Moscardino and Enrico Pea

In 1941 Pound discovered a novella by Enrico Pea, Moscardino, decided that it was a masterpiece, and proceeded to translate it erratically. The translation was published after the war and is here considered for the light it throws on Pound’s scant knowledge of Italian, impatience with minutiae, and literary interests. Moscardino presents a rural, half-savage, community, dominated by primitive passions, reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence, a writer with whose primitivism Pound has much in common.