Goliarda Sapienza in other languages

Manuela Spinelli is a lecturer at the University of Rennes 2 and a specialist in contemporary Italian literature. Her publications include: Una ribellione mancata. La figura dell’inetto nella letteratura di fine Novecento, Verona, Ombrecorte, 2016; Le parole nutrono. Per i cent’anni di Goliarda Sapienza, Florence, Franco Cesati, 2025.

Literary translations are always crucial for the circulation of works; in the case of Goliarda Sapienza (Catania, 1924–Gaeta, 1996), they take on a truly fundamental role, since the fate of her work is inextricably linked to translation. The Sicilian writer died in 1996 without ever having achieved true public recognition as a novelist. As her husband Angelo Pellegrino recalls, at the time of her burial, “no one mentioned her works. How could they, when her last significant publication was many years ago and, above all, when almost her entire oeuvre remained unpublished?” (Pellegrino in Sapienza, Lettera aperta, 2015, p. 151). During her lifetime, Sapienza published four works: Lettera aperta (Garzanti, 1967), Il filo di mezzogiorno (Garzanti, 1969), L’Università di Rebibbia (Rizzoli, 1983) and Le certezze del dubbio (Pellicanolibri, 1987). What would later be considered her masterpiece, L’arte della gioia (The Art of Joy), was only partially published: in 1994, the first part, revised by the author, was published by Stampa Alternativa. In 1998, Angelo Pellegrino published the complete text for the same publisher, with the subtitle (later removed) Romanzo anticlericale (Anti-clerical novel). The edition had limited circulation, but it attracted the attention of Loredana Rotondo and Manuela Vigorita, who dedicated an episode of their documentary Vuoti di memoria (Memory Gaps) to Sapienza. In 2003, Stampa Alternativa published a new edition of the novel, which also had limited distribution. However, it was one of these volumes that made its way to the Frankfurt Book Fair, where it was noticed by German publisher Waltraud Schwarze, who recommended it to the French publishing house Éditions Viviane Hamy and the Spanish publisher Lumen, thus paving the way for the international circulation of Sapienza’s work. The arrival in France proved to be a decisive turning point. Viviane Hamy entrusted the text to translator Nathalie Castagné, whose enthusiastic reading notes convinced the publisher to publish the novel. L’Art de la joie was thus published in 2005 by les Éditions Viviane Hamy and was an immediate and resounding success.

French critics hailed Sapienza as a “princesse hérétique” (Le Monde): the novel was described as “extraordinary” (Le Nouvel Observateur) and compared to masterpieces such as Madame Bovary and Orlando (Libération). The German translation was also published in 2005, but this was the result of a different editorial decision. The Berlin-based publishing house Aufbau Verlag decided to divide the novel into two parts, first publishing In den Himmel stürzen, translated by Constanze Neumann, and then Die Signora in 2006, translated by Esther Hansen. This decision was motivated by the length of the text and the desire to gauge public reaction. In hindsight, this decision seems to have diminished its impact and, consequently, its success. It would be several years before The Art of Joy was published in German in a single volume: Die Unvorhersehbarkeit der Liebe was released in 2013 by Aufbau, translated jointly by Esther Hansen and Constanze Neumann. The title, which emphasises love and its unpredictability, was in turn reconsidered in 2022 when the work was republished as Die Kunst der Freude. Although it does not introduce a new text, this edition offers a new editorial framework: the literal translation of the Italian title reinforces the novel’s international success and places it within a broader effort to relaunch Sapienza’s work.

Since the early 2000s, The Art of Joy has thus enjoyed rapid international circulation. In 2007, the Catalan translation, L’art de viure (La Campana, translated by Anna Casassas Figueras), and the first Spanish translation, El arte del placer (Lumen, translated by José Ramón Monreal), were published, the latter’s title emphasising the sensual and transgressive dimension of the book. This choice was modified in the new Spanish translation of 2022, again for Lumen, entitled El arte de la alegría: as in the case of the German translation, the return to the term alegría realigns the title with the original Italian, shifting the interpretative axis from eroticism to a more programmatically existential and political dimension, in which “joy” is configured as a life project.

