Poetry Bookclub 2

Still, O father, one legacy
you leave us: some small part of your genius
lives on in these syllables we bear with us,
humming bees.

Again I am struck with the sense that the poet is speaking at once to the Mediterranean as a body of water... a landscape that has made a deep impression upon him ( "However far our journey, we will always keep
an echo of your voice..." ) but also symbolic. I imagine the Mediterranean... and all that entails to the poet (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi...) as also a father to the poet whose legacy is perhaps but just "some small part" of the whole of Mediterranean genius... like the humming of that sole single bee among the humming of the whole nest. Perhaps a Romantic... even fanciful interpretation on my part... but I greatly sense that Montale never limits his poems to a single simple "meaning".

This is not on topic, Stlukes...but Italian vocabulary is way more impressive than I imagined. My provincial attitude wouldn't you know.

So Dante WAS on to something...?:D

Unfortunately, Collected Poems 1920-1954, revised, bilingual edition, is translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi.....I sincerely hope this translator will not detract from my appreciation re: Arrowsmith's superior work....At least it is all inclusive.

Galassi's translations are also quite well respected. He may actually capture certain aspects of Montale's work that Arrowsmith doesn't. I simply prefer Arrowsmith... not least of all because he was the translator in whom I first encountered Montale.

The following statement on "Reading Montale" by Jonathan Galassi:

Excerpt from READING MONTALE

...What do Italian readers hear in Montale? I'm going to offer a response,

informed by my reading in his critics, though of course no one not born
into a language can truly know how poetry sounds to those for whom it was written.
First, I believe they hear a nervous, astringent music, one that asserts its individuality
in sharp contradistinction to the prevailing norms of its era. Instead of orotund
mellifluousness they encounter harshness and abruptness, enclosed in predominantly
short forms tending to the paratactic, which are often in themselves self-conscious
ironic reprises of traditional stanzas. They encounter a large, often arcane vocabulary which, in its restless search for expressive authenticity, employs rare words from sources ranging from the highly artificial and archaic to local dialect, frequently deployed in surprising conjunctions calculated to
"strike sparks." They find, as a rule, compressed expression and thematic reiteration
to the point of obsession, along with prodigious inventiveness in handling the inevitable,
even oppressive riches of Italian rhyme, and great variation in the use of the Italian
version if iambic pentameter-- the hendecasyllable-- which Montale alternates freely
with SETTENARI, OTTONARI, and NOVENARI, or seven-, eight-, and nine-syllable lines,
in his search for constant rhythmic variety, occasionally resorting to longer forms as he
experiments with his own kind of Hopkinesque "sprung rhythm." In sum, Italian readers of
Montale experience a restless will to reinvent, to renew the time-honored materials
of their poetry by submitting them to arduous contemporary challenges.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&...GkMsng#PPR9,M1

While waiting for my Arrowsmith translation, Galassi's became available. When I went to pick up the Arrowsmith...the good people at B&N handed me Antonino Mazza.

Eugenio Montale

From The Bones of Cuttlefish
(translated by Antonino Mazza)

ALMOST A FANTASY

Day reappears, I present it
As a dawn of threadbare
Silver on the walls:
The shut windows stripe a glimmer.
The event of the sun
Returns and the diffused
Voices do not bring the customary uproars.

Why? I think of a day of enchantment
And with merry-go-rounds of hours too self-repeating
I reward myself. The power which once excited me
Will overflow, inanimate wizard,
From the great old days. Now I will lean out,
I will do away with tall houses, bare avenues. {excerpt}

Eugenio Montale


From Collected Poems 1920-1954
(translated by Jonathan Galassi)

From Cuttlefish Bones 1920-1927

LIKE A FANTASIA

Day is dawning, I can tell
By the old-silver shimmer
On the walls:
A gleam edges the shut windows.
The coming of the sun returns again,
Without the scattered voices
And old noises.

Why? I fantasize a magic day
To counteract the hours game
Of sameness. The power pent up
In this unconscious magus for so long
Will overflow. Now I'll show myself
And subjugate high houses, empty avenues.
{excerpt}

I haven't been able to get to the library, and so regret that I haven't been able to really focus on Montale and come up with a decent evaluation worthy of my maturity, but of the few samples I've gleaned through the efforts of the club participants, I respond better to Montale than to Roethke.

I do not see the muscularity that luke responds to; for me it is closer to an avuncular, jovial irony, which is at most a preliminary empathy. I cannot parse for specific elements--but 20th century European poets are simply superior to their American counterparts. Roethke too consciously constrains himself in his couplets; it is irritating, as he is really not the master of the formalism wherein his mania is always threatening to burst. Montale is rather more comfortable in his own skin, and with the irony of playing with the past, yet being, ultimately, a modern man, quiet in a muted strength. How I get all that I don't know, given how little I invested back in really studying anything, but I responded to Xenia. There was a husband in whom my scars might have softened, in terms of the character he presented.

Juat as an aside, I am going to stay out of nominating unless I am sure I can get my hands on the collection, and really offer a decent conversation. I am weary of the chip on the shoulder arguments about the value of literature which ripple in the forums with tidal consistency, and I am intent from now on in focusing on authors, their texts, and appropriate comparison.

Thank you luke for your efforts in assisting me with some access to CB.

In the Galassi trans. 4th line, second stanza...he uses the key words "unconscious magus" which compares grossly with "inanimate wizard" of Mazza. The Italian is "incosciente mago". I'd love to know how Arrowsmith translates this expression.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

In the Galassi trans. 4th line, second stanza...he uses the key words "unconscious magus" which compares grossly with "inanimate wizard" of Mazza. The Italian is "incosciente mago". I'd love to know how Arrowsmith translates this expression.

---

Arrowsmith translates the first two stanzas this way:

ALMOST A FANTASIA

Daylight again, I sense it
in the dawning of old
silver on the walls:
a glimmer edges the shut windows.
The sun comes back
again, but brings
no diffused voices, no customary din.

Why? I think of a day of enchantment,
my reward for the pageant of hours
too much alike. In me the power
welling, unconscious wizard,
will overflow. Yes, I'll be standing at the window,
I'll overwhelm tall houses, treeless streets.
[SNIP]


Very interesting poem. I can't say I really understand it.

Nor I, yet, Virgil. Can you say you understand any parts of it...perhaps. Does "divide and conquer" work in this matrix?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

Nor I, yet, Virgil. Can you say you understand any parts of it...perhaps. Does "divide and conquer" work in this matrix?

---

Let me think over it for a while. It kind of makes sense in pieces, but let me see if I can put something coherent together.

In the appendix/notes from Cuttlefish Bones there is a commentary by Glaucon Cambon, author of Eugenio Montale's Poetry: A dream in Reason's Presence:

"The clearly affirmative note of I limoni can rise to nearly triumphant pitch in Almost a Fantasia, where the poetic self envisions a forthcoming spell of its own making that will efface the deadness of daily routine to create a snow-lit fairyland and summon up remembrance of all things past- like recovered childhood."

This poem strikes me as similar, in some way... difficult to put the finger on... to the crystalline poetry of Rilke. I am especially struck by the lines:

Before me will be a land of virgin snow,
but powdered, as in a tapestry.
From a fleecy sky a slow radiance will slide.
Flooded with invisible light, forests and hills
will sing in praise of joyous returnings.

Elated, I'll read the black
signs of branches on the white,
like an alphabet of being.
In an instant, and the whole past
will open out before me...

"Triumphant" is an understatement. This poem creates such images that are almost ecstatic. Thinking of the title and Montale's initial education and love of music I imagine this poem as conveying something of a true fantasia... a symphony or visual images. The lines "I'll read the black/signs of branches on the white/like an alphabet of being..." clearly refers literally to the effect of the black branches silhouetted like so many written symbols... the calligrapher's ink... against the white parchment of the snow. I can't help but immediately think of Breughel's famous painting, Hunter's in the Snow:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/...757c04.jpg?v=0

