Paola Sica 236 the FEMININE in EUGENIO
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Paola Sica 236 THE FEMININE IN EUGENIO MONTALE'S JUVENILE WORK: "SENSI E FANTASMI DI UNA ADOLESCENTE"1 sterina, Arietta, Dora Markus, Clizia...Women are central figures in Eugenio Montale's poetry. Through women, Montale Eexpresses his fears, desires and hopes; he faces a present that seems to be lacking any certainty. In Montale's juvenile writings, more so than in his later works, such a feminine universe gains a subversive power. This power, however, is derived problematically, for although women, and more generally the idea of femininity, encapsulate elements of cultural resistance and transformation, they are also traditionally connected to exemplary ways of living and often allude to private spheres. In Montale's early work, a feminine matrix leads to poetic experimentation opposing the most traditional Italian literary models, and also to a critique of official accounts of history. Before exploring the construction of femininity in early Montale, I want to review how this question has been approached in previous critical studies. The major trend has usually focused on the analysis of women characters, prioritizing those appearing in Ossi di seppia and Montale's later poetic collections, rather than those of his very early period. Books like Glauco Cambon's Eugenio Montale's Poetry and Romano Luperini's Storia di Montale have underscored the redemptive value of Montale's women and, in certain cases, the poetic techniques adopted when these women appear. For instance, Cambon describes Clizia's redemptive mission and the development of her persona through a "more clipped and elliptical diction" (54), as does Luperini, who deems Montale's women to be repositories of moral values (52). Essays like Luciano Rebay's "Montale, Clizia e l'America", on the other hand, have devoted particular attention to women from Montale's "Sensi e fantasmi di una adolescente" ("Senses and Phantasms of a Young Woman") is the subtitle of Eugenio Montale's Accordi. In this essay all translations are mine. The Feminine in Montale's Juvenile Work 237 life who served as models for the creation of specific female characters. Finally, Ettore Bonora's "Poesie d'amore di Montale" stresses those exceptional qualities of women, especially their instinct, which allow them more readily to decipher the mysteries of life (8). Among the more recent critical readings, Giusi Baldissone's Muse di Montale establishes a detailed typology of Montale's women. Baldissone distinguishes angelic women - Clizia, and less appropriately, Esterina and "la Volpe" ("Vixen") - who appear in miraculous moments when a necessary time falls away (9); monstrous women, who belong to a more realistic dimension, and who can either be benevolent like the "donna barbuta", ("bearded woman") or, very occasionally, evil like Donna Juanita (11-12); and women-companions, such as Mosca and Marianna who are described in a "tono dimesso" ("low tone") but who still remain on a higher plane in respect to the lyrical self (15). Baldissone's study, together with the studies of the other critics mentioned, suggest a common message. By excluding negative women, like Juanita, who are admittedly rare in Montale's work, the others - be they angels, monsters or companions - are thus allowed to occupy a privileged space. They are made significant by the amorous interest of the poetic voice that portrays them. From this place, they become guides for the poetic self; they lead the poet to enliven his affective, moral and poetic values. Montale's women, however, have wider implications. They make for a deeper understanding of Montale's changing ideas of femininity and related ideas of masculinity. They also prefigure a transformation of the main poetic persona's sense of historical time. The grown-up male poetic persona in Le Occasioni, for instance, addresses the sublime Clizia to receive from her the signs that save him from his own destructive masculinity. On the other hand, the oxymoronic "fanciullo invecchiato" ("old child") of Ossi di Seppia seeks salvation, in vain, by relating himself to the earthly Esterina. In the first case, the protagonist aims to renovate the historical time he perceives by following the light of a woman who embodies a secular transcendence. Clizia, like an angel, sees "la vita che dà barlumi" ("life giving gleams", "Pareva facile giuoco", 107). In the second case, the main poetic persona remains the prisoner of a sterile masculinity and feels the weight of old age. He is unable to participate in the vivifying rhythms of nature, which Esterina can follow. Unlike the poetic Montale adopts such a definition in the eighth movement of "Mediterraneo" in Ossi di seppia. Paola Sica 238_ persona who belongs to the "razza/ di chi rimane a terra" ("race/ of those who remain on land"), Esterina can abandon herself "sullo scoglio lucente di sale" ("on the rock shining with salt"); she can "find and reenliven herself in the water" ("ritrovarsi