Top 27 Quotes by Eugenio Montale

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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