Anna Maria Cochetti

Personal life

Cochetti was born in 1899 in Rome to Enrico Cocchetti, a lawyer. She earned a literature degree in 1922 with a thesis on Emerson and Carlyle. She married journalist Max Ascoli on November 29, 1925, in Rome, and followed him to the United States in 1931.

Ascoli dedicated his 1936 book Intelligence in Politics to her. The couple legally separated in 1938 and divorced in 1940; Rosario Tosiello attributed the split to Ascoli's assimilation into American society. Cochetti became a U.S. citizen in 1939.

Translation of Italian poetry

Cochetti translated a selection of Petrarch's sonnets and songs, published in 1946 and republished in 1968. Her versions aimed to carry the rhythmic sonnet form from Italian into English, a tactic later criticized as "rhyme forcing" by some translators. A contemporary New York Times review by Thomas G. Bergin noted that many lines were not musical to the English ear and that she did not adhere to Petrarch's rhyme scheme. Her translation was the only complete English rendering of the Canzoniere at the time.

Did You Know?

• Her book of poetry titled Poems was published in 1941 and included 56 original poems and 22 translations from Horace, Catullus, Michelangelo, and Petrarch.
• Critics noted that her original poems were clearly influenced by her interest in translation of the classics.
• A copy of her 1922 thesis, Emerson nelle relazioni spirituali con Carlyle, is held in the Biblioteca del Centro in Rome.