Name: Eugenio Montale
Year Won: 1975
Read: The Selected Poems of Eugenio Montale
Original Language: Italian
Reason: "for his distinctive poetry, which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions"
About: "The Selected Poems" is pretty much what it sounds like - a collection of Montale's poetry. It's poems. Like, 500 pages of them. They are many.
What I liked: The poetry is quite pretty.
What I Disliked: It's poems. Are these poems better than other poems? I don't know. They seemed kind of generic to me, but then again, I can't read Italian, so would likely miss the nuances that make these poems slightly better (or worse) than any other poems.
Should it have won a Nobel: I have no idea. I feel like even asking this with prose is hard. With poetry, it becomes close to impossible. None of these struck me as immortal genius, but then again, that might have been the translator's fault. Or maybe I just don't care much for Montale's poetry for my own reasons.
Next Up: "The Adventures of Augie March" by Saul Bellow
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