As Professor [G.] Singh argues in his excellent "Introduction" [to Selected Essays], working as a freelance journalist in much the same situation as Eliot, Montale is free of the largely academic vice of "a priori postulates of a critical credo, theory or methodology."… His criticism and literary journalism are "constantly enriched by the kind of intuitions, similitudes, references and turns of phrase which he owes to his experience as a poet", and the "validity of his criticism thus may be said to be ultimately rooted in that experience as well as in his sense of contemporaneity."… It is a refreshing criticism to encounter, and of course what Professor Singh says is not meant to imply that Montale's work lacks a definite theoretical stance. "Poetry as gift" … might be the best description of Montale's humanistic aesthetic, and it is notion of art "as the creation of forms that express...