ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to bridge the gap in the critical literature on the subject, casting light on the influence of Shakespeare's work on one of the greatest Italian poets of the last century. Montale's references to Shakespeare are mainly used to embellish the epistolary language directed to his English-speaking muse, connoting a shared cultural horizon deeply rooted in Shakespeare's work, as Brandeis' diaries likewise clearly reveal. Moreover, both references establish a "distinctive" relationship with the source, in a technique that Montale uses regularly in his late collections the negation of a poetic passage, which is evoked only to be challenged by a diametrically opposite assertion—"I breathe rather better when you're not here", "not silence". In the two collections dominated by the figure of Clizia, Le occasioni and La bufera e altro, Montale counters the pain of reality with highly lyrical language whose primary virtue is its own aesthetic value.
