Carmen Lega
The correspondence between Eugenio Montale and Irma Brandeis: the creation of a private code
This research aims to recover a private code between Montale and Irma Brandeis that spontaneously takes shape in their correspondence, gradually structuring itself over time through the recurrence and rewriting of the same figures, until it crystallizes in the poet's verses.
The word, encrypted, is the meeting place, the site of creation and revelation: Dante as a shared cultural reference, the English language, and Irma Brandeis’s translations, both published and unpublished, are an ever-present underlying filigree, a “basso continuo” (the same sound that, for Montale, Eliot had).
Brandeis’s Dante becomes fundamental and, in fact, through the lux-in-tenebris, Montale retraces Jacob’s Ladder via Brandeis’s book, making Irma Brandeis the first step on the ladder that leads to God.
Research Interests
Contemporary Italian literature.