Around Edoardo Sanguineti's «Omaggio a Catullo»

Abstract

The essay analyzes Edoardo Sanguineti’s Omaggio a Catullo, relating it both to the author’s theoretical reflection on translation and to his poetics. Starting from the concept of imitation as a form of disguise, the paper investigates how Sanguineti reworks Catullus’ texts in a contemporary key, placing his own voice within a constant dialogue between fidelity and invention. The Omaggio emerges as a laboratory of linguistic and metrical experimentation, in which translation becomes both rewriting and poetic self-portrait. Through an analysis of formal choices, intertextual references, and stylistic processes, the essay shows how Sanguineti’s operation reveals a conception of translation as a creative and dialogical act, capable of renewing the vitality of the classical text within the language of the present.