SOURCE: A review of Hard Labor, in The Antioch Review, Vol. 35, Nos. 2-3, Spring-Summer, 1977, pp. 239-41.

In the following excerpt, Sadoff lauds William Arrowsmith 's English translation of Hard Labor and explores various aspects of Pavese's poetry.

The great Italian poet, Cesare Pavese, has finally found an able translator in poet William Arrowsmith. The translations in Hard Labor are direct and emulate Pavese's flatness of style and diction. Arrowsmith's critical introduction is simultaneously scholarly and informal, providing as substantial a critical overview of Pavese the man and poet as we are likely to get for some time to come. Based on the provided selection of poems, however, Arrowsmith has a tendency to overpoliticize Pavese's work; no doubt Pavese's opposition to fascism and his exile played a central part in his life and concerns, and there are a few poems from the collection "Green Wood" which are explicitly political...