This is another of the short poems from the sequence ‘Xenia’ that Eugenio Montale wrote in memory of his wife (see also weeks 370 and 501 ).

A comparison has been made between this sequence and the poems that Hardy wrote about his wife Emma after death. Hardy is more lyrical, remembering the happier days of their first love in natural settings, such as walking on the cliffs; Montale by contrast is doggedly yet movingly mundane, and remembers a more lasting happiness. Here he imagines going back to hotels where they used to stay together, and having to ask for a single room, and talking to the hotel staff that had become her friends, then leaving with his grief unassuaged.

The translation that follows is my own.

Notes:

Saint James di Parigi: a hotel in Paris where Montale and his wife often stayed, particularly in his capacity as correspondent of the ‘Corriere del Sera’.

falsa Bisanzio: the hotel Danieli in Venice, famous among other things for its elaborate façade.

‘spaiati’: ‘unpaired’, a word normally used of things like odd socks, so here conveying than the idea of a broken coupledom that is more than mere singleness.

‘esaurita la carica meccanica’: I had difficulty with this line. Literally ‘the mechanical charge exhausted’, but what does this refer to? I consulted a native speaker, who wasn’t sure but thought the reference was to some time-related mechanism such as a watch or old-fashioned wind-up telephone, the basic idea being that the speaker’s time is up, so I’ve gone with that.

Xenia I.iii

Al Saint James di Parigi dovrò chiedere
una camera ‘singola’. (Non amano
i clienti spaiati). E così pure
nella falsa Bisanzio del tuo albergo
veneziano; per poi cercare subito
lo sgabuzzino delle telefoniste,
le tue amiche di sempre; e ripartire,
esaurita la carica meccanica,
il desiderio di riaverti, fosse
pure in un solo gesto o un’abitudine.

Eugenio Montale

At our hotel in Paris I’ll have to ask
For a room for one. (They don’t like guests unpaired).
Similarly at your favourite in Venice
With its Byzantine façade; and then first thing
I’ll track down in their box-room your friends for life
The switchboard operators, to share with them,
Our time together being over, the desire
To have you back again, if only in
A single gesture, one habit.