Two things stayed with me after reading Barry Schwabsky’s essay “In the Reckless Hour,” about the recent English translation of Cesare Pavese’s The Leucothea Dialogues—henceforth, the Dialogues. The first was an existential question: How do we ask mortal questions through stories about the immortals? But don’t let the question weigh on you more heavily than it should. We have always asked essentially the same questions in different ways.
The Dialogues are twenty-seven short dialogues that bring the Greek gods and goddesses back into the human condition—under law, mortality, and fate—and question why things are the way they are: unfair, absurd, and cruel. What makes the gods and goddesses so deeply engaged in human affairs, and so human that they alter human fates? If they cannot show their strength in the realm of Fate, are they truly superior? These Greek divinities could not care less about humans unless humans offer them satisfying sacrifices to feed their divine egos. Even Shakespeare’s Oberon and his wife are more sympathetic than their Greek counterparts. Free will is unthinkable because Fate takes precedence. Humans are toy soldiers manipulated by Fate and deployed by the gods. Are they worthy of being worshipped? If they are, it is only out of fear of punishment in the form of unfortunate events in human life: the gods play their war games with human lives as pawns to see who will prevail. They do not interfere with human affairs but govern them. Then we do not have to work so hard or hope for anything better if our fates are predetermined. John Calvin must have felt the same way I do—and perhaps Pavese did, too.
Regarding the translation of the Dialogues from Italian into English, Schwabsky is a strict examiner who questions whether the recent English version is a translation made without fully understanding the book. He also believes that its plain language lacks Pavese’s dark grandeur and the gravity of his language. Although I have not read the Dialogues yet, I can’t say whether I agree with his opinion. But I am a proponent of using plain language to make difficult themes and ideas accessible to general readers, so that knowledge can be shared and enrich their minds rather than remain exclusive to academics.
This essay is apposite to my current reading of Vergil’s The Aeneid, in which a man’s destination is already predetermined, while everything he does seems like an act in a script written by the divine. Then what is the meaning of being human, and what is the purpose of living? If some people are fated to suffer the most violent pain and cruel injustice, would our hopeful search for the meaning of life be merely another futile act of living?
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 