Italian - Poet | October 12, 1896 - September 12, 1981
In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.
Eugenio Montale
ArtRealityAlwaysEveryone
I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life.
LifeDoorAlwaysEnigmaWonderful
Too many lives are needed to make just one.
Just OneMakeJustManyTooNeeded
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.
HappinessEyesLightWalkFeetYou
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.
LifeGoodStruggleI AmEvilLate
Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.
SuccessCommunicationReflectionMass
Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.
WorkManThoughtSlowSingleCannot
Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.
IdentityLoseDarkCivilizationArts
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.
ArtManWaitingWorldNewWill
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.
NegativeExerciseDangerousLiberty
Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word.
WorstMoreArtsBecomingSenseWord
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.
MusicPoetrySpeechBornFirst
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