Between the 1910s and 1920s, Eugenio Montale (1896–1981) was a restless accountant with a passion for music and poetry. Although he engaged with Genoa’s leading cultural figures (Angelo Barile, Adriano Grande, Mario Bonzi), he felt isolated and was perpetually dissatisfied. A significant turning point came in 1923 through the influence of Bobi Bazlen, who arrived in Genoa to work at the Atlantic Refining Company owned by the Psyllas family. Thanks in part to Bazlen, Montale left his hometown in 1927 and moved to Florence, which in the 1930s was undeniably Italy’s literary capital. Montale himself described Florence as a “mainland of culture, ideas, and tradition” and the place where he spent “the most important” years of his life in terms of “cultural development.”
It was in Florence, in 1927, that he met Drusilla Tanzi, his future muse and life companion, whom he nicknamed Mosca. Montale’s first existential act of rebellion came earlier, when he mustered the courage to rewrite his fate, moving away from the melancholy, solitary destiny of being an accountant in the family business. His first poetic work, however, emerged in 1925: Ossi di Seppia (Cuttlefish Bones), a collection that would alter the course of modern poetry. In Florence, Montale worked at the Bemporad publishing house, joined the vibrant literary circle of the journal Solaria, and quickly became friends with Bonaventura Tecchi, whom he succeeded as director of the Gabinetto Vieusseux from 1929 to 1938.
In 1939, with the help of Gianfranco Contini, Montale published his second poetry collection, Le Occasioni (The Occasions), with Einaudi. This collection interweaves various muses (Lucia Rodocanachi, Drusilla Tanzi, and especially Irma Brandeis). Montale frequented Florence’s most renowned literary cafés, such as the Giubbe Rosse, where he mingled with figures like Palazzeschi, Vittorini, Gadda, and Quasimodo, and the Pazskowski café, which hosted a different literary faction, including Malaparte, Bacchelli, Rosai, and Baldini. Montale became a key figure in this milieu. In 1945, like many intellectuals, he joined the Action Party and contributed to founding the magazine Il Mondo. Around this time, he also began painting, encouraged by Raffaele De Grada and, earlier, by Sebastiano Timpanaro, one of the first admirers of Montale’s artistic talent.
In 1948, Montale moved to Milan with Drusilla Tanzi (whom he officially married in 1962) to work as an editor at Corriere della Sera, a role he held until 1973 under editor-in-chief Guglielmo Emmanuel. In 1949, he experienced another transformative encounter, this time with the Turin poet Maria Luisa Spaziani, whom Montale nicknamed the Fox. Yet, perhaps due to lack of courage or ability—or, as some have suggested, ineptitude—Montale chose stability once again, remaining with Mosca.
In 1956, Montale published a third and significant poetry collection, La Bufera e Altro (The Storm and Other Things), with Neri Pozza. Having finally achieved financial stability—something that, as many wryly observed, Montale, a true Genoese, always craved obsessively—he devoted himself even more fully to writing. This included not only journalistic work (later compiled by Giorgio Zampa under the title Il Secondo Mestiere or The Second Profession) but also creative writing.
In 1971, Satura was published, its ironic ingenuity once again making a mark on the Italian poetic landscape. In 1973, Diario del ’71 e del ’72 (Diary of ’71 and ’72) appeared, followed in 1977 by Quaderno di Quattro Anni (Notebook of Four Years). Montale was also a translator (see Quaderno di Traduzioni, published in 1948 by Edizioni della Meridiana), a prose writer (notably La Farfalladi Dinard, released in 1956 by Neri Pozza), and an essayist with a keen critical insight. Thanks to Bobi Bazlen, Montale introduced Italians to the previously overlooked Italo Svevo. In 1967, he was appointed a Senator for Life. In 1975, after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, he famously declared to the world that poetry, fortunately, “is not a commodity.” Montale passed away in Milan on September 12th 1981.
Le Occasioni (The Occasions) is Montale’s second poetry collection, published in 1939 by Einaudi (his debut collection, Ossi di Seppia, had been published in 1925 in Turin by Piero Gobetti). Le Occasioni is now widely considered part of the canon of 20th-century Western poetry. Notably, while Irma Brandeis is the principal muse of the collection, appearing under the fictional name Clizia, Montale only explicitly dedicated it “to I.B.” starting with the sixth edition in 1949 (the first published by Mondadori). This act of concealment and subsequent revelation reflects a deliberate strategy (not solely poetic).
