Eugenio Montale is one of the most famous Italian poets, prose writer, editor and translator. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975 at a formal ceremony on December 10. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Birth and early years

Eugenio Montale was born on October 12, 1896 in Genoa, Italy. He was the youngest son of Domenico Montale and Guiseppina (Ricci) Montale. They were brought up in a business atmosphere, as their father was a trader in chemicals. Ill health cut short his formal education and he was therefore a self-taught man free from conditioning except that of his own will and person. He spent his summers at the family villa in a village. This small village was near the Liguarian Riviera an area, which has had a profound influence on his poetry and other works. Originally Eugenio Montale aspired to be an opera singer and trained under the famous baritone Ernesto Sivori. Surprisingly he changed his profession and went on to become a poet who can be considered the greatest of the twentieth century’s Italian poets and one who won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975.

World War I and the beginning of his literary career

Between 1915-18 Montale worked as a military officer. He served as an infantry officer in the Austrian front. After the war he returned to his house in 1920. He resumed his singing career again but gave up on this profession when his teacher died in 1923. He now began to devote himself to poetry and a literary career. He was very interested in literature and had read all the Italian classics. He also read a lot of French fiction and studied the works of famous philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, Benedetto Croce and Henri Bergson. He also read the works of Dante Alighieri. He started his literary career by writing for several publications. In 1921 he contributed to “Primo Tempo”. Here he displayed his rare talent for criticism and an independence from the conventional patterns of the time. In 1925 he published Ommagio a Svevo in the Milanese paper “L’Esame”. This brought him a lot of attention.

The absurdity of the War manifested itself in Italy among the poets in the form of the Hermeneutical Society. Montale was superficially a part of this group, which created poems of total illogic mirroring the absurdity of the “War to end all Wars”. His contemporaries included Guiseppe Ungaretti and Salvador Quasimodo. Their poetry was obscure and difficult to understand rich in symbolism and imagery. The words used generally have an emotionally suggestive power.

Move to Florence

In 1927 Montale moved to Florence where he worked as the editor for a publisher Bemporad. This was the period when Florence was the cradle of Italian poetry.

In 1928 he was appointed director of the Gabinetto Viesseux. During this period he also wrote for the magazine Solaria. He also frequented the literary café Guibbe Rosse (Red Jackets) where he got acquainted with like-minded literary figures of the time. He wrote poetry for almost all the literary publications. Due to his antifascist views he was expelled from the Gabinetto Viesseux in 1938.

Montale the translator

Following his dismissal from the Gabinetto Viesseux he withdrew from public life for a while. He began translating into Italian the works of many famous poets and writers. Some of those whose works he translated included William Shakespeare, T. S. Elliot, Cervantes, Eugene O’ Neil and Herman Melville. He was particularly impressed by Elliot’s poem The Waste Land since he believed that this poem exemplified the pessimism and mood of confusion felt by many between the world wars.

Move to Milan

In 1948 he moved to Milan and remained there till his death on September 12, 1981. He began working as a special correspondent, music critic and editor at the offices of the “Corriere della Serra” the most influential Italian daily newspaper. He wrote about many literary and influential people including Ettore Schmidt (Italo Svevo), W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson and Henry Furst. Despite Ezra Pound’s fascist sympathies in the 1930’s he still considered Pound to be a good man. Montale’s views and opinions often had an influence on other critics’ judgments’ of literary works.

In 1967 President Saragat appointed Montale Senator for Life. This in a way relieved him of the daily obligation to go to the editorial offices of the “Corriere della Serra” and gave him additional time to increase his literary output.

Personal life

In the 1930’s Montale met Irma Brandeis a Jewish-American scholar of Dante. She had a deep influence on his poems and appeared as his Beatrice or Laura in several of them. In 1958 Montale married Drusilla Tanzi after her husband died although she was separated from him right from the late 1930’s. They had no children. She died in 1963. He wrote about the theme of love and marriage in the poems, which followed her death.

