba », Cahiers d'études
romaines | 27 | 2013 [en
ligne]
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| mise-à-jour : 2
juillet 2019 |
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