Renowned translator best known for rendering the robust Italian prose of Eco's The Name of the Rose into nuanced English
William Weaver, who has died aged 90, was the greatest of all Italian translators. Before him, the professional translator was considered little better than a superior sort of typist. Weaver helped to bring the art of translation out of obscurity and give it a literary credence and recognition. His versions of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco are models of exactitude and seamless craft. Half jokingly, Eco said that Weaver's translation of his metaphysical whodunnit The Name of the Rose (1980) was "much better than the original". The novel sold more than 10m copies worldwide. Not since Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude had there been such a consensual success on the book market. Weaver made a fortune from the translation and was able to build an extension to his Tuscan villa from the proceeds (the "Eco chamber" he called it).
Many of the Italian writers Weaver translated became lifelong friends. Among them was the novelist and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom Weaver got to know in Rome during the 1950s. Weaver remained unhappy with his translation of Pasolini's novel Una Vita Violenta (The Violent Life). Published in Italy in 1959, the novel was written partly in Roman dialect; Weaver's translation of this vibrant speech into streetwise American ("jerk", "punk") looked odd alongside Pasolini's baroque descriptions of the Roman underworld. "From Pasolini I learned how poor American obscenities are," Weaver recalled, adding: "Some books simply resist translation."
Weaver had more success with Calvino, whose incomparably lucid Italian prose presented a different sort of challenge. Calvino had a stubborn streak, Weaver recalled, and wrangled over niggardly points of expression. He loved to use technical terms and would slyly insert these into Weaver's translations at proof stage. Once, during work on Calvino's great comic novel If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, a running battle ensued over use of the word "feedback", which Weaver repeatedly struck out of the typescript, and Calvino repeatedly re-inserted. (In the end, Weaver won: Calvino died before he was able to see the final proofs.)
Born in Virginia, the youngest of five siblings, Weaver grew up in a rarefied southern household filled with books and music. He was sent off to boarding school at the age of 12 with a typewriter as a leaving present. His father, Henry, who worked as a recording secretary for the House of Representatives, instilled in him a love of opera and the printed word.
Weaver graduated from* *Princeton University and, shortly after Pearl Harbor brought America into the second world war in 1941, he joined the American Field Service as an ambulance driver, first in Africa and then in Italy. Weaver's first glimpse of Italy was in September 1943 when he landed at Salerno, south of Naples, in the rear of General George Patton's 5th Army. He instantly fell in love with the country and the people. During the winter of 1947-48 Weaver lived in Rome and got to know the novelist Alberto Moravia and his wife Elsa Morante. ("I met people I didn't even know I wanted to meet until after I met them," Weaver recalled.)
In the late 1940s Weaver began to translate more or less by accident, with no thought of becoming a professional. English-Italian dictionaries were as scarce as penicillin in postwar Italy, so Weaver began to teach himself Italian. His first translations (of poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo) were published in American magazines and encouraged Weaver to broaden his interest in Italian culture. In the 1950s, he settled in Rome, where he experienced firsthand the flashbulb glitz and glamour immortalised in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. At WH Auden's house in Ischia, south of Rome, he met Maria Callas, who became a friend.
Over the years, as Weaver divided his time between New York and a farmhouse in Tuscany, he combined translation work with literary journalism. Occasionally he appeared as a guest commentator on radio broadcasts for the Metropolitan Opera and was briefly Rome correspondent for the poet Alan Ross's London Magazine. In 1984, to critical acclaim, Weaver published his biography of the Italian actor Eleonora Duse.
Over the 50-odd years of his translating career, Weaver never once varied his method. Armed with a boxful of "Ebony soft pencils and good erasers", he would painstakingly go over a first draft with the help of the author. At all times he tried to preserve the rhythm, cadences and tone of the original. "Some of the hardest things to translate into English from Italian are not great big words," Weaver said in an interview with Paris Review in 2000, "but perfectly simple things, buon giorno for instance. How to translate that? We don't say 'good day', except in Australia…"
In 1981 Weaver finished a draft version of Eco's 500-page novel The Name of the Rose, then prepared a long list of queries. In the course of wine-fuelled restaurant lunches, he and Eco spread pages of draft manuscripts between the cruets of oil and vinegar, and worked on translations until dusk. Eventually Weaver was able to render the polyglot braggadocio of Eco's prose into impeccable and nuanced English.
