ABSTRACT
The poet explicitly declares his intention to explore the timeless world of memories in 'Ai tuoi piedi', the only text where, possibly, the divinity itself appears in the second person singular. Meanwhile, in the face of a present that is debased and absurd, the past—the dimension of memory—becomes increasingly important as the only remaining source of potentially positive themes and imagery, the only remaining space in which individual integrity can be maintained intact. The memories are almost always poetic memories mediated by earlier textual experiences, recurrences of figures whose meanings are inseparable from the cultural and historical meaning of Eugenio Montale's work as a whole. The sense of touching the 'veil' at close quarters, the sense that death is now at hand and that the future is a shrinking space, can be felt in many texts in Diario and Quaderno.
