Nel nostro tempo

by Eugenio Montale

English, Italian (translation)

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

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

[Giada Brugnera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un grande peccato che questo breve saggio sulla modernità e sull’arte sia misteriosamente scomparso dalle scene dell’editoria italiana. Questo volumetto di meno di un centinaio di pagine, che io ho rinvenuto casualmente in un mercatino, non gode della notorietà e della considerazione che merita. Anche se risalente ormai a cinquant’anni fa, questa raccolta di annotazioni e riflessioni fa emergere tutta la potenza e la sorprendente attualità di Montale come pensatore, oltre che come poeta. D’altronde non si può essere grandi poeti senza essere grandi pensatori.