The Great Absentee: Notes on the Italian reception of Twentieth-century Russian Poetry for children

The article offers a review of 20th century Russian children’s poetry trans- lated into Italian. Despite the fact that Russia can boast a great tradition of children’s literature in verse, the number of existing Italian translations is not very large and the authors translated are only some happy few. They are Vladimir Mayakovskiy, Osip Mandel’shtam, Boris Pasternak, Korney Chukovskiy and Samuil Marshak. Their not very many texts have mostly appeared for little publishers with scarce circulation. Attention to formal aspects has also not always been impeccable, and no Italian poet has sys- tematically devoted himself to elaborate Italian versions that could aspire to true aesthetic autonomy. This is why, in spite of some notable translations in recent times, we must continue to speak of Russian poetry for children as the great absentee on the Italian cultural scene.