Indiana University Professor Chisels Away at Eugenio Montale's Code

This is a picture of the acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning, in fact, Italian poet and writer: Eugenio Montale. Dr. David Hertz, Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, has spent much time trying to crack Montale's coded poems, perhaps written for a forbidden (Jewish) love in the time of Mussolini. More:

As a professor of comparative literature, David Hertz spends every day immersed in reading and writing.

Hertz, the chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at IU, has written books on a variety of art topics including modern architecture, poetry and music.

On Tuesday, Hertz will take patrons of the Venue Fine Art & Gifts on an in-depth tour of what he calls one of his favorite projects, a book titled “Eugenio Montale, the Fascist Storm and the Jewish Sunflower.”

At 5:30 p.m., he will give a lecture on the book and its background. A book signing will follow the lecture.

The book was originally published in 2013, and Hertz said he hoped this event introduces people who may not have known about the book to the history, mystery and an unexplored love story.

“I wanted to bring out a story and also the magical literary expression that came out of it — it’s like a double story,” Hertz said.

The book explores the life of Italian poet Eugenio Montale, 1975 Nobel Prize winner and celebrated modern writer.

Hertz said Montale fell in love with Irma Brandeis, an American Jew, during Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Montale’s work, Hertz explained, was deeply coded with messages to the love he could not publicly express as he and Brandeis sat separated by politics and circumstance.

“It’s a secret cycle of poems,” Hertz said. “You wouldn’t know exactly who the person he writes about is unless you researched.” [...]

Read on at IDS.