Quaderno di quattro anni

by Eugenio Montale

Quaderno di quattro anni uscì da Mondadori nel 1977. I centoundici componimenti che ne fanno parte risalgono al periodo 1973-77: si tratta quindi di un libro composto a cavallo dell'assegnazione del Nobel, in sintonia con le considerazioni svolte dal poeta nel discorso pronunciato a Stoccolma: È ancora possibile la poesia? Ed è anche una summa della sua intera storia poetica e ideale: un bilancio, letterario ed esistenziale, nel quale tornano gli echi degli scrittori amati – Svevo in primis – e le figure di donne da sempre protagoniste dei suoi versi, Annetta, Clizia e Mosca. L'io lirico di un poeta più che maturo riflette sul proprio percorso e riscopre pressoché immutati i temi degli esordi, le grandi domande degli inizi: Caso o Necessità, vuoto o indifferenza, sopravvivenza o Nulla. E tra mito, storia, cronaca e tragedia, anche in questo libro il pessimismo montaliano si conferma come «l'altra faccia di una fede profonda». L'edizione, curata da Alberto Bertoni con la collaborazione di Guido Mattia Gallerani, oltre a introduzione, commento e note ai testi, è arricchita da un efficace scritto del critico Cesare Garboli e da un ampio saggio del poeta Giorgio Orelli.

Genres: Poetry, Literature

134 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

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."

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The gardener
lives on field mushrooms which
he considers excellent, the hedgehogs
have disappeared, the sweet little bristly pigs
of the ravines, the season
is at the halfway stage,
one walks through puddles of water,
the sun makes its increasingly few rays
change colour, at times it seems
to race, at others to rest lazily
of even to explode; the heart's
condition too is a matter of opinion,
life could coagulate
and say in an instant all
it most needed to say before
yielding itself to its substitution.
This is what happens every time
the calender changes and nobody notices it.

- Intermezzo, pg. 7-9

* * *

If I go away for a couple of days
the pigeons that peck
on my windowsill start agitating
according to the directives of their union.
When I return order is restored
with a supplement of crumbs and of disappointment
for the blackbird that goes to and fro
between the venerable old man opposite me
and myself. My family is reduced
to so little. And some have one
or more, alas what a waste!

- Solitude, pg. 31

* * *

Even the void has disappeared
where one could once take refuge.
Now we know that even the air
is matter that weighs upon us.
Immaterial matter, the worst
that could have befallen us.
It isn't full enough because
we must people it with fact and actions
to be able to say we belong to it
and will never escape it even when dead.
To cram with objects what is
the sole Object by definition although
it doesn't care for it oh what a vile
comedy. And with what zeal we perform it!

- The Void, pg. 33

* * *

One cannot exaggerate enough
the importance of the world
(our own, I mean)
probably the only one
in which one can kill with art
and even create
works of art destined to live
for the space of a morning, although made
of millennia or even more.
No, one can't magnify it enough.
Just that we had better get a move on
for the hour may not be far-off
when according to a well-known fable
the frog will be too swollen.

- Eulogy of Our Times, pg. 49

* * *

On the television
Christ on the cross was singing
like a tenor overcome by
a sudden attack of pop colic.
A short while before he had been tempted
by the devil in the guise of a naked woman.
This is twentieth-century religion.
Probably St. Bartholomew's night
or the truncated tail of a lizard
have the same weight
in the Economy of the Spirit
founded on the principle of Indifference.
But perhaps one should say that it isn't true,
one should say that the false is true
and then we shall see what happens.
In the meantime let's turn off the T.V. set.
He who can will look after the rest
(if this he means anything) we
wouldn't know.

- Easter Sunday Evening, pg. 53-55

* * *

Half a century ago
the cuttlefishbones appeared
a learned foreigner tells me
by way of congratulating me.
I wouldn't like to tell him to go to the devil.
I don't like being nailed down to history
for four verses or little more.
I don't like who I am who I seem
to be. It has all been a quid quo pro.
And who can get out of that now?

- Half a century ago, pg. 59

* * *

Glimpsed and gone in a flash
the starlings pass swiftly and high
in rhomboidal formations so
tightly packed
that not a point of light
penetrates that rhombus -
they have the best chance of surviing
according to the ornithologists ecologists
which is all that we know about them
it's not much and yet
it's a lot - I wish one could say
the same
of the nomadic
vociferous formations
of man.

- From a Diary, pg. 63

* * *

Fury is as old as man
but it used to think it had an objective.
Now it is self-sufficient. It's a step
forward but it's not enough.
Man, while remaining a biped,
must change into another animal.
Only then will he be
like the wild four-legged breasts
harmless unless attacked.
It will take a few years or millennia.
The twinkling of an eye.

- Fury, pg. 79

* * *

If euphoria can be the darkest
opening on to the world
friends who sneer at my
obtuse unbelongingness . . .
to whom? to what? I can tell you
that if a string is still left on my zither
I shall have more than you and without tinted glasses
a rosy life for me.

- Euphoria, pg. 83

* * *

Life oscillates between
the sublime and the filthy
with a certain propensity for the second.
We shall know more about it
after the last elections
to be held up there
or down there or nowhere
because we are all already
elected and he who wasn't
is much better off down here
and when he realizes this it's too late
les jeux sont faits
says the croupier for the last time
and his take sweeps away the cards.

- Life oscillates, pg. 113-115

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Se fu triste il pensiero della morte
quello che il Tutto dura
è il più pauroso."
(p. 39)

"La vita oscilla
tra il sublime e l’immondo
con qualche propensione
per il secondo."
(p. 103)

[Mills College Library]

851 M763i 1980