Back to work and Berenson's Socratic methods

 

Transcription

Luisa : I was kept so busy, doing all the research for Berenson, and doing the translations which were fascinating because in fact, I wasn’t a simple translator. Because I had to be there at his bedside every day, from nine to ten… and tell him what I had found, because he woke up at six o’clock, Berenson, and then worked between six and ten … he had Emma bring him some sort of breakfast, I don’t know what… in bed, not getting out of bed, he used to write.

And then at nine o’ clock, from nine to ten, I was sitting by his bed, with all my papers and discussing, you know, what I had found, and always …all the thing were published first in Italian and then into English. But I’d say “ No this makes no sense, this I don’t understand,” I was being …. it was also my job to say, to contradict, to ask questions, he liked that, it was not a lack of respect… ( Mary: “No, no, no”) He wanted me to do that (Mary “That’s kind of what an editor does, isn’t it, in a certain sense?”)

I see, well I had never done it before, because at the university as you know …you had to learn by heart some things, and then repeat it, whereas with Berenson, it was this kind of Socratic method. So that went on …

(Mary “It stimulated him probably a lot”)

I suppose so, because he encouraged me to do that. And sometimes we composed new wording together, because he knew Italian very well. He didn’t speak it much, and when he spoke it, it was such a refined Italian, that it was almost, you know, like having, I don’t know, Manzoni or somebody from a century before speaking. But he knew Italian beautifully, also the choice of words was very refined

Sometimes when I was unsure… he suggested Italian words,… from a literary point of view he knew it beautifully.