Talk:Va, pensiero

WikiSource proposal

A number of opera excerpts and arias are now being proposed for moving to Wikisource. Someone removed the Wikisource tag here apparenly because it was not a complete opera. I have put it back. These articles are anomalous in WP. If they are moved to Wikisource then they can be edited as appropriate there. There is a discussion about this on Opera Project. - Kleinzach 10:45, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Apostrophe or not?

Is it Va, pensiero or Va', pensiero. We're using both versions at the moment. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:58, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

From memory, the apostrophe is not marking a contraction, it's a grave accent, or more precisely the vestigial remains of one. The third person singular of andare is "va" (go), but "và" indicates the imperative mood (go!). The ` in và is archaic, making no difference in pronunciation or otherwise. Perhaps fossilised as an apostrophe, it can be, and is often, left off. This perhaps may explain the "free variation" - analogous to Free variation in linguistics - between "Va pensiero" and "Va' pensiero". Or maybe I'm just completely wrong.--Shirt58 (talk) 11:30, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

That sounds quite plausible, thanks Shirt. Maybe an Italian speaker can advise. All I know is that, at the moment, between the title, the opening words of the lede, the text in the excerpt in the photo, and the photo caption, we're using Va x 3, and Va' x 2. It makes us look like a Mickey Mouse outfit. Even if we're 100% wrong, better to make the same mistake consistently than have a mish mash like this. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 14:55, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Update to Monsieur Maillot Cinquante-huit: As you would have seen from the replies on the Language Ref Desk here, in standard Italian it would be Va', but the actual libretto has the apostrophe-free version, Va. They checked with the experts on Italian WP. I guess it doesn’t matter which version we choose for our article, as long as we spell it consistently, and have a redirect from the other version, which we do. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

A few verbs in Italian have a special form for the imperative in the seocnd person singular. There are very few (I think it's only something like four or five), but they all end with an apostrophe, which is not normally used for all the other verbs. So the second person singular imperative of the verb andare (to go) is va'. Va without the apostrophe is the third person singular indicative (he/she/it goes/is going). The second person singular indicative is vai, and a lot of modern Italians use the indicative when they really should use the imperative (so if this chorus were written today it might be spelt "vai pensiero"). The apostrophe is merely indicative of this rather special imperative, and is not indicative of any missing letters. Spell checkers on mobile phones very often replace va' with và, which absolutely doesn't exist as any sort of a verb form, but which a lot of people think must be correct as their mobile has "corrected" it to that spelling. To use the spelling used for this article, "va pensiero", actually means something like "the thought is going", rather than ordering a thought to go. Therefore, for it to be correct Italian the apostrophe is absolutely required. Safebreaker (talk) 21:08, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

The spelling should stay as in the score. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:33, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

File:75 let 17 hor iz opery nabuk.ogg Nominated for Deletion

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IPA transcription of "Va, pensiero"

The IPA transcription of "Va, pensiero" should be emended to : [ˈva penˈsjɛːro]), because in Italian consonant gemination never occurs after a syntactic pause (here signalled by a comma). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_gemination#Exceptions — Preceding unsigned comment added by HumbleEB (talk • contribs) 07:58, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

English translation of the chorus

The English version of the chorus renders the actual meaning of most lines of verse, but the last quatrain certainly needs emendation. The line "o t'ispiri il Signore un concento" should be rendered as an exclamation, as an earnest and solemn entreaty (not as an alternative to the preceding two lines): "oh may the Lord inspire you a harmony of voices". It. "o" here corresponds to Eng. "oh", as in the first line of the quatrain. A better translation of the latter is: "Oh you akin to the fate of Jerusalem". The invocation of the first two lines is taken up again, and varied, in the last two lines: we need a crude lamentation and a harmony of voices "which may instill virtue to suffering", where "virtue" means "courage", as in some uses of Latin "virtus" (< "vir" = "man"). I would add this footnote to "virtù" and "virtue": [i.e. "courage" as in some uses of Latin "virtus" (< "vir" = "man"). Cfr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtus_%28virtue%29]. I would also add this footnote to "Sòlima" and "Jerusalem": [Ἱεροσόλυμα / Hierosólyma (> Jerosòlima > It. Sòlima) was the ancient Greek designation of Jerusalem. See http://greeklexicon.org/lexicon/strongs/2414/.] — Preceding unsigned comment added by HumbleEB (talk • contribs) 08:02, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Update. In an edit of 29 September 2017‎ user 92.2.137.180 modified the last quatrain of the chorus, which had been previously corrected and commented on by me (see English translation of the chorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Va,_pensiero). 92.2.137.180’s argument is incorrect. The Italian "O" can represent at least four different uses. See, e.g., Grande Dizionario Italiano di Aldo Gabrielli, which has a version online (https://www.grandidizionari.it/Dizionario_Italiano.aspx?idD=1) s.v. "o". The headword "o3" (interjection) shows that Italian "o" can be a variant of Italian "oh" (English "oh"), used for exclamations and solemn entreaties. The latter form is more common now, because it is unanbiguous. But in a similar exclamation, the well-known Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi uses "o": “o patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi ...” (oh my homeland, I see the walls and the arches...).

