Montale, Eugenio, << mohn TAH lay, ay oo JAYN yoh >> (1896-1981), was an Italian lyric poet and literary critic. He received the 1975 Nobel Prize in literature.
Montale was born in Genoa on Oct. 12, 1896, and spent much of his youth in Monterosso, a small town on the shore of the Ligurian Sea. This rugged coastline setting inspired many of the images of his early verse. Montale’s first book of poetry was Cuttlefish Bones (1925). The poems stress the themes of the modern individual’s loss of faith, the impossibility of human happiness, and the powerlessness of poetry to transform reality. The collection The Occasions (1939) further developed these themes. An English translation of his early verse was published in 1999 after his death as Collected Poems: 1920-1954. Later volumes of poems include The Storm and Other Poems (1956), and Notebook of Four Years (1977, published in English as It Depends: A Poet’s Notebook).
Montale wrote a number of autobiographical short stories published in The Butterfly of Dinard (1956). Many of his essays were collected in Act of Faith (1966) and Away from Home (1968). Montale also became known for his masterful Italian translations of several English-language poets. He died on Sept. 12, 1981.
