“Peculiare struttura” o “necessario respiro”? : L’interpunzione nelle traduzioni italiane del Michael Kohlhaas di Heinrich von Kleist

Abstract

The paper analyses the rendering of the elaborate hypotactic style of Heinrich von Kleist’s short story Michael Kohlhaas in thirteen Italian translations, with particular reference to the preservation or variation of punctuation in relation to the original text. Starting from contrastive considerations on the differences in punctuation between German and Italian and observations on the functions of punctuation marks, the paper examines a sample of Kleist’s text by observing the translation of punctuation and tries to identify, on the one hand, the tendency to guarantee the Italian reader a greater usability of the text (in terms of reading difficulty) and, on the other hand, the need to preserve Kleist’s elaborate hypotactic style.