Synopses & Reviews
evokes a magnificent savagery, an attack on the poet himself and on the nihilistic squalor that he observes around him. An old man, Montale remembers his youth and recalls the dead. At times he seems to wonder if he himself is dead. And so his is a grim majesty, a new kind of poetry that faces the void: "She's lied too often, now let darkness, / void, nothingness fall on her page. / Rely on this, my scribbling friend: / Trust the darkness when the light lies."
Review
"Thirty years after Montale's death, his poetry is still vividly alive. . . . As we read through this incredibly rich poetic itinerary that traverses the heart of the twentieth century's devastations and yearnings, we understand once more why Montale is known as one of modernity's greatest poets." Rebecca West
Synopsis
, one of the final volumes assembled by Eugenio Montale before his death, shows the last act of the twentieth-century master to be one of splendid negation.
About the Author
Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.William Arrowsmith was a renowned translator and classics scholar.Rosanna Warren, the author of four collections of poetry, has received awards from the Academy of Arts and Letters and has won the Lamont Poetry Prize. She teaches at the University of Chicago and lives in Chicago.