Eugenio Montale Quotes

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?
Eugenio Montale

God, Future, Ignorance

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.
Eugenio Montale

Art, Reality, Everyone

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.
Eugenio Montale

After, Creative, Comedy

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.
Eugenio Montale

Music, Poetry, Born

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.
Eugenio Montale

Communication, Success, Solitude

Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.
Eugenio Montale

Dark, Lose, Against

Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word.
Eugenio Montale

Sense, Word, Worst

However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.
Eugenio Montale

Poetry, School, Live

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.
Eugenio Montale

Poetry, Wait, Search

I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life.
Eugenio Montale

Life, Wonderful, Door

It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip.
Eugenio Montale

Often, Language, Cut

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.
Eugenio Montale

Work, Single, Thought

Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose.
Eugenio Montale

Today, Bad, Prose

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.
Eugenio Montale

Great, Art, Poetry

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.
Eugenio Montale

Art, Poetry, Everyone

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.
Eugenio Montale

Poetry, Two, Arts

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.
Eugenio Montale

Often, Poet, Whom

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.
Eugenio Montale

Great, Poetry, Human

Too many lives are needed to make just one.
Eugenio Montale

True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know.
Eugenio Montale

Poetry, True, Few

Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.
Eugenio Montale

Art, Waiting, Used

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.
Eugenio Montale

Liberty, Negative, Write

Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.
Eugenio Montale

Happiness, May, Eyes

I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil.
Eugenio Montale

Life, Good, Struggle

There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.
Eugenio Montale

Power, Poetry, Written

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Biography

Nationality: Italian

Type: Poet

Born: October 12, 1896

Died: September 12, 1981

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