Keeping the Right Rhythm; the Italian (Re)translations of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf prose was translated in Italian for the first time in 1927. It was Carlo Linati, friend and translator of James Joyce, to translate her work, choosing some extracts from Mrs Dalloway and publishing them in the pages of «La fiera letteraria», a well known and widespread literary journal. The first Italian edition of Mrs Dalloway, though, was published only in 1946, inaugurating Alberto Mondadori’s wide project to publish Virginia Woolf’s Opera Omnia. The essay examines Carlo Linati’s first translation attempts by comparing them to the first Italian edition of Mrs Dalloway, translated by Alessandra Scalero, and to more recent translations by Nadia Fusini (Feltrinelli 1993) and Anna Nadotti (Einaudi 2012). Eventually, extracts from an unpublished translation of The Years by Alessandra Scalero are presented and compared to Guido De Angelis’ translation, published by Mondadori in 1955, and to the most recent one by Antonio Bibbo, published by Feltrinelli in 2015. What emerges from these comparisons is the translators’ struggle to render Woolf’s experimental style by focusing on the crucial role of rhythm in her prose.