e rinnovarsi nell'acqua", "Falsetto", 12). Clizia's femininity, then, is linked to a metaphysical history. It is a crystallized, heavenly femininity, unaffected by external events3. Because of her distant and static nature, Clizia is both shelter and consolation for the male subject who depicts her. On the other 4 hand, Esterina's femininity is connected to a physical history4. She instinctively conforms herself to the rhythms of nature, thus favoring the perpetuation of the species. Compared with her, the masculinity reflected in the same poem seems to embody estrangement and immobility, an inability to live, an awareness of evil. Women like Clizia and Esterina, mostly remaining within a traditional paradigm of angels and mothers, have a complex genealogy in Montale's juvenile writings. In these juvenile writings, femininity does not necessarily correspond to biological features of the poetic personae. Neither is it an ideal principle toward which the lyrical self tends without attaining. Femininity ambiguously embraces what Julia Kristeva defines as the platonic "aporia of the chora, a matrix-like space that is nourishing, unnameable, prior to the One and to God" ("Women's Time", 204). It irradiates its renovating energy in a mythical temporality - the same energy that, ideally, is present in the early ages of every individual when the conditioning imposed by the past and by social rules is less strong. Femininity rises to the surface when the self attempts to regenerate its existence; it is repressed when the self becomes affected by an official history made by men - a history that, in Montale's early writings, leads to wars and destruction. In a letter dated November 8, 1917, and addressed to his sister Marianna (with whom he was extremely close) Montale already expresses his opinions concerning private and public life: Io sono un amico dell'invisibile e non faccio conto che di ciò che si fa sentire e non si mostra; e non credo e non posso credere a tutto quello 3 Clizia's role will change in La bufera e altro. 4 In referring to Montale's poetry, other critics have made a distinction between a "fisico" and "metafisico" level before me. One of the first critics to propose such a distinction is Pietro Pancrazi in "Eugenio Montale: poeta fisico e metafìsico", included in Scrittori d'oggi, op. cit., (1946). The Feminine in Montale's Juvenile Work 239 che si tocca e che si vede. Son dunque proprio un antimilitare. (Quaderno genovese, 72). (I am a friend of the invisible and only care about what can be felt and does not appear; I do not believe and cannot believe in what one touches and sees. Hence, I am an antimilitarist indeed.) Montale detests a life of action intended to shape historical events. He stands against the nationalist ideals that justified the outbreak of the Great War5, and had promoted a violent masculinity deriving from a combination of Henri Bergson's vitalism and Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the superman. (We need only look at Gabriele D'Annunzio's heroes, such as Claudio Cantelmo in Vergini delle rocce, and at the virile audacity in the work of the Futurists for confirmation of this point). On the contrary, Montale prefers a contemplative existence nourishing itself with enlivening female ferments - an existence in which intuition counts more than rationality. Montale's problematic relation to the dominant male culture into which he was about to be initiated becomes more evident in his Quaderno genovese, a diary that he wrote between February and August 1917. In addition to searching for his poetic voice, here Montale also comments on his readings and expresses his opinions on concerts and theatrical performances that he attended. Significantly, he omits the dramatic events of Italian history of the period. In Quaderno genovese, Montale critiques a type of masculinity that he recognizes in the texture of adult Italian bourgeois society. According to Montale, this masculinity only enables the logical and practical side of existence, while restraining the most natural impulses. Montale maintains that men who excessively use "misura", "buon senso", and "cervello" ("measure", "good sense", and "intelligence") give proof of "viltà", "incompetenza", "quieto vivere", "filisteismo", and "abitudine" ("cowardice", "incompetence", "quiet life", "philistinism", and "habit", 37). "[La loro] vita passiva d'ufficio e di meccanismo è il male; è la rinunzia, la debolezza, la inerzia! La morte!" ("[Their] passive life as office drudges and lack of engagement is what is evil; it is renunciation, weakness, and stagnation! It is death!", 17) 5 Paul Fussel, who writes about the British experience in World War I in his book The Great War and Modern Memory, declares that for every country involved, that war became "a hideous embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated the public consciousness for a century. It reversed the idea of Progress" (8). Montale's early writings reflect this disenchanted vision of the event.