Abstract
Giuseppe Garibaldi’s novel Clelia o il governo dei preti (1870) is an exposition of the Italian hero’s strong anti-clerical sentiments in the form of a historical novel. Even before its publication in Italian, the novel was translated and published in England and the United States. The study examines how the source text was appropriated by the anonymous translator to suit the ideological agenda of radical anti-Catholic Protestant groups in Britain and America in the second half of the 19th century. The translation is considered within the historical context of Garibaldi’s celebrity status, the fortunes of his memoirs and literary works and the anti-Catholic campaigns in Britain and the US in the 19th century. The translation strategies adopted by the translator to rewrite Garibaldi’s novel according to the propaganda requirements and the sensibilities of Anglo-American Protestant readers particularly hostile to the Catholic Church are analyzed from the perspective of Lefevere’s view of translation as rewriting and its relationship with ideology, as well as Venuti’s identification of domestication as an ideological translation strategy.
In recent decades, the relationship between ideology and literary translation has become an important issue in the field of Translation Studies (see Fawcett, 2001: 106–111). As far as translation is concerned, the role of ideology, taken to mean what Teun van Dijk defined as ‘the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group’ (van Dijk, 1998: 8), may be considered on two inter-related levels. On a macro-level, the choice of what is translated, made by publishers, public authorities or the translators themselves, may be made according to ideological considerations, whereas on the micro-level translators may adopt specific translation strategies in order to rewrite the source text, to reflect a particular ideological orientation the text did not originally have. André Lefevere’s work in the 1990s dwelt on translation as rewriting of a source text according to constraints such as patronage, ideology, poetics, universe of discourse and, of course, language (see in particular Lefevere, 1992). On his part, Lawrence Venuti (2008) developed his views of ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’ from an ethical perspective. He showed how choices of translation strategies through the ages have been based on ideological motivations and how translation is one of the instruments historically used for the attainment or preservation of power and influence. The English 19th-century translation of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s novel Clelia o il governo dei preti provides an interesting example of the above. This brief study attempts to identify the reasons behind the choice of the novel for translation and to analyze how the source text was rewritten in order to conform to the ideological requirements of American and British anti-Catholic interest groups.
In the mid-19th century, hostility towards Catholicism and its clergy was widespread in American and British society, and it certainly formed part of the Anglo-American universe of discourse within the sphere of faith, religion and religious practice. Social changes and contemporary events shaped the perceptions of the dominant Protestant social groups on both sides of the Atlantic. The Irish Great Famine of the late 1840s brought a massive migration towards both Britain and America, resulting in an influx in those countries of over a million poor, foreign Catholics. In the US, the arrival of the Irish was accompanied by a steady immigration flow from Germany, and the first Italian migrants started arriving on the East coast. The arrival of large numbers of foreign Catholics was perceived as a threat to American nationhood, due to their lack of the Protestant ethos on which the nation was built and to their allegiance to a foreign power, namely the Papacy. The anti-Catholic activism of figures such as Lyman Beecher and Horace Bushnell, the Nativist movement and its political wing, the Know-Nothing Party, fuelled a high degree of hostility that occasionally degenerated into violence (see Oxx, 2013). In Britain, the long-standing enmity towards Catholicism was strengthened by the Oxford Movement’s challenge to Anglican religious practice in the 1840s, culminating in the high-profile conversions to Catholicism of John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, but even more so by Pope Pius IX’s decision in 1850 to re-establish the English Catholic hierarchy in what was termed ‘the Papal Aggression’ (see Norman, 1968). Consequently, Catholicism was perceived, at least by certain influential Protestant social groups, as a threat to the nation’s values and socio-economic accomplishments, an attack by ‘Popery’, with all its negative connotations, on Britain and America, with the scope of depriving their people of liberty and ‘enlightenment’, replacing them with Papal control and ‘superstition’.
Anti-Catholic sentiment was invariably echoed in the literatures of both countries, and anti-clericalism was a prominent feature of Anti-Catholic fiction. Most novels and other types of fictional works pertaining to this genre were characterized by crafty or lascivious clerics, intent on gaining the trust of innocent Protestant girls in order to lure them into submission and dishonour. As Susan Griffin observed, one of the most common narrative plots concerned nuns who escape from convents: Convents are priests’ brothels. Priests can enter them secretly, at any time of day or night, by means of concealed entrances and underground passages. The female inmates of the convent are either lascivious wantons or wretched victims of sexual and physical abuse. Those who refuse the priests’ attentions are punished and, like the infants born as a result of priests’ and nuns’ illicit relations, eventually murdered. In the passages and rooms beneath the convent, dreadful penances are exacted, recalcitrant nuns imprisoned, and bodies disposed of. (Griffin, 2004: 32)
Anti-clericalism in the second half of the 19th century was by no means limited to the Anglo-American socio-cultural sphere. In the Kingdom of Italy itself, anti-clericalism spread to the point that the government promulgated laws in 1866 and 1867 suppressing religious orders and establishing the forfeiture of ecclesiastical assets to the state. In the cultural sphere, Giosuè Carducci was the most authoritative and conspicuous exponent of anti-clericalism; his famous Inno a Satana (Hymn to Satan) was published in 1863. On his part, Garibaldi, taking advantage of his celebrity status, actively promoted his anti-clerical convictions especially during the electoral campaign of 1867.
