Today marks the birthday of the Italian poet and writer Eugenio Montale, born on October 12, 1896, in Genoa, Italy. He was a poet, prose writer, editor, and translator, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975 for “his distinctive poetry which interpreted human values with high artistic sensitivity under the motto of a view of life without illusions.”

Montale was born in Genoa, Italy, and received vocal lessons from baritone Ernesto Severo. However, the outbreak of World War I, Severo’s death, and Montale’s decision to pursue poetry led him to abandon his musical career. He settled in Florence in 1928, where he became the director of the Gabinetto Vieusseux library. Ten years later, he was dismissed for refusing to ally with Mussolini. From 1948, he worked as a music critic for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera alongside his other writings.

In 1925, Montale published his first poetry collection, “Ossi di Seppia” (Cuttlefish Bones), which quickly became a masterpiece of contemporary Italian poetry. His poetry collection “Finisterre” (1943), written during World War II, was smuggled to Switzerland and published there. Montale drew inspiration in his poetry, especially in vocabulary, style, and imagery, from the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, but he created his own style inspired by the works of the 14th-century poet.

According to the Nobel Prize committee in 1975 when awarding Montale, with his first poetry collection “Ossi di Seppia” in 1925, the then 29-year-old Montale was ready to maintain his position in Italian poetry. As his works gradually gained fame outside his country, he held the same claim abroad, increasingly recognized as one of the most important contemporary Western poets. The fact that this took a long time is natural, but in Montale’s case, there may be a special explanation. Perhaps his personal reserve was one reason it took so long for the literary public to become familiar with him. However, the decisive reason is that, generally, he was not given such a rare opportunity to be judged. With each poetry collection, he expanded and strengthened his position, but the intervals between new volumes were long, and some works were published posthumously or in later editions.

Montale published four poetry collections since his first fifty years ago: “Le Occasioni” (1939), “La Bufera e Altro” (1948), “Satura” (1962), and finally “Diario Postumo” (1971-1972). The continued interest of young readers, both in his country and worldwide, is sufficient proof of his greatness and lasting impact.

Montale also translated poems by William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as prose works by Herman Melville, Eugene O’Neill, and other writers into Italian. His journalistic stories and sketches were published in the book “Farfalla di Dinard” (1956).