Classics/Foreign Lit, Period 2, 2/23

[game-of-you.livejournal.com]

Dream sits cross-legged on his desk as the students file in. He appears mildly irritated.

"Hello, students. I hope you all find it fair that you are in this classroom today, and that you properly appreciated the lesson with Mr. Chaucer on Tuesday."

Classics: You have had a week to read the Homeric Hymns of Hesiod. Is there a hymn that you especially enjoyed reading? Why?

Also, your midterm will be next week. It would serve you well to review your Greek grammar in advance of the test.

Foreign Lit: Select an Italian Poet other than Dante. Write 100 words on their life and work.

You too will have an examination next week.

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Re: Foreign Lit, 2/23

[notcalledlizzie.livejournal.com]

Scanning down the list of poets, Elizabeth chose Eugenio Montale, for the simple reason that he had won a Nobel prize. As far as she was concerned, it was as good as a reason as any.


Eugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and traslator. He was born October 12th, 1896 in Genoa, and was the youngest of five children. His formal education was cut short due to ill health, and he learned by reading Italian poetry and French classics. When the Great War hit Europe, he served as an infantry officer on the Austrian front. After World War I, he trained to become an opera singer, however, Montale’s aspirations for an opera career ended when his voice teacher died in 1923, and thus began his literary career.

In his work, Montale focused on the dilemmas of modern history, philosophy, love, and human existence.

Montale’s first book, Ossi di seppia (Cuttlefish Bones), appeared in 1925, and within Cuttlefish Bones are poems about Liguria and its scenery. Eugenio’s poems combined archaic words with scientific terms and idioms from the vernacular.

Cuttlefish Bones, The Occasions, and The Storm and Other Poems are the three collections that won the Nobel Prize for Literature for Eugenio Montale in 1975. In Swedish Academy’s presentation of the prize to Montale, Anders Österling comments on his achievements, “Montale has slowly confirmed his key position in Italy's modern literature during this epoch, in many ways so tragic for his native land. To a great extent he can be said to represent this sombre awareness, which seeks individual expression of collective sorrows and troubles. As a poet he interprets this awareness with calm dignity and without any political publicity.”

Eugenio Montale died in Milan in 1981 at the age of 85.