THE STORM AND OTHER THINGS By Eugenio Montale. Translated by William Arrowsmith. 219 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Cloth, $14.95. Paper, $6.95.
WHEN Eugenio Montale received the Nobel Prize in 1975 for five formidable volumes of poetry (of which ''The Storm and Other Things'' is the third, most difficult and most beautiful), no one doubted that the prize had gone to the poems, not the public persona. Montale generated no legend. No shred of gossip clung to his heavyset, almost invisible figure. His career illustrated, it seemed, the irrelevance of a poet's private life to his work. The tight, acoustically intriguing poems with their murky private allusions blocked all attempts to extract an autobiography. At most, the frequency with which they addressed women, unnamed and named - Esterina, Gertin, Dora Markus, Liuba, Vixen, Mosca and, above all, Clizia - allowed one to surmise that for Montale life, like art, was quintessentially speech to a woman.
In the years between his receiving the prize and his death in 1981, he won fame as one of the century's supreme poets. Hefty editions of his complete poems appeared in 1977 and 1980. Although critics in many countries had produced much illuminating commentary on his verse, rarely, if ever, did they find it necessary to refer to his private life. His career seemed proof of the impersonality of art.
But now, five years after his death, we must learn to reread Montale's works, particularly this splendid book, against the background of his life, because the cunning poet himself deliberately broke the seal around his private life in 1967 by giving Luciano Rebay of Columbia University his correspondence with a friend, Roberto Bazlen. Those letters document a traumatic period when he was torn between the love of two women, ''Clizia'' and ''Mosca.'' Entrusting the bundle to Mr. Rebay, he dryly remarked that it might interest posterity. Later he gave journalists details of Clizia's life without revealing her name. By the late 1970's educated guesses about her identity were being made in private and in print. Two years ago Mr. Rebay lifted the veil when he published key portions of the letters with much new biographical information in the scholarly journal Forum Italicum.
Here, in outline, is the story. In 1927 the 30-year-old poet fell in love with Drusilla Tanzi, the wife of an eminent Italian art critic. Myopic, not beautiful, overbearing, she remained the central woman of his life until her death. He awarded her the not entirely flattering but affectionate nickname of Mosca, or Fly. (His own nickname was Eusebio, after a late Roman author of an early history of the church.) Despite bitter complaints about her in the letters to Bazlen, he stuck by her and married her after her husband's death in 1958. Five years later she died. He dedicated a series of domestic poems to her in his book ''Satura'' (1971). Later, as a member of the Italian Senate, he voted not to abrogate the law against divorce - a paradoxical tribute to married love by a man who had lived for so many decades with a married woman.
But Drusilla Tanzi was not the central woman of Montale's imagination. In 1932 in Florence he had met a green-eyed, ash-blond American woman with a high forehead, bangs and unruly hair who wore scarfs, jade, and coral earrings. Irma Brandeis had translated a book on Toscanini and was a student of Dante and other poets and of mystics and saints. In poems published the year before he died Montale would recall how they read Donne's erotic poem ''The Flea'' together. The Brandeis family had moved to the United States from Vienna in the 19th century. Louis Brandeis, the Su-preme Court Justice, was the second cousin of Irma Brandeis's father. The Montale she met was the obscure author of a stunning first book of poems, ''Cuttlefish Bones'' (1925), and a friend of leading liberal, anti-Fascist intellectuals.
A sense of destiny seems to have surrounded their meeting. Another late poem tells how she spoke about the ladies of poets made to stuff unreadable poems. That is what will happen to me you added slyly. I was astounded. She entered his poems as the unnamed interlocutor of the sequence ''Motets,'' in his second book, ''The Occasions'' (1939). She also entered his life, vainly urging him to join the guerrillas fighting in Spain. In 1936 she wrote an article about him for The Saturday Review. One can imagine the jealousy that the love triangle of Eusebio, Mosca and Clizia must have generated.
In 1939, with war in the air and Mussolini's anti-Semitic legislation in effect, Miss Brandeis returned to the United States. Montale wanted to follow. He hoped to find work at an American university and join other Italian exiles already here. But when a job seemed available at Smith College, he ceded it to Drusilla Tanzi's son. Something held him back. Mrs. Tanzi herself fell ill and was hospitalized. In the United States Miss Brandeis found work in the Italian broadcast section of the Office of War Information. In 1944 she became a professor of literature at Bard College and the New School for Social Research.
