To the Editors:
The review by William Jay Smith of Eugenio Montale’s The Storm and Other Things in the October issue of The New Criterion contains many errors and questionable opinions—far more than can be discussed in a letter to the editor. In this necessarily brief and partial reply I should like to comment on Mr. Smith’s competence as a critic, first of Montale and second of the art of translation, with special reference to his attack on William Arrowsmith’s version of La bufera e altro.

Publication in English of a major new translation of the volume of poetry which authoritative critics of Montale consider to be the summit of his art is an important event in a generally bleak season. Reading Mr. Smith’s review, it is puzzling to see that he seems to have no special enthusiasm for this wonderful book, nor for Montale, whom he calls “perhaps” the finest Italian poet since Leopardi. Nine-tenths of his comments on the poetry are taken verbatim from Arrowsmith’s introduction and notes, or from his reference to the fine study of Guido Almansi and Bruce Merry, Eugenio Montale: The Private Language of Poetry(Edinburgh University Press, 1977). When Mr. Smith does venture an opinion of his own it is at variance with the consensus of commentators both in Italy and elsewhere: thus he insists that Montale’s “tone is always conversational, and some of the most hermetic passages are phrased as they might be in ordinary conversation,” whereas nearly all readers