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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > Xenia

Xenia

In its literary impact, Montale’s Xenia, published in 1966 in an edition of just 50 copies, might be described as Italy’s The Waste Land. This now-famous sequence came in profound response to the death, in 1963, of his beloved wife whom he nicknamed Mosca, a woman so short-sighted as to have reputedly apologised when bumping into a mirror. At the end of the Xenia sequence, Montale allegorises the story of his Florentine ark of precious artefacts overwhelmed in the 1966 flood of the Arno. Those objects resurface in the poem as a metaphor for a loss that is as personal as it is historical. Montale’s personal past with Mosca has been submerged, but also Europe’s high literary culture.

This exciting new translation was launched in October 2016 to coincide with two anniversaries: the 50th anniversary of Xenia’s 1966 private (and first) edition in Italian, and the 120th anniversary of Montale’s birth.

Author

Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale

Books

Xenia

Eugenio Montale (1896 – 1981) was a Nobel Laureate and a grandmaster of Italian modernist poetry. During WWI, Montale served as an infantry officer on the Austrian front. Originally Montale trained to be an opera singer, but when his voice teacher died in 1923, he gave up singing and concentrated his efforts on writing. After his first book, Ossi di seppia (Cuttlefish Bones), appeared in 1925, Montale was received by critics as a profoundly original and experimental poet. His style mixed archaic words with scientific terms and idioms from the vernacular. He was dismissed from his directorship of the Gabinetto Vieusseux research library in 1938 for refusing to join the Fascist party. He withdrew from public life and began translating English writers such as Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Herman Melville, and Eugene O’Neill. In 1939, Le occasioni (The Occasions) appeared, his most innovative book, followed by La bufera e altro (The Storm and Other Things, 1956). It was this trio of books that won Montale the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975 and established him as a founder of the hermetic school of Italian poetry.

Translator

Mario Petrucci

Mario Petrucci

Books

Xenia

Mario Petrucci is a metaphysical poet, an ecologist and PhD physicist. He is the only poet to have been resident at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3, and has received major literary prizes across the board (National Poetry Competition (3rd); four times winner of the London Writers competition; Bridport Prize (winner); New London Writers Award). His book-length poem on Chernobyl, Heavy Water (Enitharmon 2004), captured the prestigious Arvon Prize for poetry and forms the backbone of a powerful new film (Seventh Art Productions). His other volumes include Flowers of Sulphur (2007), i tulips (2010) and the waltz in my blood (2011). He devises courses for the Poetry School, the Poetry Society’s Poetryclass initiative and Arvon/Foyle Young Poets. Mario is something of a frontiersman in creative writing projects in the public domain, engaging successfully with the various Imperial War Museum sites and delivering groundbreaking writing packs that tie into science (The Royal Society/ Royal Literary Fund) and ecology (Poetry Society). His remarkable poetry soundscape Tales from the Bridge was a centrepiece of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award for New Poetry. Mario lives in north London.

Original Language

Italian

Published by

Arc Publications, 2016
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In its literary impact, Montale’s Xenia, published in 1966 in an edition of just 50 copies, might be described as Italy’s The Waste Land. This now-famous sequence came in profound response to the death, in 1963, of his beloved wife whom he nicknamed Mosca, a woman so short-sighted as to have reputedly apologised when bumping into a mirror. At the end of the Xenia sequence, Montale allegorises the story of his Florentine ark of precious artefacts overwhelmed in the 1966 flood of the Arno. Those objects resurface in the poem as a metaphor for a loss that is as personal as it is historical. Montale’s personal past with Mosca has been submerged, but also Europe’s high literary culture.

This exciting new translation was launched in October 2016 to coincide with two anniversaries: the 50th anniversary of Xenia’s 1966 private (and first) edition in Italian, and the 120th anniversary of Montale’s birth.

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