Letteratura e realia. Le espressioni culturo-specifiche nelle traduzioni italiane della Wendeliteratur

Il presente lavoro affronta il problema della traduzione dei termini culturo-specifici nella letteratura contemporanea di lingua tedesca ambientata nella DDR. L’analisi della produzione narrativa della Wendeliteratur consente di osservare come il lessico e le espressioni tipiche della DDR vengano utilizzati nelle opere letterarie in funzione citazionale per denotare e connotare la realtà della Germania dell’Est. Attraverso un approccio integrato che coniuga i contributi teorici degli studi sulla traduzione con gli aspetti della pratica traduttiva il lavoro indaga il tema dei realia attraverso una presentazione delle ricerche esistenti, propone una classificazione specifica per i realia della DDR e procede a una ricognizione delle strategie e dei procedimenti traduttivi concreti, che consente di evidenziare le diverse scelte adottate dai traduttori. Attraverso un’analisi ermeneutica dei testi e lo strumento dell’isotopia come indicatore di coerenza le traduzioni italiane delle opere della Wendeliteratur sono oggetto di un’analisi critica. I risultati dell’analisi vengono infine utilizzati come riferimento per la traduzione dei realia nel racconto di F.C. Delius, Die Birnen von Ribbeck.

L'a(rche)tipico Brian O'Nolan. Comico e riso dalla tradizione al post-

This study aims at analysing Brian O'Nolans literary production in the light of a reconsideration of the role played by his two most famous pseudonyms ,Flann Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, behind which he was active both as a novelist and as a journalist. We tried to establish a new kind of relationship between them and their empirical author following recent cultural and scientific surveys in the field of Humour Studies, Psychology, and Sociology: taking as a starting point the appreciation of the comic attitude in nature and in cultural history, we progressed through a short history of laughter and derision, followed by an overview on humour theories. After having established such a frame, we considered an integration of scientific studies in the field of laughter and humour as a base for our study scheme, in order to come to a definition of the comic author as a recognised, powerful and authoritative social figure who acts as a critic of conventions. The history of laughter and comic we briefly summarized, based on the one related by the French scholar Georges Minois in his work (Minois 2004), has been taken into account in the view that humorous attitude is one of man’s characteristic traits always present and witnessed throughout the ages, though subject in most cases to repression by cultural and political conservative power. This sort of Super-Ego notwithstanding, or perhaps because of that, comic impulse proved irreducible exactly in its influence on the current cultural debates. Basing mainly on Robert R. Provine’s (Provine 2001), Fabio Ceccarelli’s (Ceccarelli 1988), Arthur Koestler’s (Koestler 1975) and Peter L. Berger’s (Berger 1995) scientific essays on the actual occurrence of laughter and smile in complex social situations, we underlined the many evidences for how the use of comic, humour and wit (in a Freudian sense) could be best comprehended if seen as a common mind process designed for the improvement of knowledge, in which we traced a strict relation with the play-element the Dutch historian Huizinga highlighted in his famous essay, Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1955). We considered comic and humour/wit as different sides of the same coin, and showed how the demonstrations scientists provided on this particular subject are not conclusive, given that the mental processes could not still be irrefutably shown to be separated as regards graduations in comic expression and reception: in fact, different outputs in expressions might lead back to one and the same production process, following the general ‘Economy Rule’ of evolution; man is the only animal who lies, meaning with this that one feeling is not necessarily biuniquely associated with one and the same outward display, so human expressions are not validation proofs for feelings. Considering societies, we found that in nature they are all organized in more or less the same way, that is, in élites who govern over a community who, in turn, recognizes them as legitimate delegates for that task; we inferred from this the epistemological possibility for the existence of an added ruling figure alongside those political and religious: this figure being the comic, who is the person in charge of expressing true feelings towards given subjects of contention. Any community owns one, and his very peculiar status is validated by the fact that his place is within the community, living in it and speaking to it, but at the same time is outside it in the sense that his action focuses mainly on shedding light on ideas and objects placed out-side the boundaries of social convention: taboos, fears, sacred objects and finally culture are the favourite targets of the comic person’s arrow. This is the reason for the word