Quote by Eugenio Montale: “Listen, the poets laureate move only between prickly plants.”

This line suggests that true artistic insight often comes from engaging with difficult or uncomfortable realities, not from basking in easy glory. It implies a gritty, challenging path for authentic creation.

Montale's work consciously distanced itself from the grand, nationalistic, and ornate poetry prevalent in Italy, aligning instead with a more humble and honest engagement with life's complexities, often through everyday imagery.

Italian poet and Nobel laureate, born in Genoa in 1896 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975. His spare, melancholic poetry — especially the collections Ossi di seppia and La bufera — explored the human condition under fascism and modernity with compressed lyrical intensity.