Teoria e pratica del tradurre in Benedetto Croce

Most anthologies and histories of translation tend to reduce Croce’s evaluation of poetic translation to an over-quoted passage in his Estetica, where he stated that poetry is untranslatable. But Croce was in fact a highly skilled and conscious translator who thought deeply about the experience and practice of translation. He dealt, as a translator, with canonical texts such as Goethe’s poetry, but also with curious masterworks largely forgotten by academic literary histories, particularly Lo Cunto de li Cunti, a 17th-century collection of fairy-tales written by G.B. Basile in Neapolitan dialect, that he translated into Italian in 1925. This essay reconsiders Croce’s conception of translation by taking into account both his work as philosopher and theorist and his acute reflections on the practical work and goals of translation.