The awards ceremony for the Benno Geiger Poetry Translation Prize 2020 will be held at 5 pm on February 26, 2021 at 5.00 pm.

The Ceremony will be hend on the Zoom platform and live on the Youtube Channel of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

 

The Award was established in 2014 by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in memory of the Austrian scholar Benno Geiger, whose literary collection is preserved and enhanced on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

The awards ceremony will be introduced by a special lecture by prof. Pietro Taravacci.

 

The Jury, chaired by Francesco Zambon, is made up of writers, critics, university professors and translation experts – such as Franco Buffoni, Fabrizio Cambi, Alessandro Niero, Snezana Milinkovic and Pietro Taravacci.

 

Scholarship

During the award ceremony, a residential scholarship will also be awarded, selected by the same Commission among the applications received.
The grant, worth 6,000 euros, is reserved for Italian and foreign graduates, PhD students and PhDs, under the age of 35 who have submitted a research project on the literary funds kept at the Giorgio Cini Foundation and will allow them to stay at the International Center for Studies of Italian Civilization ‘Vittore Branca’.

 

The “Benno Geiger” Prize and Fund

Italian translations of poetic works from ancient, medieval and modern Western languages ​​that have appeared in the last year and regularly on the market are invited to participate in the Benno Geiger Award. This seventh edition was attended by 20 works, reported by 17 publishing houses.

 

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini  established in 2014 the international poetic translation prize in memory of Benno Geiger, by the will of his daughter Elsa Geiger Ariè (born Elisabetta Paolina Geiger), with the aim of enhancing and studying her father’s literary fund, she herself donated to the Foundation in the late 1970s.

The collection, which has since been preserved on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, includes various materials: letters, publications, photographs, drafts, notes. The most important part are the letters that Benno Geiger exchanged during his life with over 500 authoritative correspondents: from Hofmannsthal to Rilke, from Kokoschka to Bernard, from Perosi to Bossi, from Pascoli to Borgese and Comisso.

To the letters are added some publications of Geiger, preparatory manuscripts of his German translations of Dante, Petrarca and Pascoli, correspondence with editors and other minor material. The Foundation also has a portrait of Benno Geiger painted by Emile Bernard, a gift from his daughter Elsa.