Volume 30, Number 2 · February 17, 1983
Living in the Breach
By Sven Birkerts
The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale
edited and translated by Jonathan Galassi
Ecco, 354 pp., $17.50
Literary traffic between Italy and America has always been fitful. The greatness and complexity of Dante have proven, in a sense, a liability. After all, who can undertake to read Italian literature without first knowing Dante? It is partly because of Dante that Petrarch and Leopardi are so little known, and that the Italian masters of our century—Montale, Ungaretti, Saba, and Quasimodo in poetry, Pavese, Gadda, and Svevo in fiction—have been more heard of than read. Translators have worked hard, but in spite of their efforts the graft has not taken well.
Review, 4003 words
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