Garibaldi’s reputation as a freedom fighter, military leader and charismatic figure was widespread. He visited England in 1864, and it is estimated that half a million people flocked to see him. However, what the English mostly saw in Garibaldi was, as Lucy Riall showed, ‘an opponent of “Popery”, the “Lord’s battleaxe” against the Roman “Babylon”’ (Riall, 2007: 332). He was also very popular in the United States, although he did not return there following his departure from New York in 1853, and the possibility of him commanding the Union’s troops during the Civil War did not materialize. Many books were written about him and a monument in his honour was erected in New York in 1888. Garibaldi’s fame and his anti-Catholic activism appealed both to his many English-speaking admirers and to the Protestant groups whose ideology benefitted from the General’s accusations against the Catholic Church and its clergy. There was definitely a market for English translations of his works, and the opportunity was not underestimated by publishers, who took advantage of the widespread Anglo-American interest in the Italian Risorgimento and its literary manifestations by publishing English translations of the works of other important figures such as Pellico, Mazzini, D’Azeglio and Guerrazzi (see France, 2000: 491). The translation of the first part of Garibaldi’s memoirs by American author Theodore Dwight, spanning from his birth to his return to Italy from South America in 1848, was published in 1859 by Barnes in the US and by Sampson Low in England. On the other hand, the translation of Clelia o il governo dei preti, Garibaldi’s most anti-clerical novel, was published in 1870 by Harper and Brothers in the US, by Copp, Clark & Co. in Canada and by Cassell in England.
In his memoirs, compiled around 1850 and revised various times in the following years until the definite version of 1872, Garibaldi gives his subjective interpretation of his military feats and seafaring adventures, his friendships and life events. He also makes his anti-clerical views amply clear from the beginning. In the preface of the definitive edition of 1872, he stated: In ogni mio scritto, io ho sempre attaccato il pretismo più particolarmente, perchè in esso ho sempre creduto trovare il puntello d’ogni despotismo, d’ogni vizio, d’ogni corruzione. Il prete è la personificazione d’ogni menzogna, il mentitore è ladro, il ladro è assassino, e potrei trovare al prete una serie d’infami corollari. (Garibaldi, 1888: 2) that Providence has committed to … [the Italians], in a prominent degree, the execution of some of his greatest designs, and the fulfilment of some of the most glorious prophesies and promises recorded in the Bible, especially in overturning popery. (Garibaldi, 1859: 8–9) prove the origin of […] [Garibaldi’s] greatness to be a pure and noble heart, a character eminently humane and disinterested, and show that one object which he had in view in training his countrymen in South America to fight for freedom there, was, to prepare them for the service of the same cause in their native land, whenever the time should arrive. (Garibaldi, 1859: 3)
On his part, Garibaldi was perfectly aware of the possibility his fame gave him, both in Italy and abroad, to spread his anti-clerical propaganda as a means to facilitate Italy’s transition to freedom, justice and social progress. In a letter to the French translator of his novel Cantoni, Garibaldi wrote: Scrivendo Romanzi non ho preteso certamente alla fama di letterato – ma bensì ho voluto render più accette, le mie idee sulla Teocrazia papale – peste del Mondo – e sul despotismo degno suo protettore – Credo aver con ciò compiuto un dovere; poiché credo – debba ogni uomo onesto contribuir colla parola e col fatto – quanto possibile – a rovesciare cotali schifosi – e corruttori ostacoli al progresso umano. (Garibaldi, 1870a: vii)
The plot of Clelia o il governo dei preti begins with the corrupt and depraved cardinal Procopio setting his eyes on Clelia, a young and beautiful Roman girl. With the help of his accomplices, the prelate orders the arrest of the girls’ parents in order to force her into submission. However, a group of intrepid young men, led by Attilio who is deeply in love with the girl, manages to secure the freedom of the whole family, killing the cardinal and his evil servants. The men are close friends and form part of a large group of conspirators who are intent on liberating Rome from the clutches of the clergy. The party escapes to the Roman countryside infested by brigands, where they meet other noble-hearted outcasts and experience a series of dramatic and romantic happy-ending adventures. However, the heroes and their respective lovers (among whom is Giulia, an English girl) eventually meet their cruel destiny following the 1867 unsuccessful attempt to liberate Rome. The men die heroically in battle, and the women escape from Italy on Giulia’s yacht, with which they reach England where they live the rest of their lives in exile.
