OSSI DI SEPPIA / CUTTLEFISH BONES
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Autor:
MONTALE EUGENIO
Country:
Italy (IT)
Book Theme:
The books of the Nobel prizes
Publisher:
MONDADORI
Publishing Year:
2024
Born in Genoa on October 12, 1896, Montale grew up in the Ligurian region. He initially trained to be an opera singer but abandoned music to focus on literature. His first major collection, Cuttlefish Bones, established his mature style, characterized by a rejection of grandiose rhetoric and an exploration of the individual’s profound sense of suffering and isolation. After World War II, he relocated to Milan and began a long career as a prominent literary and music critic and journalist In 1967, he was nominated a Senator for Life. In 1975, Montale was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions.” Montale died in Milan on September 12, 1981.
National Award for Children’s and Young People’s
Abstract
Cuttlefish bones is the first major collection of poems by Nobel prize Eugenio Montale. It represents a foundational text of 20th-century Italian poetry.
The Poetic Landscape and Themes
The collection is primarily set on the rugged, arid Ligurian coast, the landscape of Montale’s childhood, which is not merely a background but an objective correlative, a symbolic reflection of the protagonist’s inner state.
The “Eel of Living” (Male di vivere): The central theme is the existential anguish and profound sense of unease experienced by modern man. The poet feels perpetually alienated and out of sync with the harmony of the natural world, a harmony he can only glimpse momentarily or remember from his youth.
The Limit and the Wall: Montale often uses images like a high wall with broken glass on top, or a path leading to a sheer cliff, to symbolize the unbreakable barrier separating humanity from genuine knowledge and fulfillment. Truth, or a saving revelation, is inaccessible.
The Scant Revelation: Any chance of finding a profound meaning or escaping the male di vivere is fleeting and comes only as a minor, almost miraculous epiphany, a momentary “flaw in Nature” (l’anello che non tiene). The lemons in the poem “I limoni” are a famous example of this potential, yet often ultimately unreachable, momentary relief.
