Poetry: Eugenio Montale

Welcome back to It's a Classical Life! If you are new here, welcome! I hope that you will take the time to explore the diverse array of articles published here on how to live well, inspired by the classics. Reading classic literature, studying the arts, appreciating classical music, and sharing these things with all of you, are my passions. If you have come here before, you might be aware of my love of all things Italian. As part of my teaching degree I studied Italian language, literature and history and in 2004 I spent some time living and studying in the northern regions of the Veneto. It is such a rich culture, full of so many points of interest and inspiration. 

This week I'm looking at Italian Nobel Prize winning poet, Eugenio Montale - one of the most important Italian poets of the twentieth century - and his moving poem, The Lemon Trees. I've mentioned before that the best way to read poetry is aloud. I tried to find a recorded rendition of this poem on Youtube but could only find the original Italian. It is still beautiful to listen to, if you are interested. You can also read the poem in Italian here. This is just one translation, and if you explore further you may find others that speak to you also.

So, grab a cup of tea, a quiet corner (preferably in the sun) and take a few moments to be transported by Montale's beautiful imagery and touching words, to an Italian world of little paths, orchards, lush green yards and fragrant lemon trees. 

• 

Hear me a moment. Laureate poets 
seem to wander among plants
no one knows: boxwood, acanthus,
where nothing is alive to touch.
I prefer small streets that falter
into grassy ditches where a boy,
searching in the sinking puddles,
might capture a struggling eel.
The little path that winds down
along the slope plunges through cane-tufts
and opens suddenly into the orchard
among the moss-green trunks
of the lemon trees.

Perhaps it is better
if the jubilee of small birds
dies down, swallowed in the sky,
yet more real to one who listens,
the murmur of tender leaves
in a breathless, unmoving air.
The senses are graced with an odor
filled with the earth.
It is like rain in a troubled breast,
sweet as an air that arrives
too suddenly and vanishes.
A miracle is hushed; all passions
are swept aside. Even the poor
know that richness,
the fragrance of the lemon trees.

You realize that in silences
things yield and almost betray
their ultimate secrets.
At times, one half expects
to discover an error in Nature,
the still point of reality,
the missing link that will not hold,
the thread we cannot untangle
in order to get at the truth.

You look around. Your mind seeks,
makes harmonies, falls apart
in the perfume, expands
when the day wearies away.
There are silences in which one watches
in every fading human shadow
something divine let go.

The illusion wanes, and in time we return
to our noisy cities where the blue
appears only in fragments
high up among the towering shapes.
Then rain leaching the earth.
Tedious, winter burdens the roofs,
and light is a miser, the soul bitter.
Yet, one day through an open gate,
among the green luxuriance of a yard,
the yellow lemons fire
and the heart melts,
and golden songs pour
into the breast
from the raised cornets of the sun.

Oh, wow! There is so much that I love about this poem, not least the quote that I have extracted above. It takes a couple of times reading it, but Montale is really touching deep into the beauty of nature and the simple ways we can escape the overwhelming city and find truth. I'm not going to analyse the poem for you - I hope that you will read it and it will speak to you personally, especially if you are coming into the summer after a long, cold winter. 

I would love to know what you think of Montale's The Lemon Trees in the comments below. Do you enjoy poetry? Can you feel his love for his country in this poem? Or do you feel something else?

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by; I hope you all have a wonderful day.