Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato:
era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,
era l’incartocciarsi della foglia
riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.
Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio
che schiude la divina indifferenza:
era la statua nella sonnolenza
del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato.
(Often I’ve encountered the sickness of living
it was the stream that chokes and roars,
the crumpling sound of the dried out
leaf, it was the fallen horse.
I knew no good, beyond the prodigy
that reveals divine Indifference:
it was the statue in the slumber of
of the afternoon, and the cloud, and the high flying falcon.)
(Eugenio Montale)
Eugenio Montale was born in Genoa in 1896 and died in Milan in 1981. He was one of the six twentieth century Italians to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1975). Montale was considered in the 1930s and ’40s to be a Hemetic poet. Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Salvatore Quasimodo, he was influenced by French Symbolist such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Valéry and sought to convey experiences through the emotional suggestiveness of words and a symbolism of purely subjective meaning. In his later poetry, however, Montale often expressed his thoughts in more direct and simple language. Montale also rendered into Italian the poetry of William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins as well as prose works by Herman Melville, Eugene O’Neil and other writers. When I was in secondary school I had a wonderful Italian teacher who was a friend of Montale’s and knew him very well. He taught me to appreciate his wonderful way of playing with words and languages both in his poems and translations. Montale and my teacher inspired me to love poetry, to read and last but not least to become a translator.
Non chiederci la parola che squadri da ogni lato
l'animo nostro informe,
e a lettere di fuocolo dichiari e risplenda come un croco
Perduto in mezzo a un polveroso prato.
Ah l'uomo che se ne va sicuro,
agli altri ed a se stesso amico,
e l'ombra sua non cura che la canicola
stampa sopra uno scalcinato muro!
Non domandarci la formula che mondi possa aprirtisì
qualche storta sillaba e secca come un ramo.
Codesto solo oggi possiamo dirti,
ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo.
(Do not ask us the word which in every way our shapeless soul perhaps measures,
and in letters of fire may declaim it and shine like a crocus
lost in the centre of a dusty field.
Ah! the man who goes away sure, to others and to himself a friend,
and cares not about his shadow which the dog days
reflect across a plasterless wall!
Ask us not for the formula to open worlds for you,
only some syllable distorted and dry like a twig.
This alone is what we can tell you today,
that which we are not, that which we do not want.)
