[New-Poetry] Montale on content, time, art and poetry

[JforJames at aol.com]

There is still an art which tries to escape from time but nevertheless  bears 
the characteristics of our epoch and consequently supplies far from  ignoble 
material for intellectual entertainment. Yet the potential material of  art, 
the content of art is diminishing just as the difference between  individuals 
is diminishing.
 
Our epoch has destroyed art by scrutinizing its nature. It has made art  into 
a copy of something which exists in ourselves and has no need of  expression, 
of “works”. Wherever we look we see a rush towards imitation and  anonymity, 
and it would be absurd to expect that when the collective block has  reached 
its grade of maximum solidarity the very idea of an individual art, or  of any 
sort of art, should seem anything other than outrageous.
 
What remains irrefutable is the presence of a universal protest which is  not 
aimed at any particular political or social regime but at our unnatural way  
of living.
 
And poetry, which is generally ahead of its time, may go so far ahead as to  
seem behind in time.
 
--Eugenio Montale, Poet In Our Time, translated by Alastair  Hamilton, Marion 
Boyars 1976, 42-43




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