Finisterre

by Eugenio Montale, Liesje Schreuders (Translator), Cees Nooteboom (Contributor)

Dante Isella commenta la breve raccolta, poi confluita nella "Bufera", scritta da Eugenio Montale nei primi anni di guerra e pubblicata a Lugano nel 1943, dopo che Gianfranco Contini l'aveva fortunosamente portata in Svizzera.

Genres: Italian Literature

158 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1995

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

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are only 15 poems in this bundle: the Italian original, with the translation in Dutch next to it, surrounded by 120 pages of introduction and explanatory notes; that discrepancy says enough. Now you may think: “yes, this Montale, Nobel prize winner, he was some hermetic poet”. And of course that is true, but if you read this book carefully, you will soon notice that he isn’t that hermetic: with a few biographical elements and the knowledge that this booklet appeared in 1943 and is thus very marked by the war, you can come a long way to understand and appreciate the poems.

And then it turns out that Montale was an extremely sensitive poet, who in an ingenious play of words expressed his sorrow for the break with his beloved muse Clizia. And in Dantesk-Petrarian style he turned her into an angel; not a passive angel, as with his illustrious predecessors, but an angel who will save the world from the rattling violence of war. Does that sound pompous? Well, maybe, but Montale knows to root this uplifted vision in the earthly reality, he knows how to make both the pain and the hopeful expectation very tangible. And then there is the extraordinary musicality of the eleven-syllable verses, quite inimitable.

And of course: there’s also the almost impossible translation and the accompanying notes. Perhaps Cees Nooteboom in his foreword is right: translator Liesje Schreuders has tried to explain a little too much, while he suggests better to leave the poems shrouded in their mystery. That may be true, but still, I was very happy with the detailed notes. Well done.

[Gianluca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Qui dove il grillo insidioso buca
i vestiti di seta vegetale
e l'odor della canfora non fuga
le tarme che sfarinano nei libri,
l'uccellino s'arrampica a spirale
su per l'olmo ed il sole tra le frappe
cupo invischia. Altra luce che non colma,
altre vampe, o mie edere scarlatte."
(Finestra fiesolana)