‘Il fiore del verso russo’? Soviet poetry, publishing and the PCI in post-war Italy

In 1949, the Italian left-wing publisher Einaudi, related in varying degrees to the Italian Communist Party (PCI), published a poetry anthology entitled Il fiore del verso russo (‘The Best of Russian Poetry’), edited by scholar Renato Poggioli. The publication sparked debate, as both the editor???s selection of poets and his preface were deemed as not fully aligned with communist ideals. This created tensions between the publishing house and the party, as well as within the publishing house itself. In 1961, Einaudi published a second anthology, of Soviet-era poetry only, Nuovi poeti sovietici (‘New Soviet Poets’), edited by Slavicist Angelo Maria Ripellino. By this time the editors??? attitude, as well as the relationship between Einaudi and the PCI, had radically changed, as was visible in the reception of the later anthology. This article draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework for its analysis of the production and reception of these literary works, and argues that, through the debates on poetry translation, Italian cultural agents sought to position themselves within both the national context of the changing post-war distribution of power and the transnational exchanges of the Cold War. The translation of Soviet poetry becomes a lens through which we can see the micro-dynamics and contradictions that emerge in transnational cultural networks and movements.