SOURCE: "The Poetry of Montale," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XVIII, No. 10, June 1, 1972, pp. 29-32.

Spender was an English man of letters who rose to prominence during the 1930s as a Marxist lyric poet and as an associate of W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. His poetic reputation has declined in the postwar years, while his stature as a prolific and perceptive literary critic has grown. In the following excerpt, Spender celebrates Montale's ability as a poet, finding that he unsentimentally captured the essence of life.

Mosca (meaning "fly")—as everyone called her—was the wife of Eugenio Montale, the most famous living Italian poet and the incomparable ironic literary commentator of Corriere della Sera. She was a small, auburn-haired, rather heavily made-up lady who wore spectacles with thick lenses that magnified the gaze with which she looked out at...