Please, Do Not Forget Eugenio Montale!

  • Abstract:

    Eugenio Montale sits as a quiet memory in Europe today. Now it is time to reexamine Eugenio Montale’s art, journalism and poetry. For most of his career in Italy, Eugenio Montale was an active journalist, until the Fascists came to power. The Fascists demanded he write what they wanted, whether true or false or for societies actually needs. He would not compromise his journalism with lies, resulting in his firing and having no job in Italian journalism. In some ways this may have been a blessing to Eugenio Montale and all. He turned to his lifelong interests of art and poetry. He retreated from current affairs and journalism to quietly focus on writing his poetry and drawing his landscapes and portraits in seclusion mostly. His poetry became meaningful and prolific to the world for a time. His art remains almost completely hidden behind his poetry and his journalism forgotten today. In Italian American neighborhoods like New York City today and elsewhere in America, Italian passport holders seldom recognize or even know the name, Eugenio Montale, or his role standing against the winds of Fascism long ago. Please do not forget Eugenio Montale, the 1975 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, for his brilliant poetry and much more. In the new publication, Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Eugenio Montale in Milan in 1976 (Blake Press 2015, we are able to look back at events of the past and can apply them to politics today. Great insight is present for all to see in Eugenio Montale’s Nobel Prize Lecture in 1976, presented in both English and Italian in this new book, along with his conversation with Melinda Camber Porter on art, journalism, politics, poetry and society (Montale and Camber Porter 2015).