La complessa vicenda editoriale di Saturno e la melanconia. Quattro lettere inedite del carteggio Einaudi-Warburg Institute

On the basis of four unpublished letters of the correspondence between Einaudi and the Warburg Institute, preserved at Archivio Einaudi in Turin, this paper proposes a preliminary reflection on some key topics related to the publishing history of the volume by Raymond Klibansky, Fritz Saxl and Erwin Panofsky titled Saturno e la melanconia: studi di storia della filosofia naturale, religione e arte. Although it was published in 1983 by the abovementioned Italian publishing house, it appears that its editorial path officially started in the summer of 1949, with the approval of Henri Frankfort, new director of the Warburg Institute after Saxl’s sudden death in 1948. From this moment on, Einaudi encountered remarkable obstacles during the translation process, mainly due to two reasons: first, the complexity of the themes dealt with in the volume, and second, the inadequacy of the German drafts provided by the Warburg Institute. Both aspects created many difficulties, requiring the intervention of several translators and proofreaders. Vicissitudes that probably could have been avoided if the publisher had listened to the incessant proposals of Gertrud Bing, the other Warburgian art historian involved in the course of the matter.