I think Cambon has really put his finger on it. Montale starts out with a description of day returning once more: the usual silver on the wall and the old glimmer around the edges of the shut windows. But this day is different. Why? He notices the lack of the usual noises and muffled sounds that accompany the start of day. I wonder if it is not the snowfall itself that has transformed this day into something "magical". Surely, we all have experienced the almost silent world of morning the snow has fallen and muffles the usual sounds. How common is such an experience in the Italy where Montale lived? Might it not be imagined as something even more magical...? Might it not trigger memories of the past... a childhood experience of the snow? But Montale transforms this experience into something even more poetic/ecstatic. He answers the question of "Why?" himself:

Why? I think of a day of enchantment,
my reward for the pageant of hours
too much alike. In me the power
welling, unconscious wizard,
will overflow. Yes, I'll be standing at the window,
I'll overwhelm tall houses, treeless streets.

By the way... the original:

Quasi una fantasia

Raggiorna, lo presento
da un albore di frusto
argento alle pareti:
lista un barlume le finestre chiuse.
Torna l'avvenimento
del sole e le diffuse
voci, i consueti strepiti non porta.

Perchè? Penso ad un giorno di incantesimo
e delle giostre d' ore troppo uguali
mi riparo. Traboccherà la forza
che mi turgeva, incosciente mago,
da grande tempo. Ora m'affaccerò,
subisserò alte case, spogli viali.

Avrò di contro un paese di intatte nevi
ma lievi come viste in un arazzo.
Scivolerà dal cielo bioccoso un tardo raggio.
Gremite d'invisibile luce selve e colline
mi daranno l'elogio degl'ilari ritorni.

Lieto leggerò i neri
segni dei rami sul bianco
come un essenziale alfabeto.
Tutto il passato in un punto
dinanzi mi sarà comparso.
Non turberà suono alcuno
questa allegrezza solitaria.
Filerà nell'aria
o scenderà s'un paletto
qualche galletto di marzo.

the poem seems to be ambiguous in the extreme, so no accurate reading I think that can safely be done with any certainty, still I will attempt an interpretation of sorts here.

In the first paragraph the poet seems to be anticipating a return of a moment of pure clarity. This begins with him anticipating the 'return of the sun', shining on the 'old silver on the walls:'. But the problem is, what is this daylight bringing. We know that it is encroaching the illusion of the room, and beginning to spill in through the windows, but what does it symbolize? the last line is quite puzzling at this point, a return 'no diffused voices', implying a moment of clarity, without the 'customary din', seeming to echo the concept of line shining the truth on the moment/the life of the speaker.

In the second paragraph the speaker expands, 'Why?' he asks, as if asking what this means, to which he answers, the 'day of enchantment' is his 'reward for the pageant of hours / too much alike.' He then goes on to explain in further depth, that the sleeping power of his 'unconscious wizard', which has been 'welling' inside him will now 'ooverflow'. The light now shines on him and he proclaims "I'll overhwhelm tall houses, treeless streets." imply that something great is in store, in what is symbolized by the returning day.

The next paragraph takes a turn, explaining what awaits for him: a 'land of virgin snow," which "powdered, as in a tapestry." implying that it is free for him to leave a definite mark - the powdered snow being impressionable to the footprint, and being clear of the previous marks of others - and therefore ready for the taking/impressing, the Snow being transformed into a sort of canvas for his own designs.

The last paragraph takes another drastic turn; the speaker says his purpose and desire now - to, from his elated level, 'read the black / signs of branches on the white, like an alphabet of being.' The white here referring to the snow, being marred by time and nature, fallen branches symbolizing the growth and destruction of the tree in winter, in the time when the sun was down, and he was symbolically sleeping. He wishes to use these branches to view 'the whole past', for he believes they 'will open out before' him. They will say what has occurred while he hid behind his window, and the snow was down.

The last few lines through another curve ball. What is so significant about reading the branches? Well, if 'no sound will jar' his 'solitary joy' than it can be assumed that this act is bringing him clarity and understanding - a oneness with himself. The final lines take it into another direction all together - the 'hoopoe... come / to usher in the spring.' must symbolize the end of the winter, after the light has risen, and the spring, bringing rebirth, and the end of winter - and with it the end of his need for clarity.

