All posts tagged: Milan

In the Fog

In the Fog

May 12, 2022 ,

By ADA NEGRI

Translated from Italian by LAURA MASINI, CHONA MENDOZA, and LINDA WORRELL

 

Story appears in both English and Italian below.

 

Translators’ Note:

“In the Fog” is taken from Le Solitarie (1917), Ada Negri’s first collection of stories, astute portraits of marginalized women struggling with poverty, exploitation and loneliness. Raimonda is a young woman who was horribly disfigured by a fire in her childhood. Only in the dense and murky fog of Milan, her face concealed by a “nebulous mass of vapors,” does she feel free.

We decided to work together at the close of a week-long Italian translation workshop at the British Centre for Literary Translation and we chose this story because we were captivated by Negri’s richly evocative prose. Much of our lively collaboration, helped along by Tuscan reds, seppie in zimino, minestra di fagioli and lesso rifatto, took place in Lucca and Florence.

                                                            —Linda Worrell, Chona Mendoza, Laura Masini

In the Fog
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From the Stone House: Reading Stevie Smith in Milan

November 8, 2012

By MARTHA COOLEY

Beauty is overrated.  Beauty is underrated.

Three months ago, shortly after moving to Italy for the year, I was walking along via Montenapoleone in Milan, gazing at lovely summer togs and shoes in the shops (beauty is overrated?), when I nearly stumbled into a bearded man wearing dirty shorts and old sneakers.  He sat spread-legged on the sidewalk, an empty, leaning-Tower-of-Pisa paper cup between his knees.  Not the right street for such begging, I found myself thinking—too upscale, everyone carrying credit cards rather than change.  Nobody wanting to be bothered, what with the insufferable humidity and all the gorgeous distractions in the shop-windows.

From the Stone House: Reading Stevie Smith in Milan
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