Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale , 1896-1981, Italian poet, critic, and translator. After working as an editor, Montale became chief librarian of the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence. His complex poetry expresses the tensions and disorders of 20th-century European culture, especially of Italian social and political life under fascism. Montale's pessimistic philosophy stressed that only the occasional moment of joy could give one a glimpse of salvation in the midst of one's hopeless existence on earth. Montale speaks with a stoic voice, one resigned to accept the absurdities and illusions of life. The collection Poesie (1958, tr. 1964) includes Ossi di seppia (1925), Le occasioni (1939), and La bufera e altro (1956). Montale's other works include The Butterfly of Dinard (1956, tr. 1971), a collection of book reviews and cultural criticism written for the newspaper Il corriere della sera, as well as Quaderno di traduzioni (1975), translations of T. S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Corneille. Montale was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1975.

Bibliography: See his Collected Poems, tr. by J. Galassi (1998); studies by G. Cambon (1972), G. S. Singh (1973), and R. J. West (1981).

Montale, Eugenio (1896–1981) Italian poet, journalist, critic, and translator. In 1922 Montale helped to found the literary magazine Primo Tempo, and from 1948 he was the literary editor of Corriere della Sera. His poetry is characteristically pessimistic in tone, especially in Cuttlefish Bones (1925). Montale received the 1975 Nobel Prize in literature.