“It seems that sooner or later
rather sooner than later
on the Aliscampi that shine
between Amalfi and Vietri you will see enormous ones
skyscrapers and already rises from the waist up
the intelligentsia, with its high rankings.
But they will be wasted; scratch the sky
it is what remains to those who no longer believe
that a sky exists.”
Eugenio Montale
It is a wonderful, but above all unpublished, poem by Eugenio Montale, with an environmentalist theme: it is a lyric against the Hotel Fuenti, one of the most infamous eco-monsters in Italian history. The author of the discovery is Ida Duretto, a young teacher of Italian literature in Japan.
The important discovery took place at the Manuscript Center of Pavia, where this unpublished writing by Eugenio Montale (Genoa, 1896 – Milan, 1981) was found. Ida Duretto discovered the poem, dedicated to the environmentalist debate on the Hotel Fuenti, one of the most well-known and discussed eco-monsters in Italian history, during her research for the edition of the commentary on the «Altri versi» and published it in the third issue of «Quaderni montaliani» (Interlinea, 2023) released this November. The term “ecommonster”, moreover, was coined by Legambiente precisely in reference to the Hotel Fuenti.
The composition, typed on the back of a Montalian translation by Yeats, presents several drafts: in the first the name of Elena Croce appears, the daughter of the philosopher Benedetto, writer and environmentalist (this is what we read in the first version: «Elena would like me to I would oppose / with all my strength the imminent / disappearance of the splendid coast / from Amalfi to Vietri where a skyscraper already stands / and others will follow / Skyscrapers are rising / between Amalfi and Vietri, a reputed / Eden and dear Elena / would like me rose / from the waist up like a Demosthenes / to order its demolition. / Even in the Aliscampi that join / Amalfi to Vietri they loom and indeed / Between Amalfi and Vietri»).
The text critically addresses the construction of the so-called «Fuenti Monster», a huge illegal building built in the Fuenti area of Vietri sul Mare, on the Amalfi Coast, in the Seventies. The hotel was at the center of a heated discussion (Antonio Cederna called it «an exemplary ecological misdeed») which touched on the issues of protection of the natural environment: Elena Croce had probably attempted to involve Montale in the draft of a proposed law on protection of cultural heritage following the construction of the hotel. Montale, moreover, had already taken a position against the Hotel Fuenti, together with other intellectuals of the time such as Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Indro Montanelli, Mario Soldati, Franco Zeffirelli.
This composition of 8 March 1975 seems to arise precisely from this solicitation: the references to Dante’s Inferno increase from one draft to the next, while the name of Elena Croce disappears, as highlighted by Ida Duretto. The final version, with the handwritten title “Skyscrapers”, which follows the first deleted version, concludes with the bitter observation that the “higher powers” of the “intelligentsia” will be wasted; scratching the sky / is what remains for those who no longer believe / that a sky exists”.
Duretto compares this poem to a first draft of «L’eroismo»: «Elena would like me to oppose», incipit of the first version of «The skyscrapers», recalls that «Clizia would have wanted me to engage» referring to political commitment in Spanish Civil War. The hypothesis not excluded by Duretto is that these compositions constituted a series on the impossibility of taking part in civil life.
The Hotel Fuenti was finally demolished in 1999, and still today represents a symbolic moment of the nascent debate, in the era of full economic boom, on the need to reconcile economic development with environmental protection (and in 1975 the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, established by Giovanni Spadolini): this is why Montale’s poetry represents a work with a decidedly pioneering flavour, which was composed in the same years in which, for example, Pasolini wrote against the concept of “progress” and that of “development » and he railed against consumer society, which he considered the true fascism of modern times.