a(rche)typical as applied to the comic figure in society: atypical in a sense, because unconventional and disrespectful of traditions, critical and never at ease with unblinkered respect of canons; archetypical, because the “village fool”, buffoon, jester or anyone in any kind of society who plays such roles, is an archetype in the Jungian sense, i.e. a personification of an irreducible side of human nature that everybody instinctively knows: a beginner of a tradition, the perfect type, what is most conventional of all and therefore the exact opposite of an atypical. There is an intrinsic necessity, we think, of such figures in societies, just like politicians and priests, who should play an elitist role in order to guide and rule not for their own benefit but for the good of the community. We are not naïve and do know that actual owners of power always tend to keep it indefinitely: the ‘social comic’ as a role of power has nonetheless the distinctive feature of being the only job whose tension is not towards stability. It has got in itself the rewarding permission of contradiction, for the very reason we exposed before that the comic must cast an eye both inside and outside society and his vision may be perforce not consistent, then it is satisfactory for the popularity that gives amongst readers and audience. Finally, the difference between governors, priests and comic figures is the seriousness of the first two (fundamentally monologic) and the merry contradiction of the third (essentially dialogic). MPs, mayors, bishops and pastors should always console, comfort and soothe popular mood in respect of the public convention; the comic has the opposite task of provoking, urging and irritating, accomplishing at the same time a sort of control of the soothing powers of society, keepers of the righteousness. In this view, the comic person assumes a paramount importance in the counterbalancing of power administration, whether in form of acting in public places or in written pieces which could circulate for private reading. At this point comes into question our Irish writer Brian O'Nolan(1911-1966), real name that stood behind the more famous masks of Flann O'Brien, novelist, author of At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), The Hard Life (1961), The Dalkey Archive (1964) and, posthumously, The Third Policeman (1967); and of Myles na Gopaleen, journalist, keeper for more than 25 years of the Cruiskeen Lawn column on The Irish Times (1940-1966), and author of the famous book-parody in Irish An Béal Bocht (1941), later translated in English as The Poor Mouth (1973). Brian O'Nolan, professional senior civil servant of the Republic, has never seen recognized his authorship in literary studies, since all of them concentrated on his alter egos Flann, Myles and some others he used for minor contributions. So far as we are concerned, we think this is the first study which places the real name in the title, this way acknowledging him an unity of intents that no-one before did. And this choice in titling is not a mere mark of distinction for the sake of it, but also a wilful sign of how his opus should now be reconsidered. In effect, the aim of this study is exactly that of demonstrating how the empirical author Brian O'Nolan was the real Deus in machina, the master of puppets who skilfully directed all of his identities in planned directions, so as to completely fulfil the role of the comic figure we explained before. Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen were personae and not persons, but the impression one gets from the critical studies on them is the exact opposite. Literary consideration, that came only after O'Nolans death, began with Anne Clissmann’s work, Flann O'Brien: A Critical Introduction to His Writings (Clissmann 1975), while the most recent book is Keith Donohue’s The Irish Anatomist: A Study of Flann O'Brien (Donohue 2002); passing through M.Keith Booker’s Flann O'Brien, Bakhtin and Menippean Satire (Booker 1995), Keith Hopper’s Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist (Hopper 1995) and Monique Gallagher’s Flann O'Brien, Myles et les autres (Gallagher 1998). There have also been a couple of biographies, which incidentally somehow try to explain critical points his literary production, while many critical studies do the same on the opposite side, trying to found critical points of view on the author’s restless life and habits. At this stage, we attempted to merge into O'Nolan's corpus the journalistic articles he wrote, more than 4,200, for roughly two million words in the 26-year-old running of the column. To justify this, we appealed to several considerations about the figure O'Nolan used as writer: Myles na Gopaleen (later simplified in na Gopaleen), who was the equivalent of the street artist or storyteller, speaking to his imaginary public and trying to involve it in his stories, quarrels and debates of all kinds. First of all, he relied much on language for the reactions he would obtain, playing on, and with, words so as to ironically unmask untrue relationships between words and things. Secondly, he pushed to the limit