Introduction by Eugenio Montale; Translation by Allen Mandelbaum

In its literary impact, Montale's Xenia, published in 1966 in an edition of just 50 copies, might be described as Italy's The Waste Land. This now-famous sequence came in profound response to the death, in 1963, of his beloved wife whom he nicknamed Mosca, a woman so short-sighted as to have reputedly apologised when bumping into a mirror. At the end of the Xenia sequence, Montale allegorises the story of his Florentine ark of precious artefacts overwhelmed in the 1966 flood of the Arno. Those objects resurface in the poem as a metaphor for a loss that is as personal as it is historical. Montale's personal past with Mosca has been submerged, but also Europe's high literary culture. This exciting new translation is launched in October 2016 to coincide with two anniversaries: the 50th anniversary of Xenia's 1966 private (and first) edition in Italian, and the 120th anniversary of Montale's birth.

A strong, idiomatic translation of Italy's greatest modern poet.
Eugenio Montale is universally recognized as having brought the great Italian lyric tradition that began with Dante into the twentieth century with unrivaled power and brilliance. Montale is a love poet whose deeply beautiful, individual work confronts the dilemmas of modern history, philosophy, and faith with courage and subtlety; he has been widely translated into English and his work has influenced two generations of American and British poets. Jonathan Galassi's versions of Montale's major works--"Ossi di seppia," "Le occasioni," and "La bufera e altro"--are the clearest and most convincing yet, and his extensive notes discuss in depth the sources and difficulties of this dense, allusive poetry. This book offers English-language readers uniquely informed and readable access to the work of one of the greatest of all modern poets.

Montale's incandescently beautiful poetry is deeply rooted in the venerable lyric tradition that began with Dante, but he brilliantly reinvents that tradition for our time, probing the depths of love, death, faith and philosophy in the bracing light of modern history. Montale's poems teem with allusion and metaphor but at the same time are densely studded with concrete images that keep his complex musings firmly tethered to the world. Montale's reputation is international and enduring, and he has influenced generations of poets around the world. This volume contains selections from all his greatest works, rendered into English by the accomplished poet and translator Jonathan Galassi. It serves as both an essential introduction to an important poet and a true pleasure for lovers of contemporary poetry.

A seemingly off-the-cuff songbook of late poems dealing with aging, memory, belief and illusion.

Acclaiming the late Eugenio Montale (1897-1981) as "one of the most important poets of the contemporary West," the Swedish Academy awarded him the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature. This selection, introduced by Glauco Cambon, presents sixty-nine poems chosen from Montale's first three books--Ossi di seppia (Cuttlefish Bones), Le occasioni (The Occasions), and La bufera e altro (The Storm and Other Things)--as rendered by sixteen translators, many of them distinguished poets in their own right.

A collection of poems in Italian and English by the 1975 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature reveals an innovative use of dialogue, journalistic language, song, and other techniques.

This book appeared in Italy during the Nobel laureate's eighty-second year. The sardonic force of his shrewd observations of the contemporary scene remains unblunted even as the poet has become more involved with everyday, more private, more self-revealing. Here it gains even greater prominence as the poet attempts to find catchholds and constancies in an unstable world, finally to accede to 'precariousness the muse of our time.'