The problem therefore, in the poem, I would think, is in interpreting the symbolism behind the branches on the snow, and what the speaker desires to get or understand from them. He mentions the whole past opening up before him, but what does he mean by that? It must be assumed then, that he is implying the tree branches are somewhat of the observer of time - the natural, and therefore eternal world, and therefore he can gain clarity about himself, and about time, before spring will come, and bring about a wanted fundamental change in him.

I think it would be unfair also to view this poem as just a collection of happy images, or of a Wordsworthian moment as seen in Wordsworth's prelude and Tintern Abbey. Montale is a very different poet, who builds more with metaphor and synechdoches, and likes to load his poems with symbolic depth, at this time probably influenced strongly by the symbolists, who were just finishing up. I think it is more sensible then, to consider the elements as a contrast - the night is cloaking the tree branches, and therefore not letting him enjoy the view of the past, and the future, and also the lack of understanding in the past is obscuring the future, and making it unwanted.

We must then consider the context - this was written a little after the first world war (my edition doesn't have an exact date, but the whole collection was from 1925, so we can assume somewhere after the war, and to this date) and the world was in a rather uncertain point.

It can be assumed then, that this poem pushes time from two fronts - the darkness before the sun returns, and the spring after the clarity occurs. Winter is a transitional period, awaiting the new growth, after sense and order can be divulged from the branches, from the past.

Stlukes and JBI: Your analysis of this poem, i.e. both of you, is grounded as can be in academic terms. My question (which uncomfortably co-incides with a pet theory) arises from the expression "incosciente mago" and is this a key to the ultimate meaning? (= fantasy). My sense of the poem, albeit problematic because of the translation factor, is that this expression ...if it may mean Montale's unconscious prophet (or wizard if you must) ....turns the piece into a desire for the quiet period between to warring periods (as JBI mentions with regards to the poems historical place). Also, if true, this fantasy becomes an irony, being that the writer has as high desire for something most consider normal.

I took the 'unconscious wizard' to be in apposition to 'the power welling', thereby acts as him comparing the power welling inside him to an unconscious wizard, a sleeper ready to awake and throw fire. The term isn't significant, in my reading, I think it is just the speaker being metaphorical.

Your interpretation is more likely but mine gives Montale more credit for a wider view. I'll go with yours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by quasimodo1

Your interpretation is more likely but mine gives Montale more credit for a wider view. I'll go with yours.

---

Don't; the poem is ambiguous, it can mean anything. I'm just making educated guesses; the poem could mean many other things..

I'll look out on a land of untouched snows
But insubstantial, as if seen on a screen.
A slow ray will slide down from the cottony sky.
Woods and hills alive with invisible light
Will praise me for their joyful reoccurrence.
{Galassi's third stanza}



.................................................. .................................................. .................

Avro' di contro un paese d'intatte nevi
Ma lievi come viste in un arazzo.
Scivolera' dal cielo bioccoso un tardo raggio.
Gremite d'invisibile luce selve e colline
Mi diranno l'elogio degl'ilari ritorni.
{Montale's original Italian} This third stanza seems to me, unconnected to the others and in my almost non-existant knowledge of Italian...just evaluating some expressions word by translated word (and of course I'm using the Galassi translation) ... the most seems lost in translation. "A slow ray will slide down from the cottony sky." stands out from the text in several ways....the "slow ray" being light that defies the laws of physics and "from the cottony sky" is a more romantic (dramatic as well) expression then perhaps you find in the rest of the poem. The image produced is surreal and getting back to your historical placement...the line has a post-war feel, or post great -event feel to it. Again I see the whole poem going in a direction that is anything but fantasy.

I think it would be unfair also to view this poem as just a collection of happy images, or of a Wordsworthian moment as seen in Wordsworth's Prelude and Tintern Abbey... probably influenced strongly by the symbolists, who were just finishing up.

I agree that it would be off to limit this poem to such a view. The fact that he presents the scene in anticipation of the event rather than in response to an actual "Wordsworthian" moment is quite different. Montale admits to having been deeply inspired by the Symbolists as well as Rilke. I certainly see much of that in this work. The images add up, to my reading, as something not unlike the work of many Symbolist poems... I'm thinking especially of Rimbaud's Illuminations... but also the more crystalline Modernist sound of Rilke.