Moreover, the original libretto has an exclamation mark at the end of the quatrain (which I forgot to insert in 2016). See the libretto by Temistocle Solera. A copy is available at the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/resource/musschatz.12398.0/?sp=16&r=-0.07,0.119,0.987,0.4,0 See Part Three, Scene Four: "Che ne infonda al patire virtù!".

To sum up: both the first and the second "o" in the quatrain should be rendered as "oh" in English and the whole quatrain correctly interpreted as a sequence of two invocations separated by a comma and with an exclamation mark at the end of the English (and Italian) text.

"The overall intent of the sentence" is not (as 92.2.137.180 writes): "you either lament your fate, or let it transform you into a better person". Prosastically, what the chorus says in addressing the golden harp is: Please send out a sound of lamentation and may the Lord (hear you and) inspire you a harmony of voices which may give new courage to suffering. HumbleEB (talk) 11:26, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

(responding to message on my talk page) I'm not sure what the best way forward is. My Italian is very rudimentary, but I know that the anonymous editor's remark regarding "o … o" as "either … or" is not wrong. The paraphrasing section in it:Va, pensiero also sees it that way, and many websites use the same idea for their English translation. The only definitive way to settle this is to find a reputable translation that can be cited. Meanwhile, maybe User:Voceditenore can give us the benefit of her knowledge of Italian. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 16:00, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Dutifully answering your ping, Michael. The "either or" translation is correct. In other words: "You can either sit there and moan about it or let God give you some fortitude!". The "either or" interpretation is used in scholarly sources, e.g. [1], [2] and by the Metropolitan Opera [3]. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:24, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for your time! Majority opinions neither create truth nor alter facts. It is a real pity to read that poor quatrain in English! But I surrender. Best, HumbleEB (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

High, User:Michael Bednarek. Since you changed the last quatrain again, I feel free to comment on it. How can you explain "Let me cry out with sad lamentation" when the Italian original has "traggi un suono di crudo lamento" (give forth a sound of crude lamentation)? "Traggi" is an obsolete form of the 2nd person singular imperative/exhortative of "trarre". See the complete conjugation at http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/trarre/ The whole quatrain is addressed to the golden harp. Best, HumbleEB (talk) 15:09, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

It's not my translation, it's from the Met. Do you prefer the one by Michael Seymour in Knippschild and Morcillo? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 15:17, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate your kindness, but for me it is not a question of choosing an existing translation, but of having a correct translation, or at least one that does not distort the original. HumbleEB (talk) 17:30, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

You misunderstand how Wikipedia works: it's verifiability, not truth; it's presenting reliable sources, not original research. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:54, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I understand your position. I know how Wikipedia works and I'm not talking about truth. I am simply trying to show that rules cannot always be applied strictly, because good rules can sometimes produce unacceptable results, as in the line mentioned above. Best, HumbleEB (talk) 08:19, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Role in Italian political history

The passage «In 2009 Senator Umberto Bossi proposed replacing Italy's national anthem with "Va, pensiero"....» suggests that he was the first to do so, but in 2009 the proposal was certainly not new. Giorgio Soavi proposed the change much earlier. Thus I would re-write the whole as: «On January 27 1981 the journalist and creative writer Giorgio Soavi (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Soavi) proposed replacing Italy's national anthem with "Va, pensiero" in a letter published by Indro Montanelli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indro_Montanelli) in his daily newspaper “Il Giornale” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Giornale). The proposal was widely discussed for some time and then abandoned until 2009, when Senator Umberto Bossi took it up again,[5] but to no effect. However, Bossi's political party, Lega Nord/Padania, has adopted "Va, pensiero" as its official hymn and the chorus is now sung at all party meetings (see, for example, "National Anthem" at http://memim.com/padania.html and cfr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va'_pensiero_Padania).» — Preceding unsigned comment added by HumbleEB (talk • contribs) 08:06, 9 March 2016 (UTC)