The Nobel Prize

Eugenio Montale was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1975. He was awarded this prize for his distinctive poetry. According to the awardees his poetry has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook of life with no illusions and with great artistic sensitivity. In his acceptance speech Montale questioned if poetry was still possible in this world of mass media. His answer to the question is similar to the obscurity of his poetry. He believes that the complexity of the problem can only be answered through how one interprets what poetry should be. In Montale’s view poetry has been weakened by a contemporary society aiming to dictate an individual’s expression. This is mainly due to the individual’s quest for the safety of a future.

Honorary Degrees

He received honorary degrees from many of the world famous universities including those from the University of Milan in 1964, Cambridge 1967, and Basel in 1974.

Famous Works

Poetry

In 1925 he published his first collection of poems Ossi de sepia (Bones of the cuttlefish). This became one of the “classics” of contemporary Italian poetry. In this collection he evoked images of Liguria. The strong influence of the Mediterranean on him was reflected in these poems. According to Montale nature was rough, scanty and dazzling. The sea was fermenting and hypnotizing. Nature seemed to give Montale a deep dignity just as his poems gave its readers the same experience. Montale’s poems combined archaic words with idioms from the vernacular to form an original whole rarely seen in contemporary poetry.

In 1932 he published La casa dei doganieri e alter poesie

In 1939 he published Le Occasioni (The Occassions). This was among his most innovative and introspective works. These poems examined his personal emotions set in contemporary events. This collection brings forth his unique style.

In 1956 he published La Bufero e altro (The Storm and Other Things). This was his third major collection of poems. In this collection his figure Clizia is joined by the Fox (La Volpe). It is said the young poetess Maria Luisa Spaziani was the inspiration for Clizia. Finisterre, (Land’s End) which was first published in 1945, is included in this collection.

These three books were the ones which fetched him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature and established him as a founder of the Hermeneutical School of Italian poetry.

In 1971 his fourth major collection Satura was published. His famous poem Xenia written in 1966 is included in this collection. In this collection he experimented with dialogue, commentary, satire and journalistic notation. These poems also reflected his views on Fascism satirizing the growth of ideologies, which rarely deliver what they promise. There is also a poignant elegy to his wife Drusilla Tanzi.

In 1996 Diario postumo (Posthumous Diaries) was published. Initially it created a controversy as some critics believed it to be a forgery by the young poet Annalisa Cima. However it was later considered to be his authentic work.

Prose

Montale is almost as well known for his prose as he is for his poems. He was a famous editor, critic and journalist. In 1956 he published La farfalla di Dinard. This book is a collection of book reviews and cultural criticism written for the newspaper “Corriere della Serra” as well as “Quadrino di tradizioni” (1975), which comprise translations of famous writers like Shakespeare, Cervantes and T. S. Elliot. Some of his other important prose works include Auto da fe: Cronache in due tempi in 1966. In 1969 he published Fuori di casa. Nel nostro tempo was published in 1976.

Later years

During the last ten years of his life Montale published four collections. They included: Satura (Miscellany) in 1971, Diario del’71e del’72 (Diary of ’71 and ’72) in 1973, Quademo di Quattro anni (Notebook of four years) in 1977 and Altri versi e poesie disperse (Other and Uncollected Poems).

Montale’s complex poetry is a mirror, which reflects the disorders of the 20th century European culture with special emphasis on Italy. It gives us a clear picture of Italian political and social life under fascism. By focusing on the dilemmas of modern history, philosophy and some unanswerable riddles of life he gives us a commentary on life with its vicissitudes in his own unique style.

When Eugenio Montale died in 1981, Italy lost one of its true masters of the last fifty years of Italian literature. However his legacy lives on as Elliot Carter used works by Montale for his new song cycle Tempo e Tempi. Sosepo performed these songs in January 2004 with soprano Lucy Shelton. Australian poet Andrew Taylor has also made new translations of his works so that future generations will also derive immense pleasure from both his prose and poetic works.