Gli incantesimi nella poesia popolare finlandese e le sue testualizzazioni

Antonio Parente; Viola Parente-Čapková

doi:10.6093/1826-753X/8873

Antonio Parente Literary translator and independent researcher
Viola Parente-Čapková University of Turku, Finland http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0629-1182

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/1826-753X/8873

Keywords: Finnish folk poetry, ritual poetry, spells, translation

Abstract

Article english title: Spells in Finnish Folk Poetry and its Textualizations

Kalevala and Kanteletar are respectively the epic and lyrical collection of poems compiled and heavily edited by the folk poetry collector and philologist Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884). In this paper we present a more authentic form, the original texts of Finnish folk poetry, which can be accessed, for example, through the collection of the Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot I-XXXIV ([1908-1948] 1997, Gli antichi poemi del popolo finlandese I-XXXIV), in which the majority of the original collected Kalevalian folk poetry has been recorded. Although genres, subgenres and topics in the field of folklore have enjoyed different status, one seems particularly interesting to us e.g. that of spells/incantations. It is not only because of the originality of this genre of ritual poetry, but also because it is apparent how nowadays its tradition is very active and productive in different cultural/artistic fields. Within this framework and with particular attention to the healing spells, we present translations of texts not only dating back to ancient material collected in the 19th century, but also from new sources, ranging from the musical field to the very recent spell against the Corona virus.

Author Biographies

Antonio Parente, Literary translator and independent researcher

Antonio Parente (<antonioeviola@email.it>) is a literary translator and independent researcher. He translates poetry, prose, non-fiction, and theatre plays from Finnish, Czech, and English. He has published translations of poetry in various magazines and anthologies and edited numerous poetry publications. He has subtitled a large number of films, also for international events such as the Venice Film Festival. He teaches courses of literary translation. Lately, he has been mainly interested in the relationship between artificial intelligence and translation. Together with his wife Viola Čapková, he won, at FILI’s suggestion, the 2004 National Prize for Literary Translation, awarded by the Finnish Minister of Culture.

Viola Parente-Čapková, University of Turku, Finland

Viola Parente-Čapková (<viocap@utu.fi>), Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku and at Charles University, Prague. Currently, she works at the University of Turku, School of History, Culture and Arts Studies, where she leads two research projects. Her fields of expertise are Finnish literature in the European perspective, namely the turn of the 19th and the 20th century, literature written by women, gender studies, transnational reception of women’s writing, spirituality in literature, theory of literary history, digital humanities. She has published extensively on these topics and has translated poetry and prose from Finnish into Czech.