the convention of addressing to spectators and listeners usually employed in live performing, stretching its role in the written discourse to come to a greater effect of involvement of readers. Lastly, he profited much from what we labelled his “specific weight”, i.e. the potential influence in society given by his recognised authority in determined matters, a position from which he could launch deeper attacks on conventional beliefs, so complying with the duty of a comic we hypothesised before: that of criticising society even in threat of losing the benefits the post guarantees. That seemingly masochistic tendency has its rationale. Every representative has many privileges on the assumption that he, or she, has great responsibilities in administrating. The higher those responsibilities are, the higher is the reward but also the severer is the punishment for the misfits done while in charge. But we all know that not everybody accepts the rules and many try to use their power for their personal benefit and do not want to undergo law’s penalties. The comic, showing in this case more civic sense than others, helped very much in this by the non-accessibility to the use of public force, finds in the role of the scapegoat the right accomplishment of his task, accepting the punishment when his breaking of the conventions is too stark to be forgiven. As Ceccarelli demonstrated, the role of the object of laughter (comic, ridicule) has its very own positive side: there is freedom of expression for the person, and at the same time integration in the society, even though at low levels. Then the banishment of a ‘social’ comic can never get to total extirpation from society, revealing how the scope of the comic lies on an entirely fictional layer, bearing no relation with facts, nor real consequences in terms of physical health. Myles na Gopaleen, mastering these three characteristics we postulated in the highest way, can be considered an author worth noting; and the oeuvre he wrote, the whole collection of Cruiskeen Lawn articles, is rightfully a novel because respects the canons of it especially regarding the authorial figure and his relationship with the readers. In addition, his work can be studied even if we cannot conduct our research on the whole of it, this proceeding being justified exactly because of the resemblances to the real figure of the storyteller: its ‘chapters’ —the daily articles— had a format that even the distracted reader could follow, even one who did not read each and every article before. So we can critically consider also a good part of them, as collected in the seven volumes published so far, with the addition of some others outside the collections, because completeness in this case is not at all a guarantee of a better precision in the assessment; on the contrary: examination of the totality of articles might let us consider him as a person and not a persona. Once cleared these points, we proceeded further in considering tout court the works of Brian O'Nolan as the works of a unique author, rather than complicating the references with many names which are none other than well-wrought sides of the same personality. By putting O'Nolan as the correct object of our research, empirical author of the works of the personae Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, there comes out a clearer literary landscape: the comic author Brian O'Nolan, self-conscious of his paramount role in society as both a guide and a scourge, in a word as an a(rche)typical, intentionally chose to differentiate his personalities so as to create different perspectives in different fields of knowledge by using, in addition, different means of communication: novels and journalism. We finally compared the newly assessed author Brian O'Nolan with other great Irish comic writers in English, such as James Joyce (the one everybody named as the master in the field), Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Swift. This comparison showed once more how O'Nolan is in no way inferior to these authors who, greatly celebrated by critics, have nonetheless failed to achieve that great public recognition O’Nolan received alias Myles, awarded by the daily audience he reached and influenced with his Cruiskeen Lawn column. For this reason, we believe him to be representative of the comic figure’s function as a social regulator and as a builder of solidarity, such as that Raymond Williams spoke of in his work (Williams 1982), with in mind the aim of building a ‘culture in common’. There is no way for a ‘culture in common’ to be acquired if we do not accept the fact that even the most functional society rests on conventions, and in a world more and more ‘connected’ we need someone to help everybody negotiate with different cultures and persons. The comic gives us a worldly perspective which is at the same time comfortable and distressing but in the end not harmful as the one furnished by politicians could be: he lets us peep into parallel worlds without moving too far from our armchair and, as a consequence, is the one who does his best for the improvement of our understanding of things.

