La bufera e altro

by Eugenio Montale

Winner of the PEN Translation Prize, these translations by noted American poet Charles Wright bring one of the major collections of poetry in this century to English-speaking authors. Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale considered La Bufera e Altro (The Storm and Other Poems) his best book.

Genres: Poetry, Nobel Prize, Italian Literature, Italy

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Eugenio Montale was born on October 12, 1896 in Genoa, Italy. He was the youngest son of Domenico Montale and Giuseppina (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 Ligurian Riviera, an area which has had a profound influence on his poetry and other works. Originally 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 "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions."

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

My five-star rating is for the publisher W.W. Norton and the translator William Arrowsmith who together to brilliantly present Eugenio Montale, the 1975 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I am grateful to Norton for choosing to put the original texts along side the translations.

As translator, Arrowsmith was faced with the difficult challenge of rendering the words having Latin roots into a language having Germanic roots. It this ungrateful task, Arrowsmith acquits himself honorably. Where Arrowsmith shines is in the notes that he provides to assist the reader with the interpretation of Montale's poems.

Arrowsmith argues cogently that "L'anguilla / The Eel" is the masterpiece in the collection. I personally preferred "Iride / The Rainbow."

[Emanuela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questa raccolta di poesie di Montale, poeta che già mi piaceva molto, mi ha attratta perché non ha potuto essere pubblicata in Italia nel 1942-43 a causa dell’iscrizione iniziale, apparentemente, ma probabilmente perché la bufera di cui si parla è evidentemente la guerra come denunciato in “la primavera hitleriana”.
Le scene descritte nelle poesie sono tutte “burrascose”, sia per quanto riguarda gli scenari naturali che per le emozioni trasmesse.
Parlano di desolazione, di nostalgia, di lontananza o allontanamento, come in Voce giunta con le folaghe, ma anche di vendetta, di giustizia, come in Sulla colonna più alta.
Le parole sono scelte con cura, semplici ma evocative e indubbiamente collegate all’atmosfera di cui è pregna la raccolta.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Montale seems to merge the natural images of his first collection with the more abstract themes of his second to create this collection, which alternates from the sublime to the somber. As in The Occasions, Montale’s muse Clizia features throughout, a symbol of hope journeying through these poems as if through the psychological state of postwar disillusionment in which Montale was writing.

[Timothy Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. I lost my copy, and finally bought a new one this spring. Montale through the eyes of Charles Wright is poetry as poetry should be -- a beautiful, slightly foreign language that always flirts with profundity. Musical as hell and memorable.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faves -

In Sleep
The Ark
Two In Twilight
Iris
Hitler Spring

[Emanuele Baseggio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ognuno riconosce i suoi

[Giuseppe Del Core]

Il vento del giorno
confonde l'ombra viva e l'altra ancora
riluttante in un mezzo che respinge
le mie mani, e il respiro mi si rompe
nel punto dilatato, nella fossa
che circonda lo scatto del ricordo.
Così si svela prima di legarsi
a immagini, a parole, oscuro senso
reminiscente, il vuoto inabitato
che occupammo e che attende fin ch'è tempo
di colmarsi di noi, di ritrovarci...

[Orest Mercator · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s quite interesting to read Charles Wright’s translation of The Storm and the Other Things after having read Wright’s selected poems (the 700+ pages of Oblivion Banjo) and Montale’s collected poems in the Arrowsmith translation. One might assume that Wright, being such an accomplished poet, might have the better ear for Montale, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Or, perhaps more fairly, Wright’s stylistic evolution in this period leads him towards more idiosyncratic and experimental translations. Arrowsmith renders a precise, distinctive voice, while Wright’s Montale is unruly and arcane. Wright faithfully captures the stormy romanticism of Montale’s tonal benchmark in La Bufera, but he effaces Montale’s subtlety and measured dramatic development. Partially as a result of the odd page layout and long lines in the Wright translation, one loses the sense for how Montale’s poems turn the screw through subtle tonal shifts. I don’t know who is more faithful to Montale, and certainly both translations have their merit, but I think Arrowsmith’s product is more successful.

It is interesting to locate these 1978 translations within Wright’s career. They come at the end of Wright’s early period, culminating in Country Music, in which he stages a mournful confessionalism in and through nature. In this quintessential period, Wright’s emotional accessibility and deep yet homespun metaphysics recall William Stafford, though with greater formal and symbolic classicism (testaments to the influence of Cathay’s Pound). Country Music precedes the increasingly mystical and fragmentary poems of his middle period (see: The World of the Ten Thousand Things, which would be more aligned with the Pound of the Cantos). I struggle with Wright’s middle years, where his elliptical poems contain great lines but largely feel under-edited and lack the tight cohesion that once packed his wallop. Eventually, he will synthesize his spiritual wanderings into a highly-compressed pastoral style (a process that begins around Black Zodiac but really starts to bear fruit in the masterful crystals of Sestets). That said, the most compelling Wright—to me at least—is that of Country Music. I am thus not particularly well disposed to a translation style that seems to keep with the poetics of his middle period, but I do think that even if one prefers the direction he started to go in then, these poems still seem wet behind the ears in their attempt at what will become his style.

Notes to Self
- The abstract lugubriousness—the constant iterative attempting of pathos—reminds me of sexton: “its fragments drifting out / into the open where slipper prints / gather on hardened mud, / where the splinter of your cross / in festering pulp of old / and rotting beams thickened, where the smile, / skull-like…” - ‘Ezekiel Saw the Wheel’
- I see the response to D'Annunzio: the (comparative) populism, the pre-confessional intimacy in which the lyrical “I”—who takes emotion as an occasion for art—gives way to the confessional “I,” which uses art as the medium for an emotion.

(Inb4 James compares me to the obnoxious Columbia professor in Annie Hall)

[Miguel Aranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Califico lo que ha sido mi experiencia lectora, no la calidad del libro. Me ha costado conectar con estos poemas de Montale. Hice una lectura (la edición es bilingüe e iba leyendo las dos versiones) y me quedé pensando: has de acercarte a este libro más, mejor, de otro modo. Paré para releer Huesos de sepia, con el que había conectado en su momento, y volví a conectar. Retomé desde el principio este La tormenta y otros poemas y logré acercarme más, logré acercarte mejor. De todos modos me quedo con las ganas de decir, señor Montale, no sé si me parece del todo bien complicar tanto anécdotas de la vida privada. Eso sí, el par de textos en prosa lírica me han parecido impagables.

[Elsa Billgren · Rating 2 out of 5]

näe hörrni. denna var sådär. vackra ord men så tråkig… kanske bättre på italienska men jag tänker inte lära mej det för jag är inget fan av varken fascism eller fotboll

[Sanna B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I specially like that it has translation snd that the italian version is so much better.

[Laurence Ward]

The Storm and Other Poems by Eugenio Montale is a book to which I will return. Most of these poems will require at least two readings to fully appreciate.

[KYH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Die Kurzgeschichten haben mich gut unterhalten und an der ein oder anderen Stelle nachdenklich gemacht.
Gedichte sind nicht so meine Sache, deshalb habe ich nur ein paar gelesen, weil der Autor ja eigentlich für sie bekannt ist. Ich kann verstehen warum sie gemocht werden.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible poetry.

[Lore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tanto eccezionale quanto, talvolta, estremamente difficile. Per affrontarlo vittoriosamente consiglio pertanto l'edizione critica Mondadori uscita da poco.