I first met Weaver in 1993 at his home in Tuscany, where he had lived since the mid-60s; I had come to talk to him about his friendship with Primo Levi, whose biography I was writing. Weaver was then 70 and slim due to the stone in weight he had lost after giving up alcohol. He had a faint southern drawl and the air of the Virginian dandy. Midway through our meal of pasta with lemon and cream sauce (Weaver was an excellent cook), Muriel Spark walked in with a basketful of forest mushrooms; Spark was Weaver's neighbour.
Weaver had first heard of Levi in 1949 when Fiori Pucci, the wife of the Neapolitan novelist Raffaele La Capria, urged him to read Levi's concentration camp memoir If This Is a Man. Weaver demurred ("Not another memoir of the camps!") and did not read the book until nearly 20 years later. He was urged to do so by the Scottish translator of Italian Archibald Colquhoun. "I could see immediately that the book was a classic," recalled Weaver.
In 1984, Weaver translated Levi's Jewish partisan novel If Not Now, When? and enjoyed the experience. "There was a lot of laughter, and at times a great deal of frustration, as Primo and I searched for le mot juste." Weaver had a smattering of Yiddish picked up from Jewish friends in New York, and Levi was always flattered (he told Weaver) when a "goy" showed an interest in Jewish culture. Levi understood that beneath Weaver's professorial appearance was a sharp business acumen: his canny understanding of publishing deals and contracts earned him the nickname in Italy of Il Vecchio Lupo (the Old Wolf).
Even a partial list of the Italian writers Weaver translated – Giorgio Bassani, Roberto Calasso, Carlo Cassola, Oriana Fallaci, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Luigi Pirandello, Mario Soldati, Ignazio Silone and Italo Svevo, as well as libretti by Puccini and Verdi – is little short of astonishing.
Weaver had been in poor health since suffering a stroke several years ago. His partner, Kazuo Nakajima, died earlier this year.
• William Fense Weaver, translator, born 24 July 1923; died 12 November 2013 Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 hours ago.
William Weaver, who has died aged 90, was the greatest of all Italian translators. Before him, the professional translator was considered little better than a superior sort of typist. Weaver helped to bring the art of translation out of obscurity and give it a literary credence and recognition. His versions of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco are models of exactitude and seamless craft. Half jokingly, Eco said that Weaver's translation of his metaphysical whodunnit The Name of the Rose (1980) was "much better than the original". The novel sold more than 10m copies worldwide. Not since Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude had there been such a consensual success on the book market. Weaver made a fortune from the translation and was able to build an extension to his Tuscan villa from the proceeds (the "Eco chamber" he called it).
Many of the Italian writers Weaver translated became lifelong friends. Among them was the novelist and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom Weaver got to know in Rome during the 1950s. Weaver remained unhappy with his translation of Pasolini's novel Una Vita Violenta (The Violent Life). Published in Italy in 1959, the novel was written partly in Roman dialect; Weaver's translation of this vibrant speech into streetwise American ("jerk", "punk") looked odd alongside Pasolini's baroque descriptions of the Roman underworld. "From Pasolini I learned how poor American obscenities are," Weaver recalled, adding: "Some books simply resist translation."
Weaver had more success with Calvino, whose incomparably lucid Italian prose presented a different sort of challenge. Calvino had a stubborn streak, Weaver recalled, and wrangled over niggardly points of expression. He loved to use technical terms and would slyly insert these into Weaver's translations at proof stage. Once, during work on Calvino's great comic novel If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, a running battle ensued over use of the word "feedback", which Weaver repeatedly struck out of the typescript, and Calvino repeatedly re-inserted. (In the end, Weaver won: Calvino died before he was able to see the final proofs.)
Born in Virginia, the youngest of five siblings, Weaver grew up in a rarefied southern household filled with books and music. He was sent off to boarding school at the age of 12 with a typewriter as a leaving present. His father, Henry, who worked as a recording secretary for the House of Representatives, instilled in him a love of opera and the printed word.
