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.

When his wife died the great Italian poet Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) wrote a sequence of short poems in her memory, linked but able to stand alone; he called the sequence ‘Xenia’, meaning ‘gifts’, particularly those made as a token of hospitality by a host to his guest. Their style is much plainer and more direct than that found in most of his other work, which makes them not only very accessible but very moving in their simplicity. This one commemorates his wife’s brother, who died young, and by extension her.

The translation that follows is my own.

From ‘Xenia’

Tuo fratello morì giovane; tu eri
la bimba scarruffata che mi guarda
“in posa” nell’ovale di un ritratto.
Scrisse musiche inedite, inaudite,
oggi sepolte in un baule o andate
al macero. Forse le riinventa
qualcuno inconsapevole, se ciò ch’è scritto è scritto.
L’amavo senza averlo conosciuto.
Fuori di te nessuno lo ricordava.
Non ho fatto ricerche: ora è inutile.
Dopo di te sono rimasto il solo
per cui egli è esistito. Ma è possibile,
lo sai, amare un’ombra, ombre noi stessi.

Your brother died young; you
Were the tousle-headed girl looking out at me
From your pose in an oval portrait. He wrote music
Unpublished, unperformed, buried today
In a trunk or sent for pulping; yet maybe,
If what is written stays written, reinvented
Unknowingly by someone else. I loved him
Although I never knew him, but only you
Remembered him. I never made inquiries
To know him better, and now it would be in vain:
With you gone, I am left the only one
For whom he once existed. Yet one can,
I know it, love a shade, being shadows ourselves.

I find the Italian writer Eugenio Montale one of the most interesting voices of the last century, a poet who moves easily between the physical world and the world of the mind, making a gnarly, intellectual music. Here is one of his love poems, set in Edinburgh: the bridge in question is the Forth Bridge. I like how it conveys a mind struggling to retain its grip on the reality of love though separated and on alien ground. The translation that follows is my own.

Vento sulla mezzaluna   

Il grande ponte non portava a te.
T’avrei raggiunta anche navigando
nelle chiaviche, a un tuo comando. Ma
già le forze, col sole sui cristalli
delle verande, andavano stremandosi.

L’uomo che predicava sul Crescente
mi chiese «Sai dov’è Dio?». Lo sapevo
e glielo dissi. Scosse il capo. Sparve
nel turbine che prese uomini e case
e li sollevò in alto, sulla pece.

Wind on the Crescent

The great bridge did not lead to you.
I would have come to you although the way
Led me through the sewers, had you asked.
But already my powers, like the declining sun
Reflected in the windows, were ebbing away.

The man who was preaching on the Crescent
Asked me ‘Do you know where God is?’ I did
And told him. But he shook his head, disappearing
In a blast of wind that caught up men and houses
And whirled them aloft, under the pitch-dark sky.