From Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter to Langston Hughes' Piccola America negra: Where's the Music Gone?

Langston Hughes’ blues poetry amply demonstrates the crucial function of music in establishing African-American identity, an essential issue of the Harlem Renaissance. Also in Hughes’ first novel, Not Without Laughter (1930), music plays various roles in the definition of each character. Their images, however, are deeply influenced by Mrs. Charlotte Marie Mason, Hughes’ formal patroness and strong advocate of some sort of “negro primitivism.” In 1947, Not Without Laughter underwent further manipulation when it was translated into Italian by Mario Monti: Piccola America negra is in fact an excellent example of domestication in translation. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the influence of music in the depiction of an oppressive social system and in the attempt to grasp individual consciousness. Monti’s role in the Italian editorial market and some of his translation strategies are here examined to demonstrate not only the re- sulting effacement of the novel’s sonorous qualities, but also a distortion of the original intentions of the writer, who was in fact twice “betrayed.”