Rafael Moneo: la complessità del vuoto. Dalle matrici formali dell'opera di Oteiza e Chillida

The experience of void, essential to the production of forms and to make use them, can be considered as the base of the activities that attend to the formative processes. If void and matter constitutes the basic substances of architecture. Their role in the definition of form, the symbolic value and the constructive methods of it defines the quality of the space. This job inquires the character of space in the architecture of Moneo interpreting the meaning of the void in the Basque culture through the reading of the form matrices in the work of Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida. In the tie with the Basque culture a reading key is characterized by concurring to put in relation some of the theoretical principles expressed by Moneo on the relationship between place and time, in an unique and specific vision of the space. In the analysis of the process that determines the genesis of the architecture of Moneo emerges a trajectory whose direction is constructed on two pivos: on the one hand architecture like instrument of appropriation of the place, gushed from an acquaintance process who leans itself to the reading of the relations that define the place and of the resonances through which measuring it, on the other hand the architecture whose character is able to represent and to extend the time in which he is conceived, through the autonomy that is conferred to them from values. Following the trace characterized from this hypothesis, that is supported on the theories elaborated from Moneo, surveying deepens the reading of the principles that construct the sculptural work of Oteiza and Chillida, features from a search around the topic of the void and to its expression through the form. It is instrumental to the definition of a specific area that concurs to interpret the character of the space subtended to a vision of the place and the time, affine to the sensibility of Moneo and in some way not stranger to its cultural formation. The years of the academic formation, during which Moneo enters in contact with the Basque artistic culture, seem to be an important period in the birth of that knowledge that will leads him to the formulation of theories tied to the relationship between time, place and architecture. The values expressed through the experimental work of Oteiza and Chillida during years '50 are valid bases to the understanding of such relationships. In tracing a profile of the figures of Oteiza and Chillida, without the pretension that it is exhaustive for the reading of the complex historical period in which they are placed, but with the needs to put the work in a context, I want to be evidenced the important role carried out from the two artists from the Basque cultural area within which Moneo moves its first steps. The tie that approaches Moneo to the Basque culture following the personal trajectory of the formative experience interlaces to that one of important figures of the art and the Spanish architecture. One of the more meaningful relationships is born just during the years of his academic formation, from 1958 to the 1961, when he works like student in the professional office of the architect Francisco Sáenz de Oiza, who was teaching architectural design at the ETSAM. In these years many figures of Basque artists alternated at the professional office of Oiza that enjoys the important support of the manufacturer and maecenas Juan Huarte Beaumont, introduced to he from Oteiza. The tie between Huarte and Oteiza is solid and continuous in the years and it realizes in a contribution to many of the initiatives that makes of Oteiza a forwarder of the Basque culture. In the four years of collaboration with Oiza, Moneo has the opportunity to keep in contact with an atmosphere permeated by a constant search in the field of the plastic art and with figures directly connected to such atmosphere. It’s of a period of great intensity as in the production like in the promotion of the Basque art. The collective “Blanco y Negro”, than is held in 1959 at the Galería Darro to Madrid, is only one of the many times of an exhibition of the work of Oteiza and Chillida. The end of the Fifties is a period of international acknowledgment for Chillida that for Oteiza. The decade of the Fifties consecrates the hypotheses of a mythical past of the Basque people through the spread of the studies carried out in the antecedent years. The archaeological discoveries that join to a context already rich of signs of the prehistoric era, consolidate the knowledge of a strong cultural identity. Oteiza, like Chillida and other contemporary artists, believe in a cosmogonist conception belonging to the Basques, connected to their matriarchal mythological past. The void in its meaning of absence, in the Basque culture, thus as in various archaic and oriental religions, is equivalent to the spiritual fullness as essential condition to the revealing of essence. Retracing the archaic origins of the Basque culture emerges the deep meaning that the void assumes as key element in the religious interpretation of the passage from the life to the death. The symbology becomes rich of meaningful characters who derive from the fact that it is a chthonic cult. A representation of earth like place in which divine manifest itself but also like connection between divine and human, and this manipulation of the matter of which the earth