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Overview
"With LATE MONTALE the distinguished poet George Bradley has given us a Montale in English most of us hardly knew. In selecting and translating scores of poems from the four collections published in the last decade of Montale's life, along with dozens of previously untranslated poems drawn from notebooks the Nobel laureate entrusted to his housekeeper, Bradley urges us to focus on the work the poet's old age. These translations, printed with the meticulously edited Italian texts en face, are marvels of lucidity and subtle music in which precision is suffused with a rare tenderness of attention. The volume includes Bradley's succinct but copious notes clarifying many of the allusions in the poems. And there are many masterpieces here, riches of meditation, at times caustic and satirical, at others grave and quizzical. For all its unavoidable melancholy, Montale's late work pulses with life, and Bradley captures the underlying exuberance to perfection. Montale's late poems are 'direct and conversational, the work of an older man soaked in reflection and second thoughts,' as Bradley notes in his elegant Foreword; but they are no less moving and indeed no less thrilling for that."—Eric Ormsby
"Montale once quipped that the early poems 'were written in a tailcoat' and the late poems 'in pajamas,' an image that goes a long way toward conveying the casual, relaxed mood of LATE MONTALE. George Bradley's versions feel as comfortable in their English as the originals do in their Italian, and his generous selection and discerning introduction and notes offer Anglophone readers their best chance yet to discover the many quiet pleasures of LATE MONTALE."—Geoffrey Brock
"With his gentle wit and rigorous precision, Mr. Bradley is the ideal medium for these poignant poems of Montale's late maturity. He has done the anglophone reader a great service."—Daniel Mark Epstein
"George Bradley has found the perfect, acerbic tone for these late poems and drafts of Montale, some never seen before in English. In old age, Montale crafted an art of radical disillusionment, a world of smoke and ashes in which 'the children of those children will have / nothing left to learn / nothing to lose' Bradley has importantly enlarged our understanding of this important and incorruptible poet.'—Rosanna Warren
Poetry.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781911379058 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Waywiser Press |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2022 |
| Pages: | 246 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.87(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Translator's Preface xiii
A Note on the Text xviii
From Satura
Xenia I, 13 3
Xenia II, 5 3
Xenia II, 14 5
History
I "History does not unfold …" 5
II "Then again, history isn't…" 7
The Rhymes 9
Letter 9
Le Revenant 11
Time and Times 13
The Black Angel 13
The Arno at Rovezzano 17
Down There 17
Rebecca 19
From Diary of '71 and '72 (Diamo Del '71 E Del '72)
The Arte Povera 25
Hiding Places 25
My Muse 27
Fire 29
At This Point 29
The Clock with the Carillon Chimes 31
The New Iconographers 33
Lake Sorapis, 40 years Ago 35
From Four-Year Notebook (Quaderno Di Quattro Anni)
Honor 39
Solitude 41
Heroism 41
Reading Cavafy 43
For a Cut Flower 43
Fire and Darkness 45
Soliloquy 45
"The blackcap wasn't killed …" 47
Questions without an Answer 49
Beside Lake Orta 51
In a Northern City 53
About a Lost Cat 53
Hypothesis 53
In No Danger 55
Aspasia 57
"Protect me…" 57
Lakeside Drive 61
Mirages 63
Other Poems (Altriversi)
I.
"… leafy cupolas from which a polyphony …" 71
"That idiot blackbird showed up late …" 71
"Winter drags on, the sun is using …" 71
The Fleas 73
Prose for A.M. 73
Motifs
"Perhaps it wasn't useless …" 75
"Its armor reduced to a tip of its shell, the lobster …" 75
"It maybe that now is the moment to tug …" 75
"When the squeaking of a bat …" 75
Critical Notes
I Hunting 77
II It Might Be 77
"Friends, put no faith in light-years …" 77
"The Big Bang must have produced …" 77
Zigging and Zagging 79
Ruminating
I "Probably …" 79
II "It seems firmly established that life was born …" 80
Today 81
While We Wait 83
Nursery 85
Hypothesis II 85
"How the horizon shrinks …" 87
"The crust of this earth is thinner …" 87
The Allegory 89
May the Worst Man Win 89
"With what voluptuous delight …" 91
"A scuffle of angry chickens …" 91
"It isn't cruel like Valery's sparrow …" 91
"The future has been over for a while …" 93
"The gigantic initial explosion …" 93
"Probably I can say the word 'I' …" 93
Time and Times II 95
The Oboe 95
The Performance 97
"Did the guy who staged this cabaret …" 97
"If the universe was born …" 99
"One may be on the right …" 99
Jupiterian 101
"When my name appeared in almost all the papers …" 101
In the Orient 101
At First Light 103
Monologue 103
To a Muse in Training 105
II.