Stlukes has made a most cogent remark and in response let me admit after the denial...that I'm grasping on this one.

Listen to me, the poets laureate
walk only among plants
with rare names: boxwood, privet and acanthus.
But I like roads that lead to grassy
ditches where boys
scoop up a few starved
eels out of half-dry puddles:
paths that run along the banks,
come down among the tufted canes
and end in orchards, among the lemon trees.
{first stanza of "The Lemons" translated by Galassi}

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Arrowsmith translates the first two stanzas this way:

ALMOST A FANTASIA

Daylight again, I sense it
in the dawning of old
silver on the walls:
a glimmer edges the shut windows.
The sun comes back
again, but brings
no diffused voices, no customary din.

Why? I think of a day of enchantment,
my reward for the pageant of hours
too much alike. In me the power
welling, unconscious wizard,
will overflow. Yes, I'll be standing at the window,
I'll overwhelm tall houses, treeless streets.
[SNIP]

---

There are two keys I think to this poem. First this: "In me the power/welling, unconscious wizard,/will overflow." It echoes Wordworth's "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" the philosophic heart of Ramanticism. Second, is the shift in tense right after that sentence I just quoted. Before the sentence, Montale is in present tense and describing the scene deligently, especially highlighting the sun and daylight and the enchantment of day time as "pageant". After the sentence of the "power welling" Montale shifts into future tense, which is a conditional or imaginative situation. The imagination has taken over and induces all sorts of imaginative situations, of which i can't quite connect except to say they magnify the narrator's ego and inflate his feelings of power. I don't exactly know what Montale suggests by the various images or symbols, but I do see this poem coming from the Romantic tradition.

Although I am disrupting the remaining discussion, I am posting just to let the club members know I am stopping with the club for the time being. I am not very good at absorbing poets or experiencing them through posts. I did manage to get some sense of Roethke, but this process is too inchoate for me, as a poet myself.

I need time with poets and their work, not only to read it, but to hear it, age with it, as I have done with Dr. Creeley, and thus appreciate his experiments with compression.

Should I be a member on the forum long enough, I will return if or when a poet is nominated whom I feel confident about in offering analysis--and whose selection is, perhaps, less rushed in the making.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

Although I am disrupting the remaining discussion, I am posting just to let the club members know I am stopping with the club for the time being. I am not very good at absorbing poets or experiencing them through posts. I did manage to get some sense of Roethke, but this process is too inchoate for me, as a poet myself.

I need time with poets and their work, not only to read it, but to hear it, age with it, as I have done with Dr. Creeley, and thus appreciate his experiments with compression.

Should I be a member on the forum long enough, I will return if or when a poet is nominated whom I feel confident about in offering analysis--and whose selection is, perhaps, less rushed in the making.

---

I completely understand. If I didn't have the book, I couldn't do it either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I completely understand. If I didn't have the book, I couldn't do it either.

---

It is more than having or not having a text Virgil, but I hope the book club continues and manages itself a little better, perhaps. I suppose it is a matter of coordination.

To Joz: If it seems like I'm winging-it, i.e. the poetry bookclub, it's becasue I am. Always open to organizational suggestions. But you know that. In these days of poetry not just being in the cultural closet...but being in the back of that cluttered closet...well. any discussion is a plus. If the quality of that discussion can be improved in any way...please inform me. As for Montale, I think we'll finish up on "The Lemons" and start a new poet. I was hoping in my inimitably prejudiced way for Bishop.

quasi dear, no biggie if you are winging it; I in fact appreciate the exposure you've given me.

I cannot *wing it* tho, if I do not wish to come off like a posting imbecile. I don't have my doctorate like Petrarch, true, but I consider myself an accomplished author, if not an entirely successful one--and reading poetry worth reading is an investment I need the time to make--more for some poets than others, and Montale is the "more" here. Bishop would be the same, as her critical reputation is on the rise--and in this I do not merely parrot TNR, as she has been in the eddy of upward attention for a few years now.

I withdraw until I can find the time to focus, research, and *say* something choice. I can get away with bandying fiction round and about, but I cannot reduce good poetry to sound bite summaries.

