Reviewed by: “Riders to the Sea”/“La Cavalcata al Mare” by John Millington Synge Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli (bio) “RIDERS TO THE SEA”/“LA CAVALCATA AL MARE,” by John Millington Synge, translated by James Joyce and Nicolò Vidacovich, edited by Dario Calimani. Treviso: Compiano Editore, 2012. 126 pp. €16.00. This elegant volume, edited by Dario Calimani, is the latest Italian edition of John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea, translated into Italian by James Joyce and Nicolò Vidacovich, one of Joyce’s Triestine pupils and a well-known lawyer. Previous publications, after the first appearance of the Italian translation in Solaria,1 include the 1988 edition by E. Fintz Menasce,2 which is listed in Calimani’s bibliography, and the prestigious 1992 Mondadori publication in Poesie e Prose, edited by Franca Ruggieri.3 What makes this 2012 edition particularly interesting is its layout: we not only have Synge’s play on the left-hand page and the Joyce-Vidacovich translation on the right, but also everything in this volume is bilingual. The thirty-six-page Italian introduction by Calimani is accompanied by an excellent English translation, as are the notes and the bibliography. Such an editorial choice certainly increases the potential readership of the book because it is clearly addressed to both Italian- and English-speaking audiences.4 This edition, moreover, is part of an ambitious editorial project that will be completed in the near future. The editor, Calimani, is the chair of English literature at the University of Venice, and he told me that his love for Synge’s play goes back many years (7 June 2013). He shows this affection in his introduction, where he writes: “Riders to the Sea is an artistic jewel that links indissolubly the names of Synge and Joyce as the symbol of a profound affinity of both intellect and sentiments” (60). About fifteen years ago, one of Calimani’s students, a retired surgeon who attended a course on the Irish theater, suggested that a luxury edition of the play, including the Joyce-Vidacovich translation, should be published. The idea was that Calimani would write an introduction and possibly some notes. The surgeon convinced an artist from Genoa, Emanuele Luzzati (1921-2007), to draw a series of serigraphs to illustrate Synge’s play, and he also sponsored the silk printing of a hundred numbered copies.5 The original project was to consist of the publication of a two-book slipcase containing a hardback, illustrated, and luxury volume with Luzzati’s serigraphs and a paperback copy. The idea was to appeal to serious scholars as well as to students and general readers. Unfortunately, the James Joyce estate objected to the publication, and the project was frozen until the copyright expired in 2011. In the meantime, however, the publisher Treviso also lost interest in the project, and it was only recently that Calimani was able to have just the paperback volume printed. I note that the book cover features a beautiful reproduction [End Page 1114] of one of Luzzati’s serigraphs representing a ship in a storm and the figure of a woman wrapped in a robe waiting on shore—a powerful image evoking tragedy. Synge scholars will definitely appreciate this publication, enriched as it is by the Joyce-Vidacovich translation. They will find Calimani’s introduction extremely provocative and effectively argued in its scrutiny of the Synge-William Butler Yeats relationship, re-creation of the cultural background of the Celtic Revival, and evaluation of “this miniature masterpiece of Irish literature,” which was set to music by the English composer Ralph Vaughan William and “is still considered [his] most successful opera” (37, 38).6 Calimani describes at length Yeats’s interest in Synge, their meeting, and the advice Yeats gave him: “Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression” (39).7 It was thanks to Yeats’s suggestion that Riders to the Sea was created. Surprisingly enough, Calimani observes, for Yeats, “the play seemed, for all the nobility of its end, its mood of Greek tragedy, too passive in suffering” (45). According to Calimani, “Yeats did not like...