''The Storm and Other Things'' is the poetic record of the years 1938 to 1949 - the least happy and most creative period of Montale's life. The book's nucleus, ''Finisterre,'' was a slim volume smuggled into Switzerland in 1943 to avoid Fascist censorship. The title poem of that little volume presents Clizia as a latter-day Beatrice, offering her lover salvation from an Old World of death and war in a New World of peace and God. With the belling of the stags in the rain at Armor, the arching of your eye faded in the early light to filter later onto the whitewashed dawn where bicycle wheels, spindles, rockets, fringes of agitated trees are whirling. Maybe I have no other proof that God sees me, that your sea-green eyes look at me, for Him.
In life Mrs. Tanzi prevailed. She imposed on Montale a long separation from his Clizia. But in art Clizia triumphed by her very absence. She became her lover's trans-Atlantic Jewish Christ-bearer, holding out to him a glimmer of a transcendence he could neither find nor forget. In Florence one fall he wrote for her his great poem ''Rainbow,'' which begins: When, out of the blue, Saint Martin shakes his embers down, stirring the fire in the bottom pit of Ontario's black furnace -crackle of green cones in the ashes or the fumes of steeping poppies and the bloodied Face on the shroud separating me from you - By 1949 the crisis had passed. He no longer dreamed of escaping from Mosca to Clizia in America. The Milanese daily Corriere Della Sera had hired him as a full-time contributor. But he continued writing poems to Clizia. In 1949 he dedicated a new edition of ''The Occasions'' to ''I.B.'' Then, in 1956, she appeared as the main character in this his greatest book. A note at the end also identified Clizia as the anonymous ''You'' of the ''Motets.''
The story was not over. Miss Brandeis had returned to Florence in 1955 to work on a book about Dante, published later as ''The Ladder of Vision.'' Today that elegant, penetrating volume can be read no longer solely as one of the best introductions to Dante in English. One cannot help wondering whether Irma Brandeis's sensitive pages on Beatrice do not also constitute Clizia's indirect autoexegesis. Does the story of Dante and Beatrice gloss the love of Eusebio and Clizia, or vice versa? But when her book appeared, neither her readers nor Montale's made the connection. The implications of his praise of her book in 1965 during celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth were lost on his perplexed Florentine audience. Nor had anyone seen the connection three years earlier, when Miss Brandeis edited an issue of The Quarterly Review of Literature dedicated to Montale.
Until a full biography appears, or Miss Brandeis herself speaks, we may speculate that Montale hid this story to protect the two women he loved, and later, after his wife's death, insured its publication because he realized that so fascinating a story could not finally be suppressed and would also provide his demanding poems with an irresistible frame.
[...]
Cuando vaya a Italia me voy a comprar tantos pero tantos libros...
Sobre libros y eso:
1. name one book that changed your life:
Ehm... no sé si hay alguno que me haya cambiado la vida, pero me parece que todos han contribuido en hacerme la persona que soy. En realidad solo se me ocurre un película: De amor y de guerra, que es sobre la vida de Hemingway, asique algo tiene que ver.
2. name one book you have read more than once:
Uf! Un montón! Pero me parece que uno de los que leí mas veces fue Dailan Kifki, de Maria Elena Walsh.
3. one book you would want on a desert island:
El Señor de los Anillos de Tolkien. Qué puedo decir? No importa donde esté, tiene la capacidad de transportarme a la Tierra Media y teniendo yo la imaginación un poco vivaz... podria salir de la isla desierta a gusto y piacere. (El concepto de "isla desierta" me inquieta/irrita un poco... no duraria nada!)
4. two books that made you laugh:
Cabo Trafalgar de Arturo Pérez Reverte, que es brillante no solo en la forma de narrar y de introducirlo a uno en la historia, sino que... no sé, maneja el lenguaje por como se van a escuchar las palabras en la cabeza del lector (tiene sentido eso?).
E Il Cerchio Magico de Susanna Tammaro, que incluye una manada de elefantes alimentados a porotos por 4 años para que se tiren un pedo descomunal. Encima en italiano es mas gracioso.
5. one book that made you cry:
Soy mas maricona yo... pero con el último que lloré a moco tendido en repetidas ocasiones fue The Time Traveler's Wife de Audrey Niffeneger, aunque con el calibre de la historia y tomando en cuenta su proveniencia creo que estoy mas que excusada.
6. one book you wish you'd written:
Cien Años de Soledad de Garcia Márquez. El realismo mágico me puede y esa forma de contar el cuento... creo que alguien que escribe un libro así debe ver el mundo de una forma diferente, con anteojos de otro color.
