From Lexicon to Symbol: The Role of Petrarch in the Building of Montale's Poetics in Ossi di Seppia

Non fu molto difficile dapprima,quando le separazioni erano nette,. . . No, non fu difficile,bastava scantonare scolorire,rendersi invisibili,forse esserlo . . .

—Eugenio Montale

Petrarch has been understood as one of the cultural, archetypical and even contradictory models of Montale's poetry.² He has been seen as Montale's lexical source, a source of style and rhetorical strategies, and even as a thematic model.³ Clearly this is the case—especially when we recall the poet's description of Finisterre's poems as his "esperienza . . . petrarchesca" (Montale, Sulla poesia 567–68).⁴

Yet, the role of the proemial sonnet of RVF in the building of the poetics of OS, as stated in "I limoni" and "Non chiederci la parola," has not been properly considered. It is certainly difficult to elucidate such a direct role, especially considering the reluctance of Montale and his vague responses when coming to terms with his sources.⁵ Moreover, since the first critical approach to OS, the tendency of most scholars to emphasize Dante over Petrarch as a primary model has driven the majority of research and inquiry, bringing into relief, in the best cases, cross-references to Petrarch.⁶ Savoca's survey of Montale's Petrarchism, however, pointed out how the peak of Petrarchan reminiscences tends to fall away, diradandosi, immediately after the OS.⁷ Going beyond the traditional Dantean,⁸ modern⁹ and Petrarchan references of Montale's first book, it is possible to see a substantial correlated antithesis between the proemial statement of RVF and Montale's poetics. This antithesis is no longer merely lexical but involves symbols as well, especially considering Montale's definition of poetical language as "un linguaggio storicizzato, un rapporto. Vale in quanto si oppone o si differenzia da altri linguaggi" (Montale, Sulla poesia 564).

The general philosophical frame¹⁰ of Montale's poetics can no doubt be referred to a relation of poetical languages. Regarding the OS, the contrastive reference to D'Annunzio's lyricism stands clear, as the incipit of "I limoni" shows.¹¹ D'Annunzio is not the only source to play an active role in Montale's first collection of poetry, as Romano Luperini has shown in his survey of the main literary references in the OS.¹² Where specifically "I limoni" is concerned, Tiziana Arvigo has usefully drafted a list of Montale's sources, collecting the traditional "linea ligure" with authors such as Boine, Novaro and Sbarbaro, the French Symbolists, and Gregh, as well as classical models, such as Callimacus and Virgil.¹³ Through Virgil, she also links "I limoni" as a symbol of poetry to Pascoli's recollection and representation of the humble Myricae. Montale's poetry, however, cannot be identified only as a litotes to the literary tradition. It is instead so innovative that it drastically diminishes the burden of tradition.¹⁴

Certainly, the well-known statement "attraversare D'Annunzio"15 hardly exhausts Montale's poetics. He goes beyond it and is strikingly original. Montale's "rischio di una controeloquenza" (Montale, Sulla poesia 565) was the foundational act of a new style: in the wake of D'Annunzio, Montale created a stylized language that used itself as its own immediate model—a language that revealed an early classicism.¹⁶

The presence of direct and more explicit poetical models as well as the building of a language in historical terms appears to be prominent in the earlier poems of OS, as is the case in "I limoni." Since "In limine" was written in 1924 in order to establish a poetic path through the OS, it is better read as a summa of the collection than a proem, while "I limoni" specifically stands as the actual proemial poem of Montale's collection. Nonetheless, the primary programmatic value of "I limoni" immediately recalls that of "Non chiederci la parola"¹⁷ at the beginning of the so-called "ossi brevi."¹⁸ The relation between the position of "I limoni," which opens the OS as a collection, and that of...