I will message you later. Busy this week.

OK THEN, your qualifications are noted. I still look forward to the occaisonal interruption.

We moving on to "Lemons"?

Quasi... sorry I've been tied up lately. I should be able to throw together some thoughts tomorrow (too tired after a day at school followed by 5 hours in the studio) on Montale before we come to a close.

It is a lovely poem... but I do think there are others also worth taking a look at before we call it quits. Like quasi I would certainly be open to suggestions for how to organize the discussion. I would certainly have liked some other input or suggestions by others for specific poems by Montale. I'd also like to see Petrarch drop by again and offer her insight.

Is it time for another poem? I haven't offerred one yet.

Yes, we're moving on to "The Lemonns" as Stlukes suggested earlier. I (we?) will await his intro. or not.

Well certainly... I limoni is it... but I am all for Virgil (or anyone else) offering another poem for discussion. I'm not up for making this my own show.

The Lemon Trees

Listen: the laureled poets
stroll only among shrubs
with learned names: ligustrum, acanthus, box.
What I like are streets that end in grassy
ditches where boys snatch
a few famished eels from drying puddles:
paths that struggle among the banks,
then dip among the tufted canes,
into the orchards, among the lemon trees.

Better if the gay palaver of the birds
is stilled, swallowed by the blue:
more clearly now, you hear the whisper
of genial branches in that air, barely astir,
the sense of that smell,
inseparable from earth,
that rains its restless sweetness in the heart.
Here, by some miracle, the war
of conflicted passions is stilled;
here even we the poor share the riches of the world-
the smell of the lemon trees...

But the illusion dies, time returns us
to noisy cities where the sky is only
patches of blue, high up, between the cornices.
Rain wearies the ground; over the buildings
winter's tedium thickens.
Light grows niggardly, the soul bitter.
And one day, through a gate ajar,
among the trees in the courtyard
we see the yellows of the lemon trees;
and the heart's ice thaws
and songs pelt
into the breast
and trumpets of gold pour forth
epiphanies of Light!

from The Lemon Trees, tr. William Arrowsmith

Ascoltami, i poeti laureati
si muovono soltanto fra le piante
dai nomi poco usati: bossi ligustri o acanti.
lo, per me, amo le strade che riescono agli erbosi
fossi dove in pozzanghere
mezzo seccate agguantanoi ragazzi
qualche sparuta anguilla:
le viuzze che seguono i ciglioni,
discendono tra i ciuffi delle canne
e mettono negli orti, tra gli alberi dei limoni.

Meglio se le gazzarre degli uccelli
si spengono inghiottite dall'azzurro:
più chiaro si ascolta il susurro
dei rami amici nell'aria che quasi non si muove,
e i sensi di quest'odore
che non sa staccarsi da terra
e piove in petto una dolcezza inquieta.
Qui delle divertite passioni
per miracolo tace la guerra,
qui tocca anche a noi poveri la nostra parte di ricchezza
ed è l'odore dei limoni.

Vedi, in questi silenzi in cui le cose
s'abbandonano e sembrano vicine
a tradire il loro ultimo segreto,
talora ci si aspetta
di scoprire uno sbaglio di Natura,
il punto morto del mondo, l'anello che non tiene,
il filo da disbrogliare che finalmente ci metta
nel mezzo di una verità.
Lo sguardo fruga d'intorno,
la mente indaga accorda disunisce
nel profumo che dilaga
quando il giorno piú languisce.
Sono i silenzi in cui si vede
in ogni ombra umana che si allontana
qualche disturbata Divinità.

Ma l'illusione manca e ci riporta il tempo
nelle città rurnorose dove l'azzurro si mostra
soltanto a pezzi, in alto, tra le cimase.
La pioggia stanca la terra, di poi; s'affolta
il tedio dell'inverno sulle case,
la luce si fa avara - amara l'anima.
Quando un giorno da un malchiuso portone
tra gli alberi di una corte
ci si mostrano i gialli dei limoni;
e il gelo dei cuore si sfa,
e in petto ci scrosciano
le loro canzoni
le trombe d'oro della solarità.

Sorry about the pm, just noticed this posting while I was writing that.