born Oct. 12, 1896, Genoa, Italy
died Sept. 12, 1981, Milan
Italian poet, prose writer, editor, and translator.
Montale began his literary activities after World War I, cofounding a journal, writing for other journals, and serving as a library director in Florence. His first book of poems, Cuttlefish Bones (1925), expressed the bitter pessimism of the postwar period. He was identified with Hermeticism in the 1930s and '40s, and his works became progressively introverted and obscure. With The Storm and Other Poems (1956) his writing showed the increasing skill, warmth, and directness characteristic of his late period. His stories and sketches were collected in The Butterfly of Dinard (1956). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.