Déplacer et replacer la poésie révolutionnaire entre la France et l'Italie: le cas de Giovanni Fantoni

Giovani Fantoni was a patriot poet and one of the democratic protagonists of the political and cultural life of the Italian Triennio of 1796-1799. This article examines two of his compositions from different periods – the translation into Italian of the Hymne à l’Être suprême (Hymn to the Supreme Being) by Marie-Joseph Chénier and the ode Il fanatismo, which was destined for a bilingual audience. In doing so, it addresses the problem of translation and the militant translatability of revolutionary ideas; this was a question of linguistics as well as a politics. Poetry and translation – or paraphrasing – of verse offers specific ways of circulating and transporting certain topics and emotions between two nations that were experiencing the process of revolution, and consequently the dimension of living memory, out of step temporally from one another and within a framework of unequal reciprocity.