What a strange, disturbing poem this is, Henry. To whom is it addressed,
Mussolini or Montale himself, I wonder--Candice
on 3/14/02 8:29 AM, Henry Gould at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> This poem, which opens Montale's volume Le Occasioni, seems to comment on
> several of the assertions people have been making on this thread. There is
> a historical-political aspect - it was written during the Mussolini era.
>
> THE BALCONY
>
> It seemed child's play
> to change the void yawning before me
> into nothingness, your certain fire
> into tedious uncertainty.
>
> Now to that nothingness I have bound
> my every sluggish motive,
> that arduous void blunts my yearning
> to serve you while I live.
>
> You have no eyes for any life
> but that shimmering you alone can see.
> You lean out toward it
> from this window, now unlit.
>
> (tr. Wm. Arrowsmith)
>
>
> I have trouble thinking of poetry as either a redundancy, or as exceeding
> meaning. Nor do I think of meaning as comfortable. Nor as the difference
> of shifting signifiers. But poetry is many things at the same time to
> many people. . .
>
> Henry
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