Poetic Notebook 1974-1977
2012
First Published
4.25
Average Rating
192
Number of Pages
Poetic Notebook 1974–1977, 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. Poetic Notebook 1974–1977 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 “She’s lied too often, now let darkness, / void, nothingness fall on her page. / Rely on this, my scribbling / Trust the darkness when the light lies.”
Avg Rating
4.25
Number of Ratings
12
5 STARS
33%
4 STARS
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3 STARS
8%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
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Author
Eugenio Montale
Author · 25 books
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."
