> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Two Poems by Ardengo Soffici, Translated by Olivia E. Sears - URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-ardengo-soffici-translated-by-olivia-e-sears/ - Published: 2020-05-13T11:00:16.000Z - Updated: 2025-11-24T16:38:57.000Z - Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Ardengo Soffici, translated by Olivia E. Sears, for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers. - Author: Wendy Xu - Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:41 (2019, 2020, part 2) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/05/folding-house-23-high.jpg) Zarina, “Folding House” (2013), detail from a set of 50 collages on Indian handmade paper with Sumi ink, 22-karat gold leaf, wax, mylar, pewter leaf and obsidian mounted on Arches Cover Buff paper, each: 8 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches (© Zarina, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York) **Translator’s note:** Ardengo Soffici began his career as a painter living between Florence and Paris, where he developed lasting friendships with Picasso and Apollinaire. Early 20th-century Paris was home to a thriving avant-garde, while Florence saw an explosion of cultural magazines; Soffici managed to situate himself in the midst of both movements. While he continued to exhibit his paintings alongside Braque and others in Paris, he wrote for influential Italian publications as an art critic, introducing French Cubist and Impressionist artists to the Italian cultural scene. Back in Italy, Soffici became a central cultural figure, and in this fertile milieu he began writing poetry in a radically original fashion, building on his love of Rimbaud and applying new concepts borrowed from French avant-garde painting. During his most innovative period (1900 to 1915), Soffici’s work combined Cubist and Impressionist writing, [*parole in libertà*](https://www.britannica.com/art/parole-in-liberta?ref=hyperallergic.com), experiments in typography, and the influence of late collaborations with Apollinaire, culminating in his 1915 master work entitled *BÏF§ZF+18: Simultaneità e Chimismi lirici* (often referred to as “Bizzeffe,” given the title’s unpronounceable typographic elements). Soffici eschews all punctuation in his poems, often creating a flood of hallucinatory utterances. As one critic suggests, Soffici “in some ways anticipated for Italian letters what Gertrude Stein was to accomplish later for American writers.” Unfortunately, soon after the book’s publication, he set off to serve in World War I. When he returned, the Florentine avant-garde was no more. Soffici wholly rejected his prior experimentalism and embraced conservative trends in both literature and politics. As a consequence of this radical about-face, his groundbreaking early work was largely forgotten and has never been fully translated. The book *BÏF§ZF+18* combines poems from the two distinct poetic forms of the subtitle: *Simultaneities and Lyric Chemism*s. “Atelier” belongs to the more symbolist-inspired “simultaneities,” often characterized by a collapsing of time. In these poems Soffici depicts his subject from several perspectives simultaneously like a Cubist painter, while also attending to the ephemeral nature of light and color like an Impressionist. By contrast, in “Typography,” Soffici illustrates his love of letters — the “mortal attire” of poetry — not primarily through *words* but through a *visual* jumble of lettering that dominates the page and dwarfs his tiny poem hidden in the center. This “lyric chemism” is an example of the visually dynamic poetic form Soffici developed contemporaneous with the Futurists’ *parole in libertà* and the *calligrammes* of Apollinaire. Soffici’s hypnotic poems pile up colors, ripe fruit, nude bodies, musical instruments, fresh flowers, typographical elements, foreign languages, scrawled messages, books, and booze, to summon a sensory tsunami — all in an effort to portray experiences based in space and time on the static page. Nailed down in printed letters, Soffici’s poetry of excess attempts a transubstantiation of the infinite and the mysterious, to write what can never be fully expressed because it is both boundless and unknown. And yet his poetry keeps trying. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/05/tipografia.jpg) Original version of Tipografia (Typography) \*\*\* ## Atelier Five meters by seven carved from the amaranth of the sun Radiotelephantastic booth open to all messages Every painting is a window onto the frenzy of life I am a thrower-open of windows And senses Every color Sings like a bird An instrument A passion Blue yellow green cobalt Black vermillion and tender pink My magnetic eyes attract lights And memories From the four corners of the world I unravel the rainbow Let things men countries Come to me like simple children Settle down around me each in its place in the picture frames Bottles of every kind of spirit Sher Tvui Césa written on the labels A fine white fig Mouthwatering watermelons Vermillion rooftops the repose of lovers in the shadow of summer branches Wine flasks toys newspapers Posters of nude bodies in full bloom Cirque Médrano La Gaîté-Rochechouart Each creation more divine than the last In the great international chaos Of this existence strewn across table and walls Letters unanswered Telegrams petits bleus Of rendezvous business deals invitations Here’s the Russian coachman with the golden top hat Just arrived from Kiev in Marinetti’s pocket A guitar The white clay pipe From Gambier à Paris And the fresh young tulip Of a girl who isn’t coming back On a trop répété cette parole Je t’aime In every language Hundreds of books all lined up Repugnant as cadavers of old friends Stendhal’s the only one you can still read In the floral armchair between the tea and the fruit salad But the inscriptions in charcoal and chalk On the door and the walls Keep better time with the bewildered music of a day juicy as a ripe orange “I’m at the café across the street” “A. came at 5 Will be back” “Salaud tu poses tout le temps des lapins! Germaine” “Anita Caputo model 57 rue de Vaugirard” (Rue de Vaugirard! I shed half my best tears there in vain On a sofa scented with Jicky perfume and ether) “R.L.L. 3.75” “Remember to write Irene at Fondukleskaja D. 27” “N.V. 104 Prussian blue 3” Mysteries mysteries on sale cheap Paid for with 24 hours of youth per day Atelier ateliers Compass roses Joy beauty miseries Dissolved in the depths of harmonies In the cubic vat minute by minute Just open the crystal vials and magic spells will smother you Pull aside the curtain Facing the street that rises and falls The twilight that festers in the white basin Smokestacks towers chimneys stars Cities of Europe deep in the night And trains speeding through lit up like theaters trains laden with nostalgia All the earth comes to rest Halcyon bird tired of flying Unfurled like a flag over our hearts ## Typography Poetry shining summit of the universe Even your mortal attire is charming Ancient things of flesh and sinew Living beings with their earthly fate Shadows now nailed down with a clear and fixed sign Typefaces transubstantiation of infinite mysteries Alphabets letters dentelles batistes bows Ornaments of the naked idea Je m’abîme dans ce fouillis de tiédeurs charnelles I breathe the rich odors of your secrets I kiss your golden scarves that are but a small part of your great body Old cosmopolitan satyr of future mythologies Voilà I possess you completely \*\*\* Poet and painter Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964) exhibited his art alongside Picasso and Braque and, through his early reviews of the Parisian avant-garde, established himself as an important cultural mediator between France and Italy. He soon dove into the Florentine literary scene, co-founding the magazine *Lacerba*, and emerged as one of the most innovative poets linked to Futurism. His poetry culminated in the experimental *BÏF§ZF+18: Simultaneità e Chimismi lirici,* published in 1915 (and expanded in 1919). The volume *Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms*, forthcoming from [World Poetry Books](http://www.worldpoetrybooks.com/index.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), is his first full-length collection in English. Olivia E. Sears is founder of the [Center for the Art of Translation](https://www.catranslation.org/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and the journal *Two Lines*, which she edited for more than a decade. Recent publications include translations of Italian women writers ranging from early 20th-century Dada poet Maria d’Arezzo to the 1960s/70s avant-garde poet Patrizia Vicinelli to contemporary poet and dramatist Mariangela Gualtieri. Her translations of Ardengo Soffici appear in numerous magazines as well as [*The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Italian Poetry*](https://bookshop.org/a/539/9780374533687?ref=hyperallergic.com). A graduate of Yale University, she holds a doctorate in Italian literature from Stanford University. These poems were drawn from her forthcoming translation of Soffici’s 1915 master work, *Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms* (World Poetry Books, 2020).