Meanwhile, Italy also rediscovered Sapienza, surprised by the “triumph of Goliarda” (La Repubblica, 2005). In 2008, Einaudi published L’arte della gioia, followed by the gradual publication of her unpublished works: Io, Jean Gabin (Einaudi, 2010), Il vizio di parlare a me stessa and Destino coatto (Einaudi, 2011), Ancestrale (La vita felice, 2013), La mia parte di gioia (Einaudi, 2013), Appuntamento a Positano (Einaudi, 2015) and, in 2021, Lettere e biglietti (La Nave di Teseo). At the same time, the international distribution of her major novel continued: in 2009, Greek (Η τέχνη της χαράς, translated by Anna Papastavrou, Patakis) and Portuguese (A Arte da Alegria, translated by Simonetta Neto, Dom Quixote) translations were published. In 2013, the English translation The Art of Joy, by Anne Milano Appel, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and subsequently entered the Penguin Modern Classics catalogue. English-speaking critics welcomed the novel with some enthusiasm: The New Yorker, for example, presented it as a powerful tale of female disobedience, capable of questioning fascism, patriarchy and Catholic moralism. This was followed by translations into Polish (Sztuka radości, translated by Tomasz Kwiecień, for Wydawnictwo Kobiece, 2018), Turkish (Mutluluk Sanatı, translated by Sinem Carnabuci for Kafka Kitap, 2017), Czech (Umění radosti, translated by Hana Voráčová, for Books & Pipes, 2020) and Danish (Kunsten at glædes, translated by Lorens Juul Madsen, for Grønningen, 2021).

At the same time, translations of Goliarda Sapienza’s other works also began to increase, confirming her growing success beyond national borders. In 2011, the Galician translation of Io, Jean Gabin, Eu, Jean Gabin, by Dolores Torres París for Editorial Galaxia, S.A., was published. In 2020, a Brazilian Portuguese translation of the poems, Ancestral, was published. In Portugal, in 2023, Carta Aberta, a translation of Lettera aperta by Manuela Gomes, was published by Antígona, which also published A Universidade de Rebibbia in 2025. In Spain, in addition to the new translation of The Art of Joy, there are translations of the prison work La presó de Rebibbia (2017, Catalan) and La cárcel de Rebibbia (Spanish), both published by Edicions del Periscopi, as well as Al filo del mediodía (2021), a translation of Il filo del mezzogiorno, by Melina Márquez for the publishing house Altamarea Edición de Libros. In contrast, the situation regarding English translations is striking: despite the success of The Art of Joy, only one other work has been translated so far, Meeting in Positano by Brian Robert Moore for Other Press, 2021. A similar decision can be found in Greece, where the translation of the major novel was followed by that of Università di Rebibbia and Ραντεβού στο Ποζιτάνο, also by Anna Papastavrou in 2024.

However, it is France that stands out as the country where the project to translate Sapienza’s work is developing in the most coherent and systematic way. After the success of L’Art de la joie, the publishing house Viviane Hamy published Lettre ouverte and Le fil de midi in a single volume entitled Le fil d’une vie in 2008, thus highlighting the autobiographical dimension of the texts and confirming that, in the French context, Sapienza’s life arouses as much interest as her work. Shortly afterwards, the rights passed to the publishing house Le Tripode, which continues to publish Goliarda Sapienza’s works on a regular basis: Moi, Jean Gabin (2012), L’Université de Rebibbia (2013), Rendez-vous à Positano (2017), Carnets (which brought together Il vizio di parlare a me stessa and La mia parte di gioia, 2019) and Les certitudes du doute (2021). In the same year, Le Tripode decided to split Le fil d’une vie, publishing Lettre ouverte and, in 2022, Le fil de midi. The two new translations feature a slightly revised version by Nathalie Castagné herself, who remains the leading translator of Sapienza’s work in France. In 2021, the French translation of the poetry collection Ancestrale was also published, maintaining the Italian text alongside the French; this was followed by Destins piégés (2023), from the collection Destino coatto, and Miroirs du temps (2024), a translation of Lettere e biglietti (2021, La Nave di Teseo). French interest in Sapienza is further confirmed by the numerous initiatives organised to mark the centenary of her birth and the publication of the biography Vies, morts et renaissances de Goliarda Sapienza, written by Nathalie Castagné for Éditions du Seuil in 2024. The translation of her plays and film scripts collected in Tre pièces e soggetti cinematografici (La Vita Felice 2014) is currently underway, reflecting an editorial project that aims, for the first time, to restore Sapienza’s work in translation in its entirety and complexity.