Lettere inedite di Eugenio Montale a Elena Croce: poesia, vita culturale, impegno civile

The article sheds light on the human and literary relationships between Eugenio Montale and Elena Croce by analysing the unpublished letters exchanged between them from 1946 to 1981. The missives, an edition of which is provided here according to the autographs, allow us to understand some remarkable aspects of the biography and work of the two correspondents. First of all, Montale’s collaboration with cultural magazines founded by Croce, such as «Aretusa» directed by Francesco Flora and Marguerite Caetani’s «Botteghe Oscure», where some rhymes of the Ligurian poet appeared in their first edition. The bond between Montale and Caetani, moreover, can be better defined thanks to these unpublished documents, beginning with the poet’s attendance at the cultural circle “Il ritrovo”, founded by Elena with the princess of Bassiano in the newly liberated Rome of 1944. Croce also played a significant role in putting the poet in contact with some of his important Anglo-Saxon translators: the English journalist and writer Sylvia Sprigge, the American Edith Farnsworth and the professor at the University of Texas William Arrowsmith. Elena herself, moreover, anthologized and made commentaries on Montale’s works (in her books and in the cultural programs of Radio RAI) and she used to send him her own volumes, which were sometimes accompanied by handwritten dedications. For his part, Montale repeatedly expressed his support for the environmentalist battles fought by Croce in the Seventies, with implications that link the letters with his production in verse. But there are many other insights and characters that mark both the correspondence and this long intellectual friendship: the interest in T.S. Eliot and German Romanticism, Linuccia Saba, Carla and Giovanni Macchia, Adriano Olivetti, Desideria Pasolini, Luigi Magnani, Giovanni Spadolini, the editorial entourage of «Il Mondo», «L’Immagine» and «Corriere della Sera», without forgetting the pervasive memory of Elena’s father, Benedetto Croce.