To My Friend Pea 109
Nixon in Rome 109
Caffaro 111
At the Giardino D'Italia 113
"Thirty years have passed, maybe forty …" 115
Succulents 115
Kid Duffer 117
A Female Visitor 117
Hiding Places II
I "The canebreak where I used to go hide as a child …" 119
II "A moon a little swollen …" 121
October Blood 121
An Invitation to Lunch 123
In Doubt 123
Glory or Something Like It 125
"It seems impossible …" 127
"No more news …" 127
"Wipe your misty eyeglasses …" 129
"My Swiss timepiece had the vice …" 129
Of Luni and Other Things 131
"I have great faith in you …" 131
Clizia Says 133
Clizia in '34 135
Predictions 135
Internal/External 135
In '38 137
Quartet 139
"Since life is fleeting …" 139
I Believe 143
To Claudia Muzio 143
"When the blackcap …" 145
Beloved of the Gods 145
A Visit 147
A Note on "A Visit" 147
Ah! 149
From Fugitive Poems (Poesie Disperse)
Little Diary 153
The Drama 153
The Gift 155
Empty Talk 157
The Glory of Useless Lives 159
Life in Plain Words 161
The House in Olgiate and Other Poems (La Casa Di Olgiate E Altre Poesie)
[I] The House in Olgiate 165
[II] "I don't know if what I smell …" 167
[III] "And now here come the herbicides …" 167
[IV] The Military Parade 167
[V] In the Apartment Block
1 "A little black cat …" 169
2 "And we poor devils, starving …" 169
[VI] "The marriage …" 169
[VII] "At an early hour …" 169
[VIII] "They sent me a crown from Yugoslavia …" 171
[IX] "Our culture is advancing with giant steps …" 171
[X] "For having served his customers …" 171
[XI] G. Pascoli 171
[XII] Rarity of the Raptors 173
[XIII] "Justice these days moves at a rapid pace …" 173
[XIV] "The days of the antelope were tormented …" 173
[XV] In the Garden 173
[XVIa] "Life is like a cigar …" 175
[XVIb] "Like a Havana cigar …" 175
[XVIc] "But if a cigar existed …" 177
[XVII] From a Garden Window 177
[XVIII] About-Face 177
[XIX] "No one has ever looked death …" 179
[XX] "I'm walking chicken-hobble …" 179
[XXI] "We went over to the 'bow window' or some such …" 181
[XXII] "Time and space, two unlivable …" 181
[XXIII] "It's a mistake to believe …" 181
[XXIV] "Concerning the universe, the city of God …" 183
[XXV] "After the invention of the internal combustion engine …" 183
[XXVI] "We're imprisoned in an allegory …" 183
[XXVII] "People talk and talk more …" 183
[XXVIII] The telephone rings …" 185
[XXIX] "In the field of science …" 185
[XXX] On the Telephone 187
[XXXI] "When I enter the cemetery …" 187
[XXXII] The storm announces its arrival …" 189
[XXXIII] "There are those who live with one foot there …" 189
[XXXIV] "They say every new love cancels the old …"
[XXXV] Hypothesis 191
[XXXVI] After Bendandi 193
[XXXVII] "It's almost certain that the planet Jupiter …" 193
[XXXVIII] "The religious wars …" 193
[XXXIX] "Even if one discovered …" 193
[XL] "When science has exhausted …" 195
[XLI] "An Everything that might be a Nothing …" 195
[XLII] Simon Boccancgra 195
[XLIII] "It has never been proved that the world …" 195
[XLIV] "The last dregs of multitudinous …" 197
[XLV] "There's no doubt Theology …" 197
[XLVI] The New Art 199
[XLVII] "That the Being has many encounters and interactions …" 199
[XLVIII] "On the veranda…" 201
[XLIX] "The idea that something might exist …" 201
[L] "Unarguably …" 201
[LI] "It's almost certain that there exist …" 203
[LII] "A puff of gas …" 203
[LIII] "The Polish Pope …" 203
[LIV] "To have heard the roosters …" 203
[LV] German Scientists 205
[LVI] In someone's spare time 205
Notes to the Translations 207
Index of Titles 229
About the Author 241
About the Translator 242