“La presenza dei gatti“ (“Die Arbeit an den Öfen“)

Poetica e stile, sintassi e traduzione della prima raccolta di racconti italiana di Wolfgang Hilbig

Abstract

Die Arbeit an den Öfen (1994) is the first, entire collection by Wolfgang Hilbig to have been published in Italy, under the title La presenza dei gatti: the Italian edition of its four short stories came out in 1996 in the translation by Agnese Grieco.

This contribution aims to briefly contextualise the publishing of the two volumes, to introduce the content of the collection and the author’s poetics, to explicate its link to the peculiarities of his style, and to highlight some of the issues raised in its translation into Italian, with special regard to the translation strategies and negotiations that became necessary in order to master Hilbig’s prose.

Particular attention will be paid to the importance of syntactic choices in the target language, and of punctuation itself, to restore the rhythm of such a complex literary language, at once rousing and calibrated, poetic and musical, tense and visionary.