Eugenio Montale

The Occasions

Translated by William Arrowsmith

Eugenio Montale's second book of poetry—Le occasioni—was first published in 1939. It is a remarkable achievement, continuing the dazzling innovations of Cuttlefish Bones (1925) while striking out boldly on a new stylistic adventure of its own—an adventure completed in The Storm and Other Things (1956). It was, above all, this trio of books that won Montale the Nobel Prize in 1975, confirming his reputation as the greatest Italian poet since Leopardi and one of the supreme modernist masters. This book is his most experimental work, but a work no less tradition-saturated than Eliot's. As poet, private individual, and "good European," Montale's way of dealing with his difficulties was to seize the occasions offered him by writing poetry in which the lover's passions for his beloved country would convey the truth of both his public and private situations.