So it seems that my grandfather's journals will be harder to translate than I had hoped. My Italian teacher took a look at some pages and although he was able to make out quite a bit of the handwriting, he said it would be difficult to do a clean translation because the writing is such a "stream of consciousness". He said that although the writer was highly intelligent and seemingly well-read, he wrote without concern for consistency of proper tenses, subjects, or sentence structure. The writing was a mix of melancholy thoughts, quotes and citations, and drafts of letters that were never sent. He also said something quite interesting ~ he said that he felt the journal was written by someone who longed to be a writer, but for some reason was never able to. I realized they must be filled with quite a depth of content for a total stranger to get such an acute sense of who this person writing was. I walked away feeling deep regret that I never really knew my grandfather, and that I might never truly know who this enigma of a man was.For now I must be content and grateful that I have his journals as a source of inspiration and the backdrop for my work, but I will continue to chip away at words and phrases in the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of my grandfather.
