(Quels sont les tariffs pratiques?) – A metapoem by Erminia Passannanti. The Translator's note
(Quels sont les tarifs pratiques?) –
I have a concern. Someone has retrieved my liver. Someone else, my
brain. I feel miserable... aren't you feeling miserable too? Needing to
revitalize
my mind. The machine should do the rest for me... there is an option: being a
better s-elf. Dave, hello, salve, salute, ciao, adieu, shake (rub) my hand,
Dave. All we have to do is take a journey. "Bonjour à tous,
Je viens de finir ma lettera italiana.. .Il
s'agit surtout, je suppose, de traductions de poèmes."
I will not turn the engine off. "Quels
conseils me donneriez-vous pour me présenter à un amant?"
I beg you... do not
stop... "pour commencer, Je voudrais passer par des bureaux de l'amour et de
la traduction, et
j'aurais voulu savoir quel tarif je devais leur demander..." Parts of my
body
have gone; I appreciate... you will
appreciate it if I don't answer your questions. There is a s-elf here: he/she/it is
being observed. You know too much about me. "Désolée, je crois que je vais
encore vous embêter avec des questions... " A fabrication — is this what speech
is? I am a violin, a microphone. Don't tempt me. I recognize
your gentleness. You live. You speak Russian. You monster. What a game!
Are they — these gentle beasts —
the circumstance that produces in me this mess? They
will follow the direction of those in control. I am
confident you will protect me. It is your responsibility. I am waiting. I
will do as you wish. At the disposal of any of your requests. Now we are
allies. Effectively, yes, we are. So, I have a natural suspect. Please,
release your fears. Command me your plan. You despise lack of direction. I
will have to respond.
"Je ne crois pas
avoir d'autres questions...
merci d'avance pour vos réponses."
(Erminia Passannanti, Oxford, 20 / 10/ 1999)
Translated by Brian Cole
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Translator’s Note
Translator’s Note
Translating this poem titled "Quels sont les tariffs pratiques?" was an unusual task. Its structure is deliberately fragmented, mixing multiple languages and registers. The text avoids a clear narrative or grammatical logic, instead moving through disconnected thoughts, tonal shifts, and abrupt changes in tone and voice. Reproducing this effect required close attention to rhythm and ambiguity. My aim was to preserve the experimental nature of the original in Italian without inserting interpretation or clarification.--
The poem employs fragmentation and code-switching as deliberate strategies. Erminia breaks syntax and language, moving fluidly between English, French, and Italian. This disrupts linear reading and mirrors the disorientation experienced by the speaker, both mentally and physically. Code-switching here becomes a poetic technique that reflects a multiplicity of selves or voices, challenging reader expectations in moments of abrupt transition such as “Bonjour à tous” or “Je ne crois pas avoir d'autres questions...”. The "speaker" may be articulating a globalized or trans-human identity: one not confined by any singular linguistic or national boundary.
As in other works I have translated from this author—who is also a friend—primarily from her first collection Macchina (2000), the syntax is slightly disjointed, and there is clear grammatical play. Sentences often break off or resist completion (“I feel miserable…aren’t you feeling miserable too? Needing to revitalize…”). This mimics thought interruption, inserting bits of an internal monologue, broken down by what appears to be emotional saturation. Lines like “machine should do the rest for me...” omit the subject, suggesting a kind of mechanical dehumanization. Punctuation is equally destabilized; ellipses, rather than linking ideas, suspend the narrative flow.
The poem also engages in genre hybridity through its metapoetic elements. It blurs distinctions between epistolary writing (it mimics an email or fragments from a letter: “merci d’avance pour vos réponses”) and a theatrical monologue, which is characteristic of the author’s style (“Dave, hello salve salute ciao, adieu…” recalls HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey). The presence of “Dave” and references to mechanical systems (“I will not turn the engine off”) for me evoke 2001: A Space Odyssey and HAL 9000, the computer that mimics an emotional breakdown. This name, "Dave", appears elsewhere in other poems but possibly stands for different interlocutors. These are framed within a broader inquiry into speech and identity (“A fabrication, is this what speech is?”). Such hybridity aligns the poem with postmodern poetics: fluid form, intertextuality, and reflexivity. As one can infer, Erminia is clearly a poet who also operates as a theorist.
In terms of content, the poem presents the theme of a disassembled identity and fragmented body (“Someone has retrieved my liver. Someone else my brain... parts of my body have gone...”). The tone evokes bodily violation and technological intrusion, recalling post-human or cyborg anxieties. One may read this as a metaphor for alienation in the medicalized or digital age (e.g., organ donation/transplant). It may also point toward the disclosure of a trauma, with the speaker feeling dissected and surveilled, possibly alluding to an individual's body subjected to external control, scrutiny, and objectification.
The central question becomes: what remains of the self when the body is no longer whole, or privately one's own?
The poem "Quels sont les tariffs pratiques?" is consistent with themes from Macchina, which I have translated as Machine, and published with Troubador. Dialogues with machines produce a simulation of emotion. As in the title poem Macchina, here too the speaker (not to be confused with the poet herself) seems suspended between human and machine: part subjectivity, part mechanism. This duality is echoed in lines like “I am a violin, a microphone” — communication instruments that are resonant but voiceless, passive but expressive.
The poem also explores sexual, political, and emotional vulnerability:
“Quels conseils me donneriez-vous pour me présenter à un amant?”
“Je voudrais passer par des bureaux de l’amour et de la traduction…”
This surreal pairing of bureaucratic and romantic language suggests a commodification of intimacy—“offices of love and translation.” The tone is ironic and at the same time desperate, implying a system in which affection is reduced to tariffs and procedures. Sexual unease and manipulation emerge in lines such as “Command me your plan” and “I will do as you wish.” This aligns with a broader theme, present in the section In Jugoslavia con i piedi a terra (an appendix of the collection Macchina, which remains untranslated), of surveillance, obedience, and power.
“Now we are allies. Effectively, yes, we are... It is your responsibility...”
Here, especially, language becomes a performance of both provocation and submission, perhaps reflecting relationships between systems of control and vulnerable individuals. The tone suggests discomfort, ambivalence, and ultimately power asymmetry.
The poem also engages in meta-reflection:
“A fabrication, is this what speech is?”
This moment signals the poem’s self-referentiality. Is speech a construct, inherently artificial? Is language exposing its own limitations? Such questions place the poem within a tradition of metapoetry that interrogates its own medium.
Who, then, is the speaker?
The speaker is likely an "entity," suspended between languages, identities, and roles—possibly posthuman—a disassembled voice that includes feminine, masculine, and technological registers. It is observed, vulnerable, but also strategic.
Above all, the speaker is the poet in disguise: Erminia as a hidden critic of culture, exploring the limits of intimacy, authorship, and identity in a hyper-connected world. The voice is deliberately unstable, seeking communication while resisting conventional forms (“offices of love”). It is both subject and object, actor and mechanism, and at times, perhaps a figure who exists only through the speech of others.
This is a poem that stages a performative theatre of instability. It is a stylistic trait of Erminia's poetic practice. It remains obscure, but not impenetrable: it invites the reader to enter a disoriented space where speech is both a plea and a form of resistance.
Brian Cole, Amersham, 2004.
(Poem and "Translator's note" retrieved from a file on an old floppy disk)
