Pane duro

A book I’d like to translate

Every month newitalianbooks asks a translator to suggest an Italian book that has not yet been published in his or her language. This month, Jean-Pierre Pisetta, who translates from Italian, presents :

Silvio Micheli, Pane duro, Torino, Einaudi, 1946

Just under a year ago, a friend from Turin, who knows that I’ve spent my life translating neglected texts, sent me a newspaper article about a forgotten author. His masterpiece, Pane duro (Hard Bread), deserved, the journalist lamented, more lasting recognition.

My friend added that this article might give me some ideas.

The book was nowhere to be found, apart from one copy in an antique shop in Turin at what I considered to be an excessive price for an author who was completely unknown to me. What’s more, the volume was 633 pages. Was it worth buying ‘a pig in a poke’? And as someone who never translates to order, that is, I first translate texts I like before offering them to publishers, was I going to start translating such a brick without a possible outlet?

No, I didn’t buy it, but I discovered the book in at least two Turin libraries and, as I had to stay in Turin soon, I decided to take the opportunity to read the first chapters. I was immediately drawn into the story of this poor office worker who dreams of escaping his misery – and that of his wife and baby – by writing, because this humble paper-pusher has literary talent (or so he thinks)!

Back in Belgium, I bought the volume, which I now wanted to read in its 633 page entirety. And, when I have a bit of spare time, I translate a page, but never more than that because I fear that this text – which I read with great pleasure, this long, desperate autofiction, will never find a buyer in the French edition.

But hey, a page here and there, while I sip a coffee at my desk, can’t do me any harm, except to my stomach (the coffee, of course, being strong).

Jean-Pierre Pisetta

Jean-Pierre Pisetta was born in 1956 in Belgium to parents who had emigrated from Trentino, in northern Italy. After his secondary education, he worked for four years as an unskilled worker. Afterwards, he studied translation in the Russian-Italian-French department. He first started working as a teacher in 1984, a profession he pursued until his retirement in 2021. His first translation from Russian was published in 1986 (Leo Tolstoy, Contes et Récits); his first translation from Italian was published in 1990 (Gianni Vattimo, La société transparente); his first collection of personal short stories was published in 1997 (Morts subites).