Eugenio Montale was born October 12, 1896, in Genoa, Italy, the youngest of five children born to Domenico (a merchant) and Giuseppina (Ricci) Montale. Montale spent much of his childhood and adolescence at the family villa on the Ligurian coast, south of Genoa, a landscape that provides the setting for much of his early poetry. Montale attended schools in Genoa but did not pursue a university education. He voraciously read Italian and French literature, studied philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Henri Bergson, and began to write poetry. Montale also aspired to be an opera singer and took voice lessons from a retired baritone, Ernesto Sivori. During World War I, Montale served as an infantry officer on the Austrian front and later commanded a prisoner-of-war camp. In 1923, after the death of Sivori, Montale abandoned his singing ambitions. Two years later, his first collection of poems, Ossi di seppia...