7. one book you wish had never been written:
(Mis respuestas mentales incluyeron Mein Kampf, la Biblia y el Corán, porque se han hecho tantas porquerias en el mundo a causa de ellos...) Pero me quedo con El Diario de Ana Frank. No por el libro en si, pero por las circunstancias: ojalá esa chica hubiera podido disfrutar de su vida en vez de tener que narrar las miserias que tuvo que padecer.
8. two books you are currently reading:
Lionboy de Zizou Corder, en ingles y comprado en Amazon porque soy asi de sofisticada y el manga Clover de Clamp en la compu, porque la edición de Ivrea de acá es medio imposible de encontrar, aunque vi los tomos 2 y 3 en Musimundo hace un tiempo... me los podria haber comprado, pero ya me estaba llevando Casablanca y Ratatouille en DVD y no me alcanzaba la plata.
9. one book you've been meaning to read:
Me prestaron El Sueño mas Dulce de Doris Lessing, que procederé a leer antes de empezar la facu y mis dias se llenen de Semiología y Patologia Especial.
Tengo que postearlo... Estaba boludeando en YouTube, porqueestoydevacacionesytengomuchotiempolibre, cuando entre varios links por aqui y por allá me encontré al mismísimo J.R.R. Tolkien recitando un poema en élfico. Me morí. Seguí investigando links y me recitó Riddles in the Dark, capítulo de El Hobbit, algunas canciones y el poema sobre los anillos. Me morí de nuevo. Y con las entrevistas igual: hablaba a los pedos, con una voz y un acento británico maravillosos. Siento como si hubiera conocido a un abuelo oculto.
De una entrevista con Dennis Gerrolt:
"Gerrolt: (hablando de Bilbo) But in the face of the most appalling danger he struggles on and continues, and wins through.
Tolkien: But that seems I suppose more like an allegory of the human race. I've always been impressed that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts... they struggle on, almost blindly in a way."
|...|
"Tolkien: |...| Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-Earth is a particular kind of Earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.
Gerrolt: It seemed to me that Middle-Earth was in a sense as you say this world we live in but at a different era.
Tolkien: No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes. " (me encanta esta frase!)
|...|
"Gerrolt: Do you consider the world declining as the Third Age declines in your book and do you see a Fourth Age for the world at the moment, our world?
Tolkien: At my age I'm exactly the kind of person who has lived through one of the most quickly changing periods known to history. Surely there could never be in seventy years so much change. " (te sorprenderias, querido...)
|...|
"I wrote the last ... in about 1949 - I remember I actually wept at the denouement." (empezó con El Hobbit en el '30... casi 20 años conviviendo con sus personajes!)
de·noue·ment –noun:
| 1. | the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel. |
| 2. | the place in the plot at which this occurs. |
| 3. | the outcome or resolution of a doubtful series of occurrences. |
Parece que New Line se c*gó en el éxito de The Lord of the Rings, en la fantástica aceptación que tuvieron las películas entre los fanáticos de larga data, en el infernal reclutamiento de nuevos fans (meh, wannabes!) y por amarretearle unos mangos a Peter Jackson, no le va a dar la dirección de El Hobbit ni de niguna de 'las precuelas' (al pobre infeliz que intente la titánica tarea de realizar El Silamrillion, mis condolencias).
*Esta es la parte en la que hago puchero y sostengo que solo un fanático de larga data puede captar el relato de Tolkien en su faceta seria y su faceta juguetona, mas infantil que LordOf... y que Jackson me merecia la confianza para realizar un trabajo respetable. Y de última, 'mejor malo conocido que bueno por conocer'.*
Esta es la nota:
" Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh Talk THE HOBBIT
Dear One Ringers,
As you know, there's been a lot of speculation about The Hobbit. We are often asked about when or if this film will ever be made. We have always responded that we would be very interested in making the film - if it were offered to us to make.
You may also be aware that Wingnut Films has bought a lawsuit against New Line, which resulted from an audit we undertook on part of the income of The Fellowship of the Ring. Our attitude with the lawsuit has always been that since it's largely based on differences of opinion about certain accounting practices, we would like an independent body - whether it be a judge, a jury, or a mediator, to look at the issues and make an unbiased ruling. We are happy to accept whatever that ruling is. In our minds, it's not much more complex than that and that's exactly why film contracts include right-to-audit clauses.
