The Nobel Prize this year was awarded to Eugenio Montale, but few now remember that the strength of his poetry has always lain in his keeping his voice low, without emphasis of any kind, using modest and doubtful tones. It is precisely for this reason that he has made himself heard to many, and his presence has had a great impact on three generations of readers. But society today demands that the writer raise his voice if he wants to be heard, propose ideas that will have impact on the public, push all his instinctive reactions to extremes. But even the most sensational and explosive statements pass over the heads of readers. All is as nothing, like the sound of the wind.
Any comment appears no more than a shake of the head, as at a naughty boy.
In the ocean of words, printed or broadcast, the words of the poet or writer are swallowed up. Fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in such countries acquire unusual political specific gravity, insofar as they give a voice to all those who are deprived of one. This is the rapport that counts, not the one with political authority, now that those in government cannot claim to hold the reins of society, either in the democracies or in the authoritarian regimes of right or left. In a word, what I think is that there are two wrong ways of thinking of a possible political use for literature. I think that such a pedagogical function for politics could only be imagined at the level of bad literature and bad politics.