The publication of Clelia was unusual in that the English translation of the novel was published almost concurrently with the Italian version. This peculiar occurrence gave rise to a mistranslation of the novel’s title, which baffled the Rechiedei brothers who bought the rights for the Italian edition. In the Editor’s Preface to the Italian first edition, they explained that the title Garibaldi had in mind for the novel was Clelia, ovvero il govero dei preti, although this did not appear on the manuscript they bought in England. In the meantime, the English translation was being prepared for publication with the title The Rule of the Monk. Realising that the Italian title reflected better the ideas expressed by the author, the Italian publishers consulted Garibaldi himself, whose reply reflected his strong anti-clerical feelings: ‘a Londra qualche prete senza dubbio ha creduto meglio intitolarlo I
The introduction to the translation, which forms part of the paratext together with the four appendices, gives a clear indication of the intention behind the rendering of Garibaldi’s novel into English. It not only highlights the heroic characteristics and flatteringly extols the literary merits of the author (his pastoral scenes are compared to those of Metastasio), but it presents the novel as ‘fiction founded upon fact’, where ‘fact’ means that Rome was ‘the emporium of solemn farces, miracle-plays, superstitious hypocrisies, the capital of an evil instead of a majestic kingdom’ (Garibaldi, 1870c: vii). The four appendices provide further historical information on the author himself, on recent Italian events and on the temporal power of the Pope. The authority and prestige of Garibaldi are brought forth as evidence of the truthfulness of his anti-clerical accusations and, consequently, of the radical Protestant groups’ justified preoccupation regarding the threat posed by Catholicism to the enlightened societies of Britain and America. The miserable state of Rome described in the novel thus becomes a cautionary example of the dangers posed by what was considered to be the nefarious influence of ‘Popery’ on Catholics all over the world. On his part, however, Garibaldi was more intent on denouncing the oppressive nature of Catholic clerical influence in Italy, as his main aim was the emancipation of the Italian people, so that they could return to enjoy the place they occupied in earlier centuries at the forefront of humanity’s quest for moral and economic progress. Consequently, whereas the Italian source text may be considered fundamentally anti-clerical, the English translation is more concerned with the ‘problem’ of Catholicism as a whole and its perceived threat to the well-being of nations.
This different perspective is also reflected on a textual level. The translator took considerable liberties with the source text in order to transform the Italian anti-clerical novel into an anti-Catholic propaganda publication fit for an Anglo-American readership. In the first chapter, apart from including a passage on the beauty of Rome, the translator inserts another on Catholic clerical celibacy, which is deemed ‘contrary to the will of God and man’, and is considered the cause of ‘every temptation to corruption and libertinism of the very worst kinds’ (Garibaldi, 1870c: 11). In the following chapter, another passage absent from the Italian mentions how the claim of the legitimacy of Papal temporal power is in contrast with the words of Christ and is enforced through foreign military intervention on the people of Rome. In both cases, the translator quotes verses from Scripture in order to provide justification for his arguments, as commonly done in religious polemical writings. In Chapter V, after narrating the story of the wretched Camilla, seduced by Cardinal Procopio who then orders the killing of the infant born from the illicit relationship in the presence of its mother, the translator anticipates the possible disbelief of his readers ‘as they sit beside their safe coal fires in free England or the United States’ (Garibaldi, 1870c: 15-6). He remarks that since ‘Popery has not been dominant in England since James II’s time’, they have forgotten the evils of Papal oppression, and reminds them that in 1848, after the Pope’s escape from Rome, one of the first orders given by the new administration was to liberate the nuns and search the convents. As already seen, the ‘topos’ of the abused Catholic nun was a favourite of radical Protestant propaganda, and also found its way into the translation of Garibaldi’s novel.
Another significant addition is found at the beginning of Chapter L, which opens the Second Part of the English version. The chapter corresponds to Chapter LII in the source text, where Garibaldi spews an impassioned attack against priests, accusing them of all kinds of evil. The invective against the clergy is shortened in the English version, but is followed by a lengthy explanation of the system of elective franchise in Italy, highlighting how elections are plagued by corruption and government pressure on voters. The collusion between church and state is identified as the reason why Garibaldi was accused of being an atheist, and the General’s rebuttal of the accusation is reproduced in translation. It was important to make clear to the Anglo-American Protestant reader that the accusation of atheism levelled at Garibaldi was false, as it would have severely undermined his reputation as an activist for the ‘purification’ of Christianity from the perceived corruption of Catholicism. From an anti-Catholic point of view, Garibaldi was relevant only insofar as he was a genuine believer in Christ, a fellow Christian with whom Protestants could share their enmity towards ‘Popery’. As an atheist, he would have had nothing in common with them, and he could not have been legitimately hailed as an anti-Catholic hero and co-defender of the ‘true’ faith.