Irma Brandeis (New York, 1905–1990) came to Florence in 1933 from the United States to study Dante and sought out Montale after being deeply impressed by her reading of Ossi di Seppia. Their meeting was transformative: Brandeis was a pivotal figure, not only because she led Montale into a profound, tumultuous, and destabilising love story but also because she opened the door for him to consider leaving Italy—a country he had long found stifling—and sparked his interest in American culture, which was beginning to be studied and translated with fervour at the time. However, Montale ultimately chose not to leave with Irma, staying in Florence with the dependable Drusilla.
The poems in Le Occasioni were written between 1928 and 1939, in the midst of a harrowing political climate. Yet, aside from the long poem Tempi di Bellosguardo (which pairs with Notizie dall’Amiata), external history is never explicitly focused on. It is the private sphere that dominates, as highlighted by memorable sections such as the Mottetti. Le Occasioni marks a turning point in Montale’s poetry, presenting a well-defined poetic concept of “you”: a modern version of the salvific “angel-woman” from the stilnovisti tradition, though divorced from theology.
The collection concludes with Notizie dall’Amiata (News from Mount Amiata), a triptych written in late 1938, a bleak period for Montale. In October 1938, his sister Marianna passed away; in December, he was dismissed from the Gabinetto Vieusseux; and Irma returned to the United States. These losses—the death of his first champion as a poet, the loss of his job, and an unsettling farewell—were compounded by horrific historical events: the racial laws and the Munich Agreement, both of which occurred in September 1938. It was an exceptionally dark time.
Notizie dall’Amiata holds significance from many perspectives, particularly regarding its symbolic layering. Montale contrasts the Amiata landscape—seen as archaic, Christian, and Romanesque—with the classical, Renaissance, pagan, and stifling environment of Florence, which represents duty, routine, and economic and existential uncertainty. This opposition also reflects the state of his relationship with Irma Brandeis: it symbolises not only the earthly mire that traps the poet, as opposed to the angelic realm of his beloved, but also the fundamental impossibility of their reconciliation (the chances of reuniting being as slim as merging two spaces as distant and different as Florence and Mount Amiata).
But Mount Amiata suggests more to Montale. It is important to remember that, geologically, the Amiata is an extinct volcano. This nature reflects, on various levels, the poet’s situation: a man who, needing to conceal the love simmering beneath his surface, is compelled to act, especially in society, as if that love were extinguished (officially, Montale is the companion of another woman); a man who, unable to fully embrace that love, suppresses it, blocking any possibility of eruption (in less metaphorical terms, Montale cannot bring himself to leave Italy and follow Clizia, his love, to America). This general tendency toward suppression resonates from the very beginning of the triptych, as seen in the opening lines: “Il fuoco d’artifizio del maltempo / sarà murmure d’arnie a tarda sera” (“The fireworks of the bad weather / will become the murmur of hives in the late evening”). This could be paraphrased as follows: the storm will die down in a few hours, and from a noisy and thus worrisome event, it will become little more than the harmless and tolerable hum of bees.
Mount Amiata, therefore, described by Montale in line 7 as a “cono diafano” (“diaphanous cone”), holds both biographical (a retreat, if not an outright escape, from a city that has become unbearable) and metaphorical significance. There is at least one other dimension to consider: the spiritual. If Florence represents rationality and calculation, Amiata is perceived as an almost mystical place, dense with spirituality, and thus the most fitting location to approach a semi-divine creature like Clizia. It may not be a coincidence that Amiata was previously interpreted and experienced spiritually by the preacher Davide Lazzaretti, whom Montale likely discovered through Giacomo Barzellotti’s book Monte Amiata e il suo profeta (Mount Amiata and Its Prophet), written by the philosopher from Piancastagnaio.
The Notizie dall’Amiata (News from Mount Amiata) has been described as a “private drama” and a “mini-autobiographical novel” because of its narrative elements. The term Notizie stands for both a letter and a coded report. The recipient, Irma Brandeis, had recently returned to her birthplace, America, leaving Montale and Italy behind forever. The lyrical verses “unire la mia veglia al tuo profondo / sonno” (“to unite my vigil with your deep / sleep”) actually refer, more prosaically, to the time difference separating them.