How closely can a poem capture the experience of seeing a film, and seeing one cut up at that? For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you an answer: a cycle of seven poems by Italian poet Paola Silvia Dolci, translated into English by the author herself. In these almost-ekphrastic verses, Dolci seeks not to describe the literal content of the film, but rather to capture the experience of seeing a film fragmented, reduced to a string of disconnected images—by damage to the film itself or constant interruption of the audience, we do not know. What we know, instead, is the hypnotic effect of the sequence, the dreamlike state induced by each isolated vignette, the plangent feeling that lingers as each slips away. Read on!
In the cinematic text, the scenes are fragments of a film; reality is never whole, but always broken down into details, movements, images that slip away.
It is a meeting between strangers, there’s a sense of waiting, of possibility, that intersects without ever belonging to one another.
1
In this scene of the film,
the two strangers
meet
at an abandoned little table
in front of the Splendid Mayer.
It’s almost winter, it’s cold,
and the sails are in regatta.
“By now November feigns nothing.”
2
Saint Paul de Vence.
In this scene of the film,
while the two strangers
talk about K,
to the small sculpture
with Tinguely’s rotating silhouettes,
something in the air
keeps kissing itself.
She slips into the rabbit mask,
along with him.
3
In this scene of the film
the two strangers
meet at night
in a bar. They hold hands,
making their way through the crowd.
Outside, it’s raining, snowing.
An exchange of hiding places
where each
will become
unfindable.
Everything gets confused.
Before the silence,
before sleep.
Everything fall perfectly into place
for an instant. The encounter
is fleeting
and momentary.
4
In this scene of the film
what gets written
sooner or later
happens.
5
In this scene of the film,
the relationship between what we see
and what we know
is not defined. We realize
that we too could, in turn,
be seen. When the two strangers
try to communicate,
they end up speaking
not so much to each other,
as to the absent.
6
In this scene of the film,
the two strangers
produce we produce, we have
the images to evoke
and make present
what is absent.
7
In the film it’s the succession of images,
how they set one after the other,
he says.
To her, it feels like talking to someone
who doesn’t understand.
Translated from the Italian by Paola Silvia Dolci
Paola Silvia Dolci is an author, a civil engineer, and a freelance journalist. She contributes to various literary magazines and national news outlets. She is the editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent poetry and culture magazine Niederngasse. She has published: Bagarre (Lietocolle, 2007); NuàdeCocò (Manni, 2011); Amiral Bragueton (Italic Pequod, 2013); I processi di ingrandimento delle immagini (Oèdipus, 2017); bestiario metamorfosi (Gattomerlino Superstripes, 2019); Portolano (Mattioli 1885, 2019); Diario del sonno (Le Lettere, 2021); Dinosauri Psicopompi (Anterem, 2022); abstine substine (pièdimosca, 2023); Dimineața e o incizie / La mattina è un’incisione (Cosmopoli, 2024); Cledon (déclic, 2025). Diario del sonno has been adapted for the stage.