Montale in e per Elena Salibra

Abstract

Elena Salibra (1949–2014) is increasingly to be considered a major poet of her time. The present paper situates her alongside Eugenio Montale in order to determine his influence on her poetry. The correspondence between Montale and Salibra is intellectual and poetic, reflecting Salibra’s dual orientation towards the 20th century giant as both an academic and a poet. The paper beings with an outline of recent criticism of Salibra, and proceeds directly to the texts themselves. The totality of Salibra’s oeuvre is brought under consideration, noting that even if her academic concentration was dominantly on Pascoli and Gozzano, Montale nonetheless represents an enormous presence in her work. The paper proceeds by close analysis to consider first the paratesto and then focuses on specific quotations, implicit or explicit, of Montale in Salibra. The close linguistic reading of Salibra and Montale demonstrates, in the argument of this paper, that the younger poet found an excellent master in the elder.