Leonardo Sciascia in the World: Visual Translations

A chapter that needs to be written, in the context of the relationship between Leonardo Sciascia and the universe of translation, concerns the cover illustrations of his books in foreign languages. For the Sicilian writer, who since 1961 has been polemicizing with Carlo Bo, Oreste Macrì and Giorgio Caproni over their versions of Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, all intent on unmasking “the tralignities and gratuitous obscurities”, restoring an author’s pronunciation in a different idiom means venturing into a daring undertaking, bordering on imposture. What would he think, then, of the translations of his books, and of the iconographic choices that end up conveying, inevitably, a subjective idea of his work? Without any pretense of being exhaustive, and referring for a more in-depth critical examination to the extensive studies on the author’s reception abroad (I will limit myself to pointing out, edited by Amici di Sciascia, the series “Sciascia scrittore europeo” and the magazine Todomodo, both published by Olschki), we have reviewed fifty translation covers, among those preserved at the Leonardo Sciascia Foundation in Racalmuto (whose catalogue, edited by Linda Graci, is now available on the site), arranging them in chronological order, but also giving an account of the wide geographical spread of his books, from West to East, from Europe to Asia to the Americas.

Take one of his most translated novels, Il giorno della civetta. From the refined and arabesque Sicilianity of the French cover (Flammarion, 1962), we move on to the ironically abstract recreation of the Czechoslovak cover (Československý spisovatel, 1964), whose illustration is only a taste of the icastic images that enrich the volume, edited by Božena Bruderhansová. If the novel’s famous incipit is here summed up in a lunar bus and its grotesque passengers, the investigative vein that runs through it is instead conveyed, in the Hungarian version of 1963 (Európa Könyvkiadó), by a metaphorical fingerprint and is referred to, in the Bulgarian version of 1965, by a stylised scene from a detective film (Hapoдha Kyлtypa, 1965). The Swedish cover of the book, whose subtitle circumscribes its theme (Tidens Förlag, 1965), almost seems to prefigure the Einaudian illustration of Il contesto – taken from a drawing by Jean-Louis Forain – with that judge looming over the characters caught in the mafia trap. Instead, the cover of the Dutch version of Il giorno della civetta (Werelbibliotek N. V., 1968) – the work by Guttuso that stands out in the 1964 Einaudi edition – echoes the original image, but in an inversion of the black-and-white colour contrast in function of the symbol par excellence of mourning. On the subtitle, which echoes the first American translation of the novel – a veritable betrayal of its meaning (Mafia vendetta, Cape, 1963) – Sciascia’s words would suffice: “I can tolerate the title Mafia, but Vendetta mafia, no”. An explicit allusion to Damiano Damiani’s film version is instead the Portuguese cover of the novel (Publiçaões Europa-América, 1968), under the banner of Claudia Cardinale’s algid beauty, in contrast to the ‘shame’ recalled in the title. And alluding to the film adaptation of Il giorno della civetta, with Franco Nero in the parts of Captain Bellodi, is also the illustration that stands out in the Spanish version (Plaza & Janés, 1968). We descend headlong into “the years of lead” with the Turkish cover of the novel (Babil Yayinevi, 1972) that makes the protagonist almost a forerunner of James Bond, while a ‘western of our own’ atmosphere in Latin sauce is breathed in the cover illustration of the Cuban version (Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1977). The spectre of terrorism having vanished, the Swiss translation of Il giorno della civetta (Benziger Verlag, 1985) – with a title that in Italian sounds like ‘The Law of Silence’ – instead plays on the easily labelled identity brand, portraying an anthropologically Mediterranean landscape against which a mafioso character with an artfully censored face stands out. The cover of the Israeli version (Hakibut Ha-Moa’ahad – Sefriat Poalim, 1985) is far from stereotypical and highly evocative: it features a Picasso painting from 1939 depicting – at the time of the Spanish Civil War – a cat with sharp teeth and threatening claws tearing at a defenceless bird, caught in a vain effort to fly. A predatory and gratuitous act that goes well with the ferinity of Sciasci’s characters. Expressly Mediterranean, like certain photographs by Ferdinando Scianna, is then the cover of the novel in the Catalan language version (Empúries, 1989). Quite different, however, is the peritestual choice of the Basque translation (Ibaizabal, 1991): a harnessed horse rearing up, à la Paolo Uccello, perhaps suggesting a heroically engagé reading of the book. But the most evocative illustration of all, by the Chinese artist Yang Su, coincides with the iconographic rendering of the epigraph: with the last lights extinguished, in the rising sun “the owl appears by day”, against a background of steel cusps emblematic of the vertigo of power (Yilin chubanshe, 2004).

