Born
Pietro P.G. Meneghelli in Mirano, a small town lying at the center of the
Padua-Venice-Treviso "triangle", on Sept. 17, 1949. Though he grew up in Rome,
he spent a fair amount of time in his native town; did part of his studies
at University College Dublin (*). Graduated cum
laude from Rome University in 1973, engaged in post-doctoral studies on Joyce's
Finnegans Wake in Dublin; specialized from Rome University (1978),
was lecturer in Italy. His first short essay on Irish author Flann O'Brien
was published 1975.
(Worked also under pennames: Horatio De Selby;
Enrichetta Orsomanni Messeliére.)
In the list
of authors
he translated stand prominent American
essayists like Donald
Harvey, Robert P. Harrison, Philip Jenkins, investigative
journalists like Joel Dyer, Jason Berry and Gerald Renner.
Mr. Meneghelli lives in a small village in
Umbria, where he works.
The translator's den
"Translating a literary work
(even one's own) from one language to another curiously implies the same type
of historical interpretation that is necessary in translating a poem of the
seventeenth century, for example, as contemporary cultures often enclaved
in different epochs of time coexist with each other" (Rosario Ferré).
Is then the translator a
time traveller?
Translator and author. Translated
into Italian and edited many literary classics —such as Melville's Moby
Dick (1995), Woolf's Night and Day (1996) etc.— and contemporary
works of fiction like R. Hellenga's The Sixteen Pleasures (1998); penned
critical essays on Irish literature (one of these is entitled, by an old rhyme,
Neither Saxon nor Italian, 2001) and a novel (La Croce Celtica,
1998). His first published translations (versions of eighteenth century fiction)
date back to 1978. 