« Peter Robinson on Vittorio Sereni »

Last night, Peter Robinson gave a special lecture on his newly published Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. My professor for Italian Theater, Lucia Re, read a few of Sereni's poems in the original Italian, Peter Robinson followed with his translations in English, and several times, we were delighted to hear Sereni's own voice reciting his poetry from recordings that Peter Robinson made before the poet's death.

At the book signing, I was too cold and tired to realize the greatness of the professor that had flown in from Japan just to promote his book to the sparse audience of fifteen people, so when I got home and woke myself up with a cold glass of water, I looked him up and read his internet autobiography. I was so impressed by his life and works that I wrote him this email:

Dear Dr. Robinson,
First of all, I hope this is your email address.
I attended your lecture this evening at the Italian Institute. I am the one who asked you to sign the books "Happy Birthday Erika" and "To Kristina with a K"...
Thank you so much for your inspiring talk. I have dabbled a bit in translation for a private business, and that was terribly difficult, so I am really impressed with your treatment of Sereni.
I hope you have a nice flight home to Japan,
Sincerely,
Kristina F. Bigdeli (UCLA undergrad in Italian)

And here is his response:

Dear Kristina,
This is my real e-mail address, but the other one gets forwarded to me ... Thank you so much for thinking of writing. It was lovely to meet you both and to appreciate your warmth and commitment. All best for your studies, and I hope we get the chance to meet again -- if they ever dare to invite me back to LA!
Warm regards,
Peter

Comments

[claudio]

potere della letteratura! potere della poesia! :-)

bello il tuo blog... ma quasi nessuno ti scrive commenti!! beh lo faccio io ora.

greetings from france

[Anna Maria]

Feeling lost this morning with so much work to do and lacking the energy to begin, I instead developed curiosity about your web site. Again, though my brain is feeling so lethargic this morning, I could only come up with two words to describe it: 'impressive" and "moving".