The covers of other Sciascian texts also deserve a mention, oscillating between stereotyping the identity brand and creative reinterpretation of the original. The cover illustration of the German edition of A ciascuno il suo (Walter Verlag, 1968) suggests an atmosphere of manhunting in a remote village in the island’s hinterland, while the cover of the English translation of the novel Il contesto (Jonathan Cape, 1974) stands out for its inventive capacity. The proposed title – ‘equal danger’ – already suggests the interpretation: there is no escape, danger is everywhere, good and evil exchange sides, the inquisitor is mirrored in the inquirer. A hitman holds a perfectly balanced set of scales with one hand, while with the other, the devil’s left hand, he brandishes the murder weapon, against the backdrop of a distressing ‘dechirican’ perspective created by Rom Bowen’s imagination. Also highly evocative is the cover of the Japanese edition of Il contesto (Shinchôsha, 1976), renamed ‘Morning of Power’ to suggest, according to translator Chigusa Ken, the ‘astonishment before the tenacity of a Power that even in its twilight knows not the slightest relenting’. This sense of precariousness is echoed in Tadayoshi’s dazzling engraving – from the folder ‘Ode to the Great Decomposition’ – depicting a snow-white lepidopteron silhouetted unrealistically against the bituminous black of the background. Also interesting is the cover of Todo modo in the Polish edition, hosted in the ‘Nike’ series by the Varsavian Czytelnik (1977). The stylisation of the Nike of Samothrace, present in all issues of the series, acquires an obvious ideological significance: despite its fragmentary nature as a headless and armless simulacrum, the statue is in fact a perfect allegory of Polish nationalistic sentiment, under the banner of a winged yet mutilated victory. And speaking of allegories, the somewhat kitschy illustration of Candido in the ’79 US version (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) is striking. Standing out on the cover is a mythical winged character, wrapped in an Italian flag, who flies over the earth, consigning himself to the eternal sphere of the dream, of utopia. A condition prerogative of those who, like the Sicilian writer, have made freedom from all diktats their creed. Equally iconic, but this time in the disquieting reference to the ‘living dead’ of Palermo’s Capuchin crypt, is the cover of the Croatian edition of Il contesto and A ciascuno il suo (GZH, 1981), where a lit candle shines in future memory of the dearly departed, or perhaps as an emblem of the never-fading light of reason. Singular, in the German edition of Il mare colore del vino (Wagenbach, 1997), is the image of a vegetal and burlesque “trinacria”, like certain circus acrobats or the rattles-hatted madmen of the tarot cards. A metaphor, perhaps, for a meaningless universe outside the sphere of the knowable. Thailand offers its elegant contribution with the cover of Sciascia’s latest work, Una storia semplice (อ่านอิตาลี, 2017): from the ingenious coupling of lettering and graphic elaboration (think of the blood stain on which the title stands out), to the enigmatic chessboard enclosing the miniature of a book – all seasoned with subtle postmodern irony – the Indo-Chinese version of the novel shows all the vitality of Oriental publishing. We like to conclude in the sign of the Enlightenment or, rather, of an 18th century imbued with Mediterranean sunshine. This is the case of the Brazilian cover of Candido (Berlendis & Vertecchia Editores, 2019), entrusted to the simplicity of the yellow-blue colour contrast. An evolution towards greater sobriety, compared to the early and sometimes folkloric covers, a sign of a more acute interpretation abroad of Sciasci’s work. Sobriety, therefore, which rhymes with Classicism.

We thank Vito Catalano and Edith Cutaia for their collaboration.

Lavinia Spalanca, University of Palermo

The exhibition “Leonardo Sciascia in the World: Visual Translations” was realised thanks to the support of the “Amici di Leonardo Sciascia” Association and the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Centenary of Leonardo Sciascia