Reticence vs. Hermeticism

and The Motets of Eugenio Montale

Hermetic

1. Completely sealed, especially against the escape or entry of air.

2. Impervious to outside interference or influence: the hermetic confines of an isolated life.

Reticent

1. Disposed to be silent or not to speak freely; reserved.

2. Reluctant or restrained.

Montale's series of love poems is full of personal references, all of which are addressed to “you,” or the speaker’s beloved. While critics have deemed this series hermetic and unsuccessful, I define poetic success, at least in part, as creating accessibility for the reader. The poet could never expect his reader to know the back stories to the privy moments and private jokes he mentions in the series; the mere existence of these references and the place that they hold represent the true nature of what the poet is communicating: the speaker and “you” were lovers and in their lover-closeness they experienced many intimacies, that is why their irrevocable separation is so devastating, and that is why the speaker’s tone is the epitome of dejection and loneliness.

In his introduction, the astute translator/poet Dana Gioia says

"The sequence recreates isolated moments of insight, stripped of their nonessential elements. Everything else in the story is told by implication, and the reader must participate in the reconstruction of the human drama by projecting his or her own private associations to fill in the missing elements of the narrative."

This suggests that the reader be active. As someone who strives to be a writer's writer and someone who lusts after an audience that is as aware of the saturated nature of language as I am, I feel that the most desired kind of reader is an active one. Montale makes this prospect statute.

IV

Far away, still I was with you

when your father

went into darkness and left you his goodbye.

What did I learn

in that moment? That until then

the ravages of the past

had sparred me

only for this:

I had not met you yet

and had to. I know this

from the pain of today, and would

even if the hours bent

back on themselves and brought

me once again to Cumerlotti

or Anghebeni, among the exploding

shells, the screams,

the panic of the squadrons

It's evident that the father of the speaker’s beloved died before they met, and that the speaker feels as though he could sense her pain even then, but the elements that are not explained such as “Cumerlotti / or Anghebeni, among the exploding / shells, the screams, / the panic of the squadrons” can be reduced down to a somewhat generic horrific event in the speaker’s life. No further details are needed to allow the reader to see that the speaker is comparing the immense pain that both he and his beloved have experienced in the past; the speaker implies that pain marries them. But something else is happening here: the memory of pain is penetrates the page, demanding the inclusion the reader, suggesting they recall some source of their own tragedy to stand in for the speaker’s unknown reference. This unites the reader to the two characters in the sequence, thus is proof that poetry, like some sort of specter, can speak and have influence from between the leaves that appear to be the final resting place of words.

Gioia also says

“Poetry can be reticent without being obscure.”

This is unequivocally true. I have never understood why some poets prefer to be thought of as hermetic. What credibility do hermetics offer? According to the reader, what is the difference between a poet who purposefully chooses to write in a manner in which no one but the poet themselves can decipher the meaning, and a poet who either unknowingly or thoughtlessly writes about something in a way that is so tightly wound that is totally inaccessible to the reader? Neither poet’s words will penetrate the reader; one does not care while the other simply does not know. This is why hermeticism is a problem, and why I do not think that Montale is a hermetic poet. He is reticent, and uses this quality wisely. The poet divulges what is most important: human emotion, which I think always wins over the alternative of concrete details.

In my own writing, I own the fact that I am a notorious compressor. A devotee to craft, I see words like math equations and I'm always seeking out the lowest common denominator. A hermetic poet, though, I will never be. My initial goal in revision is usually to expand rather than to condense. I want my poems to be accessible and I think that reticence can be a successful part of that, as long as it makes the reader work for what they looking for (it's obvious to me that readers are looking for something, just by picking up a book): to understand the poem, to connect, to find some sort of validation for their own feelings. Montale is an essential example of how to make personal references work within a text without excluding the reader.