SOURCE: "Openness to Life: The Poetry of Eugenio Montale, 1975 Nobel Laureate for Literature," in Books Abroad, Vol. 50, No. 1, Winter, 1976, pp. 7-15.

In the following excerpt, Craft highlights dominant subjects in Montale's poetry: contemporary values, the human condition, and the search for meaning in life.

In October the Swedish Academy announced that the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature would be bestowed upon the poet Eugenio Montale, the fifth Italian writer to receive the honor. In 1906, the sixth anniversary of the award, Giosué Carducci (1835-1907), neoclassical poet of Italy's post-unification era, was the first Italian Nobel winner. Twenty years later the laureate was Grazia Deledda (1871-1936), author of more than twenty-five novels, most of which are set in Sardinia. Many will doubtless recognize the name of the poet and playwright who received the prize in 1934: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), a writer known throughout the world for his philosophical plays Henry IV and...