The 2025 Benno Geiger Prize was awarded to Andrea Ceccherelli, dedicated to the most recent publications of poetic texts translated into Italian. The award recognizes the mastery with which Ceccherelli translated the book by the great Polish author Wisława Szymborska, “Ancient tale and other dispersed poems” (Adelphi, Milan 2025). The awards ceremony will be held tomorrow, Thursday 20 November, at 5.00 pm, in the Sala del Soffitto at the Giorgio Cini Foundation, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice.
In their motivations, the jury highlighted the translator’s ability to create a “wise balance between acclimatization and estrangement, for having been able to convey poems of different strengths and origins with inspiration and ingenuity, for having offered the public a compact volume that brings us closer to the all-round image of Szymborska”. Andrea Ceccherelli (Florence, 1970) is a full professor of Slavic studies and teaches Polish language and literature at the University of Bologna, where he is currently director of the University Language Centre. His studies span Polish literature from the Renaissance to the contemporary. He has written and edited over one hundred scientific publications. In 2024 he had already obtained a special mention, again at the Geiger Prize.
Upon receiving the news of the award, Ceccherelli commented as follows: “I am happy and honoured. An honor that I feel it is my duty to share with Adelphi all, to whose loving care the book owes much more than the ‘biological’ fact of its coming into the world. Who knows what Mrs. Wisława would have said… I think she would have been happy, not only because the merit of the award is above all hers, not only because she loved her translators, but also and above all because at the ceremony the ‘speech’ would not have fallen to her.”
The Young Translator Award is awarded to Giulia Bertazzoni, for the translation of “Night in Paris” by Antonio Jiménez Millán, (Le Lettere, Florence, 2024). According to the jury, the translator “fully respects the sobriety of Jiménez Millán’s gaze and restores, with fidelity and notable compositional awareness, the measure of the verses, the rhythmic progression of each composition, capturing the truest aspect of the original poetic text”. And he adds: “What is particularly appreciated in the young translator’s work is the skill with which she translates the singular timbre of the Spanish poet’s voice into the Italian text.”
Giulia Bertazzoni (Brescia, 1998) graduated in Intercultural Studies in Languages and Literatures at the University of Bergamo, holds a master’s degree in translation (at SSIT, 2023) and at Estudios Hispánicos Superiores (Seville, 2024): “When I heard about the award, I could hardly believe it. It is a great honor for me, and I am sure that Antonio would be very happy. I would like to express my my most sincere gratitude to Marina Bianchi and Maria Maffei for their constant support, without them the publication of the book would not have been possible. I dedicate this award to all the novice literary translators who, like me, are taking their first steps in this world, an encouragement not to give up in the face of difficulties”.
Furthermore, three mentions were awarded: a special one to Edoardo Zuccato for the translation of Poems and Songs by Robert Burns and two for lifetime achievement, to Rosario Trovato and Ada Vigliani.
During the awards ceremony tomorrow, November 20th, a speech by the poet, essayist and translator Franco Buffoni on “The certamen on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 33” is scheduled. During the ceremony, a three-month residential scholarship was also awarded to Ekaitz Ruiz de Vergara Olmos, a doctoral student affiliated with the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, for research on the topic: Benno Geiger, translator poet: genesis, forms and reception of his German Comedy.
The Geiger Prize is considered one of the most prestigious international awards in the field of translation of poetic texts. For the 2025 edition of the Award, 36 publishing houses proposed 57 nominations. The jury, chaired by the philologist Francesco Zambon, is made up of writers, critics, university professors and translation experts: Elena Agazzi, Franco Buffoni, Snežana Milinkovic, Alessandro Niero and Pietro Taravacci. The Giorgio Cini Foundation established the international poetic translation prize in memory of Benno Geiger in 2014, worth four thousand euros, by will of his daughter Elsa Geiger Ariè, to enhance and study her father’s literary collection, which she herself donated to the Foundation at the end of the 1970s.
Benno Geiger (1882-1965), Austrian writer and art critic, is the author, in addition to important writings on art history and poetry, of valuable translations into German of some classics of Italian poetry, including Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Francesco Petrarca’s Canzoniere and the Trionfi. He lived for most of his life in Venice and became its adopted citizen. The Geiger collection, since then preserved on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, includes letters, publications, photographs, drafts and notes. The largest part are the letters that the intellectual exchanged during his life with over five hundred authoritative correspondents: from Hofmannsthal to Rilke, from Kokoschka to Bernard, from Perosi to Bossi, from Pascoli to Borgese and Comisso. Added to the letters are some of Geiger’s publications, preparatory manuscripts of his translations into German, correspondence with publishers and other minor material. The Giorgio Cini Foundation holds a portrait of Benno Geiger painted by Emile Bernard, also a gift from his daughter Elsa.