However, we have always said that we do not want to discuss The Hobbit with New Line until the lawsuit over New Line's accounting practices is resolved. This is simple common sense - you cannot be in a relationship with a film studio, making a complex, expensive movie and dealing with all the pressures and responsibilities that come with the job, while an unresolved lawsuit exists.
We have also said that we do not want to tie settlement of the lawsuit to making a film of The Hobbit. In other words, we would have to agree to make The Hobbit as a condition of New Line settling our lawsuit. In our minds this is not the right reason to make a film and if a film of The Hobbit went ahead on this basis, it would be doomed. Deciding to make a movie should come from the heart - it's not a matter of business convenience. When you agree to make a film, you're taking on a massive commitment and you need to be driven by an absolute passion to want to get the story on screen. It's that passion, and passion alone, that gives the movie its imagination and heart. To us it is not a cold-blooded business decision.
|...|Given that New Line are committed to this course of action, we felt at the very least, we owed you, the fans, a straightforward account of events as they have unfolded for us.
We have always had the greatest support from The Ringers and we are very sorry our involvement with The Hobbit has been ended in this way. Our journey into Tolkien's world started with a phone call from Ken Kamins to Harvey Weinstein in Nov 1995 and ended with a phone call from Mark Ordesky to Ken in Nov 2006. It has been a great 11 years.
This outcome is not what we anticipated or wanted, but neither do we see any positive value in bitterness and rancor. We now have no choice but to let the idea of a film of The Hobbit go and move forward with other projects.
We send our very best wishes to whomever has the privilege of making The Hobbit and look forward to seeing the film on the big screen.
Warmest regards to you all, and thanks for your incredible support over the years.
We got to go there - but not back again ...
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh "
And so it is...
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
Resulta que antes no te importaba nada y ahora te importa todo. Sobre todo lo chiquito. Pasaste de náufrago a financista sin bajarte del bote. Vos, sí vos, que ya estabas acostumbrado a saber que tu patria era la factoría de alguien y te encontraste con el regalo de una patria nueva, y entonces, en vez de dar las gracias por el sobretodo de vicuña, dijiste que había una pelusa en la manga y que vos no lo querías derecho sino cruzado. ¡Pero con el sobretodo te quedaste! Entonces, ¿que me vas a contar a mi? ¿A quien le llevás la contra? Antes no te importaba nada y ahora te importa todo. Y protestás. ¿Y porqué protestás? ¡Ah, no hay té de Ceylán! Eso es tremendo. Mirá que problema. Leche hay, leche sobra; tus hijos, que alguna vez miraban la nata por turno, ahora pueden irse a la escuela con la vaca puesta. ¡Pero no hay té de Ceylán! Y según vos, no se puede vivir sin té de Ceylán. Te pasaste la vida tomando mate cocido, pero ahora me planteás un problema de estado porque no hay té de Ceylán. Claro, ahora la flota es tuya, ahora los teléfonos son tuyos, ahora los ferrocarriles son tuyos, ahora el gas es tuyo, pero... ¡no hay té de Ceylán!.
Malditos sean los recuerdos dolorosos.
Maldita la impotencia, la injusticia que vivimos.
El volvernos a casa cada uno por su lado.
Las finales sin jugar, el quedar en el camino.
Bendita la anestesia general a los dolores,
Las tristezas que curamos con abrazos,
Las gargantas que se rompen por los goles,
El sentirnos los mejores por un rato.
Malditos los sorteos y los Grupos de la Muerte,
Los controles sin azar que signaron nuestra suerte,
Malditos los mezquinos que juegan sin poesía,
Los que pegan, los que envidian, los que rompen y lastiman.
Bendito sea el orgullo con que entramos a la cancha,
El potrero y la pelota no se manchan,
La tv que repite la gambeta,
Inflar las redes de los otros, inflar el pecho de los nuestros
Merecer la camiseta!
Los turistas, los cronistas, los sponsors, los amigos
El himno, las mujeres siguiendo los partidos.
Benditas las cábalas que dan resultado,
Las risas y el llanto que guardaremos tanto.
Y bendito ese momento que nos regala el fútbol
De poder cambiar nuestro destino...
Y sentir otra vez y frente al mundo ...
lo "glorioso" y lo "groso" de ser ARGENTINO.
Veglia
Un'intera nottata
buttato vicino
a un
compagno
massacrato
con la sua bocca
digrignata
volta al
plenilunio
con la congestione
delle sue mani
penetrata
nel mio
silenzio
ho scritto
lettere piene d'amore
Non sono mai stato
tanto
attaccato alla vita.