it is composed is the tangible projection of the continuous search of the man towards God. The search of equilibrium between empty and full, that characterizes also the development of the form in architecture, in the Basque culture assumes therefore a peculiar value that returns like constant in great part of the plastic expressions, than in this context seem to be privileged regarding the other expressive forms. Oteiza and Chillida develop two original points of view in the representation of the void through the form. Both use of rigorous systems of rules sensitive to the physics principles and the characters of the matter. The last aim of the Oteiza’s construction is the void like limit of the knowledge, like border between known and unknown. It doesn’t means to reduce the sculptural object to an only allusive dimension because the void as physical and spiritual power is an active void, that possesses that value able to reveal the being through the trace of un-being. The void in its transcendental manifestation acts at the same time from universal and from particular, like in the atomic structure of the matter, in which on one side it constitutes the inner structure of every atom and on the other one it is necessary condition to the interaction between all the atoms. The void can be seen therefore as the action field that concurs the relations between the forms but is also the necessary condition to the same existence of the form. In the construction of Chillida the void represents that counterpart structuring the matter, inborn in it, the element in absence of which wouldn’t be variations neither distinctive characters to define the phenomenal variety of the world. The physics laws become the subject of the sculptural representation, the void are the instrument that concurs to catch up the equilibrium. Chillida dedicate himself to experience the space through the senses, to perceive of the qualities, to tell the physics laws which forge the matter in the form and the form arranges the places. From the artistic experience of the two sculptors they can be transposed, to the architectonic work of Moneo, those matrices on which they have constructed their original lyric expressions, where the void is absolute protagonist. An ambit is defined thus within which the matrices form them drafts from the work of Oteiza and Chillida can be traced in the definition of the process of birth and construction of the architecture of Moneo, but also in the relation that the architecture establishes with the place and in the time. The void becomes instrument to read the space constructed in its relationships that determine the proportions, rhythms, and relations. In this way the void concurs to interpret the architectonic space and to read the value of it, the quality of the spaces constructing it. This because it’s like an instrument of the composition, whose role is to maintain to the separation between the elements putting in evidence the field of relations. The void is that instrument that serves to characterize the elements that are with in the composition, related between each other, but distinguished. The meaning of the void therefore pushes the interpretation of the architectonic composition on the game of the relations between the elements that, independent and distinguished, strengthen themselves in their identity. On the one hand if void, as measurable reality, concurs all the dimensional changes quantifying the relationships between the parts, on the other hand its dialectic connotation concurs to search the equilibrium that regulated such variations. Equilibrium that therefore does not represent an obtained state applying criteria setting up from arbitrary rules but that depends from the intimate nature of the matter and its embodiment in the form. The production of a form, or a formal system that can be finalized to the construction of a building, is indissolubly tied to the technique that is based on the acquaintance of the formal vocation of the matter, and what it also can representing, meaning, expresses itself in characterizing the site. For Moneo, in fact, the space defined from the architecture is above all a site, because the essence of the site is based on the construction. When Moneo speaks about “birth of the idea of plan” like essential moment in the construction process of the architecture, it refers to a process whose complexity cannot be born other than from a deepened acquaintance of the site that leads to the comprehension of its specificity. Specificity arise from the infinite sum of relations, than for Moneo is the story of the oneness of a site, of its history, of the cultural identity and of the dimensional characters that that they are tied to it beyond that to the physical characteristics of the site. This vision is leaned to a solid made physical structure of perceptions, of distances, guideline and references that then make that the process is first of all acquaintance, appropriation. Appropriation that however does not happen for directed consequence because does not exist a relationship of cause and effect between place and architecture, thus as an univocal and exclusive way does not exist to arrive to a representation of an idea. An approach that, through the construction of the place where the architecture acquires its being, searches an expression of its sense of the truth. The proposal of a distinction for areas like space, matter, spirit and time, answering to the issues