Integrating the study of both music and art into an exploration of the
early poetry of Eugenio Montale (1896-1982), this book situates Italy's
premier poet of the twentieth century within the Modernist movement.
Gian-Paolo Biasin finds in Montale's poetry broad resonances,
reverberations, and comparisons that involve it in the European culture
of its time and that invite the reading of poetry, music, and painting
as texts in a cultural system. This interdisciplinary approach expands
our appreciation of Montale's work in a way not possible with literary
analysis alone.
Biasin's study first shows the structural homology between some of
Debussy's preludes for piano and certain poems in Montale's Ossi di
seppia, emphasizing the rhythmic qualities of the compositions. This
formal analysis leads to an understanding of the respective texts'
thematic, symbolic, and cultural meaning--specifically, antiheroism as a
choice of life. Similar methodology is then used to reveal the
relationship between the poetry of Montale and Giorgio Morandi's
etchings and between Montale's poetic persona, Arsenio, and the
novelistic characters of Svevo and Pirandello. Each of these comparisons
brings to light a shared image, that of the clown (or antihero) as a
mocking self-portrait of the modern artist.
Originally published in 1989.
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