Weaver graduated from* *Princeton University and, shortly after Pearl Harbor brought America into the second world war in 1941, he joined the American Field Service as an ambulance driver, first in Africa and then in Italy. Weaver's first glimpse of Italy was in September 1943 when he landed at Salerno, south of Naples, in the rear of General George Patton's 5th Army. He instantly fell in love with the country and the people. During the winter of 1947-48 Weaver lived in Rome and got to know the novelist Alberto Moravia and his wife Elsa Morante. ("I met people I didn't even know I wanted to meet until after I met them," Weaver recalled.)
In the late 1940s Weaver began to translate more or less by accident, with no thought of becoming a professional. English-Italian dictionaries were as scarce as penicillin in postwar Italy, so Weaver began to teach himself Italian. His first translations (of poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo) were published in American magazines and encouraged Weaver to broaden his interest in Italian culture. In the 1950s, he settled in Rome, where he experienced firsthand the flashbulb glitz and glamour immortalised in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. At WH Auden's house in Ischia, south of Rome, he met Maria Callas, who became a friend.
Over the years, as Weaver divided his time between New York and a farmhouse in Tuscany, he combined translation work with literary journalism. Occasionally he appeared as a guest commentator on radio broadcasts for the Metropolitan Opera and was briefly Rome correspondent for the poet Alan Ross's London Magazine. In 1984, to critical acclaim, Weaver published his biography of the Italian actor Eleonora Duse.
Over the 50-odd years of his translating career, Weaver never once varied his method. Armed with a boxful of "Ebony soft pencils and good erasers", he would painstakingly go over a first draft with the help of the author. At all times he tried to preserve the rhythm, cadences and tone of the original. "Some of the hardest things to translate into English from Italian are not great big words," Weaver said in an interview with Paris Review in 2000, "but perfectly simple things, buon giorno for instance. How to translate that? We don't say 'good day', except in Australia…"
In 1981 Weaver finished a draft version of Eco's 500-page novel The Name of the Rose, then prepared a long list of queries. In the course of wine-fuelled restaurant lunches, he and Eco spread pages of draft manuscripts between the cruets of oil and vinegar, and worked on translations until dusk. Eventually Weaver was able to render the polyglot braggadocio of Eco's prose into impeccable and nuanced English.
I first met Weaver in 1993 at his home in Tuscany, where he had lived since the mid-60s; I had come to talk to him about his friendship with Primo Levi, whose biography I was writing. Weaver was then 70 and slim due to the stone in weight he had lost after giving up alcohol. He had a faint southern drawl and the air of the Virginian dandy. Midway through our meal of pasta with lemon and cream sauce (Weaver was an excellent cook), Muriel Spark walked in with a basketful of forest mushrooms; Spark was Weaver's neighbour.
Weaver had first heard of Levi in 1949 when Fiori Pucci, the wife of the Neapolitan novelist Raffaele La Capria, urged him to read Levi's concentration camp memoir If This Is a Man. Weaver demurred ("Not another memoir of the camps!") and did not read the book until nearly 20 years later. He was urged to do so by the Scottish translator of Italian Archibald Colquhoun. "I could see immediately that the book was a classic," recalled Weaver.
In 1984, Weaver translated Levi's Jewish partisan novel If Not Now, When? and enjoyed the experience. "There was a lot of laughter, and at times a great deal of frustration, as Primo and I searched for le mot juste." Weaver had a smattering of Yiddish picked up from Jewish friends in New York, and Levi was always flattered (he told Weaver) when a "goy" showed an interest in Jewish culture. Levi understood that beneath Weaver's professorial appearance was a sharp business acumen: his canny understanding of publishing deals and contracts earned him the nickname in Italy of Il Vecchio Lupo (the Old Wolf).
Even a partial list of the Italian writers Weaver translated – Giorgio Bassani, Roberto Calasso, Carlo Cassola, Oriana Fallaci, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Luigi Pirandello, Mario Soldati, Ignazio Silone and Italo Svevo, as well as libretti by Puccini and Verdi – is little short of astonishing.
Weaver had been in poor health since suffering a stroke several years ago. His partner, Kazuo Nakajima, died earlier this year.
• William Fense Weaver, translator, born 24 July 1923; died 12 November 2013 Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 hours ago.