that scan the topics of the planning search of Moneo, concurs a more immediate reading of the systems subtended to the composition principles, through which is related the recurrent architectonic elements in its planning dictionary. From the dialectic between the opposites that is expressed in the duality of the form, through the definition of a complex element that can mediate between inside and outside as a real system of exchange, Moneo experiences the form development of the building deepening the relations that the volume establishes in the site. From time to time the invention of a system used to answer to the needs of the program and to resolve the dual character of the construction in an only gesture, involves a deep acquaintance of the professional practice. The technical aspect is the essential support to which the construction of the system is indissolubly tied. What therefore arouses interest is the search of the criteria and the way to construct that can reveal essential aspects of the being of the things. The constructive process demands, in fact, the acquaintance of the formative properties of the matter. Property from which the reflections gush on the relations that can be born around the architecture through the resonance produced from the forms. The void, in fact, through the form is in a position to constructing the site establishing a reciprocity relation. A reciprocity that is determined in the game between empty and full and of the forms between each other, regarding around, but also with regard to the subjective experience. The construction of a background used to amplify what is arranged on it and to clearly show the relations between the parts and at the same time able to tie itself with around opening the space of the vision, is a system that in the architecture of Moneo has one of its more effective applications in the use of the platform used like architectonic element. The spiritual force of this architectonic gesture is in the ability to define a place whose projecting intention is perceived and shared with who experience and has lived like some instrument to contact the cosmic forces, in a delicate process that lead to the equilibrium with them, but in completely physical way. The principles subtended to the construction of the form taken from the study of the void and the relations that it concurs, lead to express human values in the construction of the site. The validity of these principles however is tested from the time. The time is what Moneo considers as filter that every architecture is subordinate to and the survival of architecture, or any of its formal characters, reveals them the validity of the principles that have determined it. It manifests thus, in the tie between the spatial and spiritual dimension, between the material and the worldly dimension, the state of necessity that leads, in the construction of the architecture, to establish a contact with the forces of the universe and the intimate world, through a process that translate that necessity in elaboration of a formal system.

3D probability tomography: theoretical developments and applications to high-resolution geophysical prospecting

The theory of the 3D multipole probability tomography method (3D GPT) to image source poles, dipoles, quadrupoles and octopoles, of a geophysical vector or scalar field dataset is developed. A geophysical dataset is assumed to be the response of an aggregation of poles, dipoles, quadrupoles and octopoles. These physical sources are used to reconstruct without a priori assumptions the most probable position and shape of the true geophysical buried sources, by determining the location of their centres and critical points of their boundaries, as corners, wedges and vertices. This theory, then, is adapted to the geoelectrical, gravity and self potential methods. A few synthetic examples using simple geometries and three field examples are discussed in order to demonstrate the notably enhanced resolution power of the new approach. At first, the application to a field example related to a dipole–dipole geoelectrical survey carried out in the archaeological park of Pompei is presented. The survey was finalised to recognize remains of the ancient Roman urban network including roads, squares and buildings, which were buried under the thick pyroclastic cover fallen during the 79 AD Vesuvius eruption. The revealed anomaly structures are ascribed to wellpreserved remnants of some aligned walls of Roman edifices, buried and partially destroyed by the 79 AD Vesuvius pyroclastic fall. Then, a field example related to a gravity survey carried out in the volcanic area of Mount Etna (Sicily, Italy) is presented, aimed at imaging as accurately as possible the differential mass density structure within the first few km of depth inside the volcanic apparatus. An assemblage of vertical prismatic blocks appears to be the most probable gravity model of the Etna apparatus within the first 5 km of depth below sea level. Finally, an experimental SP dataset collected in the Mt. Somma-Vesuvius volcanic district (Naples, Italy) is elaborated in order to define location and shape of the sources of two SP anomalies of opposite sign detected in the northwestern sector of the surveyed area. The modelled sources are interpreted as the polarization state induced by an intense hydrothermal convective flow mechanism within the volcanic apparatus, from the free surface down to about 3 km of depth b.s.l..