The manipulation of the source text to fit the ideological mind frame of Anglo-American Protestant readers is however not limited to the additions made by the translator, but is also reflected in the omissions and in other modifications made to the story. Most of these changes concern references to the sexual behaviour of the clergy. In his novel, Garibaldi emphasizes the lasciviousness of priests of all ranks, and the lengths they go to in order to satisfy their inordinate lust. The translator limits the frequency of references to the sexual behaviour of the clergy, and avoids the most prurient passages found in the source text. In most cases, such references are transformed into generic accusations, and the sexual nature of the clergy’s misdeeds is referred to by implication. A case in point is the translation of the rhetorical question ‘quanti di quei poveri neri e luridi scorpioni a sottane venivano a sfamare le loro libidini in questi ginecei?’ with reference to the priests who abused young nuns in the underground cells of a convent. The translator opted for a more neutral phrase, ‘how many black deeds have been committed in these labyrinths?’ (Garibaldi, 1870b: 107; 1870c: 82).
The attempt to avoid the more thorny passages on sexual depravity is especially evident in two other cases. In Chapter XVII of the source text, Garibaldi compares Cardinal Procopio’s plan to force Clelia into submission with the 16th-century conspiracy of Pier Luigi Farnese, the son of Pope Paul III, who successfully plotted with his accomplices to rape the young Bishop of Fano. The reference to the scandalous incident is omitted altogether in the English version. In another instance, the translator chose to alter the storyline in the episode where the brigand Gasparo recounts how he became an outlaw. In Chapters XXVII to L, Garibaldi introduces a digression in which Gasparo narrates the story of when he saved Alba, a young and beautiful girl, from the clutches of a priest who was also her brother and who wanted to rape her. Gasparo prevented the violent incest and returned the girl to her father, who became the object of the lascivious cleric’s frustration and thirst for vengeance. The sad story has a tragic ending when the priest kills his own father. In the English version, the priest is not the girl’s brother but her uncle, and the assassination is thus transformed from a parricide into a fratricide. The modifications, which do not eliminate the incestuous aspect of the story, have the effect of toning down slightly the perverse element of the family tragedy. The dilution of such instances in the novel seem to form part of the translator’s strategy, possibly motivated by the moral constraints of his model reader.
On a general level, the translator took great liberties with the text. A number of chapters were arbitrarily merged together, one was omitted completely and the English version was subdivided into three parts whereas the source text has only two. Descriptions were added where the translator thought fit, and parts of the plot were supplemented by passages not found in the Italian version. Certain elements in the narrative were inexplicably ignored, such as the changing of the name of Giulia’s yacht from Seagull to Clelia, in honour of the young Englishwoman’s new Roman friend. In the target text, the yacht’s name remains the same throughout. Internal consistency is also somewhat erratic, suggesting that there could have been a certain urgency in delivering the work for publication. The name of the English boy who formed part of the yacht’s crew, John, changes to Jack between Chapters XXVI and XXVIII, and remains so until the end of the novel, while Garibaldi’s use of the first person to refer to himself in the source text is rendered as ‘I’, ‘we’ or ‘Garibaldi’ in various occasions.
The domesticating strategy adopted by the translator of Clelia, what Venuti defined as ‘an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to dominant cultural values in English’ (Venuti, 2008: 68), was the result of a target-oriented approach suited to the translator’s specific objective, or ‘skopos’. The extensive rewriting of the source text was ideologically motivated, and was intended to serve the anti-Catholic agenda of the Anglo-American Protestant groups that were particularly hostile to the Church of Rome. However, the translator’s efforts were not universally appreciated in the target culture. The translation was given a lukewarm reception by its reviewers in the press. The Times ‘had a good word for the skill of the translators’, but the Athenaeum was ‘less well-disposed … to the translator and his “pompous Introduction”’ (Griffiths, 1975: 86–87). Decidedly negative was the opinion expressed by the American author and Unitarian clergyman Edward Everett Hale in his periodical publication Old and New. After having provided a brief summary of the plot of Clelia, he unequivocally stated his disapproval of the translation: There is a translation of the book which fails to give an idea of the vigorous style of Garibaldi, and attempts to revise and correct him by omissions and interpolations entirely unjustifiable. The softening of such repulsive scenes as we have above alluded to may perhaps be pardoned, though we deny that even this lies within the scope of a translator; but to put in whole sentences not in the original, to entirely change others, and to omit pages, and, in one place, an entire chapter, - are frauds upon the author and the public. (Hale, 1870: 738)
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.