Eugenio Montale - Ossi di sepia, Le occasioni, La bufera e altro and Satura

Résumé du document

Eugenio Montale is a very important Italian poet of the 20th century who acquired fame within literary circles. Being as talented as he was, he was awarded the Nobel Prize of literature. Between 1925 and 1982, he published eight collections of poetry, one of which was posthumous. In this essay, I will analyze the main subjects of four of these collections: Ossi di seppia, Le Occasioni, La bufera e altro and Satura. From his first collection, Ossi di seppia, Montale's poetic word appears in the form of a discussion. The poetic commitment of Montale, from the beginning, will be this thirst for knowledge, located between experience and reason, the strength of an absolute which draws a lot from poetic and metaphysical mythology.

Extraits

[...] From "Clizia" to "Iride" the route is one of the sublimation of the loving relationship. Nevertheless the poetic speech is not upheld, Montale widens the universal condition in changing the to a and like a shipwreck, there is no hope, all is lost and it is from a darkness such as this that the symbolic character cannot escape. At the same time, an economic stylism makes the simplest words, which sanction the inexorability of events, the emblems of his poetry: "qualche gesto che annaspa He returns periodically to images with empty forms: "L'onda, vuota, / si rompe sulla punta, a Finisterre[19]". [...]

[...] The mockery which substitutes itself for a breath of hope, confirms this disintegration of the knowledge and the values which are attached to western culture. Not having succeeded in tearing by his words, the veil of knowledge, trapped by its mirror: "in me i tanti sono uno anche se appaiono / molteplicati dagli specchi. [and] l'uccello preso nel paretaio / non sa se sia lui o uno dei troppi / suoi duplicati[20]". He recovers from it, a logic which certainly does not exclude the timeless, but empties gradually the reason of its sense, making it rhyme mainly with mockery. [...]

[...] Montale, however does not give in to irrational and analogical hermetism, but reaffirms his own rational and chastely sentimental tension. In Le occasioni, the sentences become more free and the philosophic reflection, which is a major quality of the poetry of Montale, becomes more rigorous. The poet tries to penetrate into the meaning of life, the idea of death, the impossibility of giving a valid explanation of existence. Such thoughts were already present in his first collection, but without the deepness of Le occasioni, in which the world of the men replaces the deserted sea. [...]

[...] He characterizes the aridity of the human existence, consumed and worn out by nature, which henceforth is reduced to an inanimate object deprived of life. The poet is alone. The solitude engenders the dialogue with things, those small and insignificant things characteristic to Ligurian nature, or to the distant and suggestive nature of its horizon, the sea. In "Casa sul mare" , we think of houses in the Cinque Terre, in Liguria, houses, which were part of the childhood of the poet, perched on the rocky cliff. The houses which look at the un-limitedness of the sea. [...]

[...] The house, that of childhood, which was previously evoked with a poignant emotion, does not exist any more. Its nostalgic image gives way to the description of hotels, pensions, private hospitals and rooms rented at the hour. Places of precarious, brief stopping place. Inadequate and nameless places. Inhospitable and dirty, delivered to the disorder and to the dust of the termites of the time which do not delay, eating away at things and at faces. Montale breaks with the first requirement which throws one beyond the ideal completion, which manifests itself here, as unfinished. [...]