Translating Eugenio Montale

In collaboration with
New York Review Books

On the occasion of the publication of

Butterfly of Dinard
(2024, NYRB Classics)

Written by
Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)

Translated from the Italian by
Oonagh Stransky and Marla Moffa

Introduction by
Jonathan Galassi

and

Late Montale
(2024, NYRB Poets)

A selection of late poems by
Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)

Selected and translated from the Italian by
George Bradley

Panel discussion with:
Jonathan Galassi, translator
Marla Moffa, translator

In ENGLISH

About Butterfly of Dinard
The great poet Eugenio Montale was also a remarkable writer of prose whose stories appeared regularly in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Butterfly of Dinard is a collection of fifty of those stories, pieces about “silly and trivial things which are at the same time important,” whose sprightliness, subtle irony, and conversational ease defy the limits of traditional fiction. Taken together, they form a sort of autobiographical novel, evoking people, objects, and animals dear to the poet, while simultaneously shedding light on the social, cultural, and political events of the day. The book begins with Montale’s childhood in Liguria and goes on to explore his adult life in pre-Fascist Florence and the onset of Fascism. The last part of the book, focusing on his final years in Milan, forms what Jonathan Galassi in his introduction calls “a mosaic self-portrait of the writer himself, a bumbling yet proud, memory-obsessed Chaplinesque antihero, who sees himself as the only surviving, if unwilling, witness to a disappearing world.” The stories were first published in book form in 1956; Montale added further stories to subsequent editions, culminating in the final 1973 edition. Butterfly of Dinard is the first complete translation of this edition and includes five stories never before translated into English.

About Late Montale
Late Montale is a generous selection of the poems that the Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale wrote in the last decade of his life, including many drawn from notebooks he entrusted to his housekeeper, which appear here in English for the first time. In new translations by the American poet George Bradley that carry over all the wit and lucidity of the originals, each poem takes on a fresh immediacy. Together, they form an ideal introduction for readers unfamiliar with these late works, and for readers who have long admired them, a sparkling reminder of their subtle art of disillusion and surprise.

Marla Moffa was born in Massachusetts and has been living in Italy for more than twenty years. A theater director, writer, and translator of Italian literature, she has published two children’s books: Il leone con gli occhiali (2019) and Non ti senti speciale? (2021). Her first collection of short plays, Tre pièces da Borges, is forthcoming. Her father, Mario Moffa, a professor of Italian language and literature at Mount Holyoke College, was the author of Eugenio Montale, Lettura della Farfalla di Dinard (1986).

Oonagh Stransky has translated novels by Domenico Starnone, Carlo Lucarelli, Giuseppe Pontiggia, and Erminia Dell’Oro, as well as works of nonfiction by Roberto Saviano and Pope Francis. She has published short translations and essays in a number of journals, including the New England Review, Exchanges, and The Massachusetts Review. Stransky studied Italian at Middlebury College, UC Berkeley, Università di Firenze, and Columbia University, and currently resides in Italy.

Jonathan Galassi is the chairman and executive editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as a poet and translator of Italian poetry, including the work of Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale.