Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #343735 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

From Amazon.com
A white dove has landed me
among headstones, under spires where the sky nests.
Dawns and lights in air; I've loved the sun,
colors of honey, now I crave the dark,
I want the smoldering fire, this tomb
that doesn't soar, your stare that dares it to. --Eugenio Montale

Opera's loss was poetry's gain. Eugenio Montale, the 1975 Nobel Prize winner in literature and one of Italy's greatest poets, originally aspired to be an opera singer. Born in Genoa in 1896, Montale was a delicate child, his health precluding him from getting a formal education; instead, he spent his youth reading philosophy, literature, and Italian classics, and training as a baritone. World War I found him serving as an infantry officer on the Austrian front. Upon his return to civilian life, Montale took up singing again, but after the death of his voice teacher in 1923, he abandoned his operatic hopes. Just two years later, he published his first collection of poetry, Cuttlefish Bones. Over the next 50 years, Montale would produce many poems in between his work as a journalist; Jonathan Galassi's Collected Poems 1920-1954, however, concentrates on three collections that are, arguably, his masterpieces: Cuttlefish Bones (1925); The Occasions (1948); and The Storm, Etc. (1956).

In addition to Galassi's excellent translations, two other things stand out about this book: one is that both Italian and English versions can be read side by side; the other is that Galassi has thoroughly annotated these poems, placing Montale's challenging work in its historical, cultural, and personal context. We are told, for example, that "Leaving a Dove" is, in part, about the poet's abandonment of an old lover for a new one. Such information adds piquancy to the imagery and depth to the reader's appreciation. --Alix Wilber

From Library Journal
The work of Montale, the great modern Italian poet and 1975 Nobel prize winner, swarms with musical imagery and many-layered wordplay. One of many translators (William Arrowsmith, Cuttlefish Bones, LJ 7/93, is another), Galassi presents a hefty bilingual edition that contains translations of three works: Cuttlefish Bones (1920-27); The Occasions (1928-39); and The Storm and Other Things (1940-54). Galassi argues that Montale's later work is "secondary" and that poetry from Cuttlefish Bones to The Storm "describes a complete arc, one of the greatest in modern literature." Galassi's edition provides copious critical annotation, a painstaking attempt to explicate Montale's "collage of borrowings." Identifying allusions (the Holocaust, Stalin's purges), influences (Browning, D'Annunzio), sources (Dante, Debussy), and themes ("Crowds in Montale always carry infernal associations"), Galassi's linguistic-textural analysis unravels many elements of the poet's voice: "a sinuous, constantly transforming series of metaphors spiraling around an elusive central core." This marriage of creative literary research and inspired poetic scholarship helps make Montale accessible to English-speaking readers. With a thorough chronology; an insightful essay, "Reading Montale"; and an index of titles and first lines; highly recommended for all major poetry collections.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Nicholas Jenkins, The New York Times Book Review
"[A] superb translation . . . If one of the functions of a poem is to offer an alternative to dominant ways of thinking and feeling within a society, and even on occasion to offer an alternative to its own alternatives, then Montale's Collected Poems: 1920-1954 is poetry of an unignorable kind."

Customer Reviews

Read the translations by Arrowsmith instead
Eugenio Montale is my favourite poet, and before I was able to read him in the original Italian I read the extant English translations by Jonathan Galassi and William Arrowsmith. Looking back, I would wholeheartedly recommend Arrowsmith's translations about Galassi's.

Galassi's translations are accurate as far as the meaning goes, but do not sufficiently mirror the sound of Montale's brilliant Italian, and in several poems they do not translate the mood, the essence of Montale's poetic vision. Arrowsmith's translations have always seemed wonderful to me because they capture Montale's emotion (especially the sly irony of SATURA) and remain faithful to the sound of the Italian. If one wishes to read Montale's poems in English, I would highly suggest you purchase William Arrowsmith's translations. Arrowsmith translated not only Montale's first three books as Galassi only did, but also his retrospective SATURA, some of his best poetry.

This edition by Galassi does warrant recognition, however, for one thing. His attached essay, "Reading Montale," does a great deal for the unfamiliar reader to explain the nature of Montale's "Clizia" mythos, and his analysis of the cicada symbol teaches the reader to appreciate Montale's complex symbolism.

A lyrical body of work by a truly gifted poet.
Ably translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi, this revised bilingual edition of Eugenio Montale's Collected Poems 1920-1954 brings the lyrical Italian poet's work to a new generation of readers. Montale is a gifted poet who work is deeply beautiful as it confronts the dilemmas of modern history, philosophy, and faith. Day And Night: A floating feather, too, can sketch your image/or the sunbeam playing hied-and-seek/in the furniture, rebounding off/a baby's mirror or the roofs. Above the walls/wisps of steam draw out the poplars' spires/and the knifegrinder's parrot down below/fans his feathers on his perch. And then the hazy night/in the little square, and footsteps, and always/this painful effort to sink under/to re-emerge the same for centuries, or seconds,/by ghosts who can't win back the light of your eyes/inside the incandescent cave -- and still/the same shouts and long wailing on the veranda/if suddenly the shot rings out/that reddens your throat and shears/your wings. O perilous harbinger of dawn,/and the cloisters and the hospitals awake/to a resounding chorus of horns...

Some of the very best poetry I have ever read in my life, I
picked up this book out of nowhere and I read through a couple of poems, I enjoyed it so much that I purchased it then and there even though that my parents are gone for the next 3 days and I have $6.75 left to spend on food, along w/ this I purchased a Nancy Sinatra record and now I am screwed because I do NOT have enough money for food but that is ok I guess, I can leech off a couple of people Henry Miller style.