Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Eugenio Montale

Praise:

“Melinda Camber Porter In Conversation with Eugenio Montale is fabulous! I’d love to read the interview. So true what he says about artistic voices in the modern age.” - Martha Lerski, Librarian at Lehman College of The City University of New York

“Melinda Camber Porter has written that both poets, Dante and Montale, possess similar styles and ‘a common predilection for dry, desolate, cruel landscapes.’ Melinda Camber Porter’s conversation with Montale offers the reader a candid view of the poet as he discusses with her some personal observations of his life and times. –Canio Pavone, Teacher of Italian and longtime owner of Canio Books, an independent book store in Sag Harbor, NY.

“Nowadays, it is becoming harder to distinguish between artistic and commercial life. If a work sells, it immediately seems to have artistic merit. The role of the artist has been reduced to his success or failure in commercial terms… One can’t go back on history. But these mass-produced voices are not those which will tell us whether we are heading for disaster and, if so, how to prevent it.” -Eugenio Montale 1976 to Melinda Camber Porter

“D’Annuzio wrote poetry via his social personality. He was so vain that he even managed to be brave in war. But vanity was the driving motive, as it was in the case of Andre Malraux. I think, in fact, that social success always has a negative side for a poet.” -Eugenio Montale 1976 to Melinda Camber Porter

“There are about 130 different churches, which are incapable of finding a meeting ground. It is theological racism. The church has never provided us with a good example. So we end up by substituting religion by ideology- Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism.” -Eugenio Montale 1976 to Melinda Camber Porter

Melinda Camber Porter In Conversation With Eugenio Montale,

Milan, Italy 1976

Volume 1, Number 1:

Foreward by Canio Pavone, professor of Italian Literature

Drawings and text by Melinda Camber Porter and Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature

Eugenio Montale’s Nobel Prize Lecture in English and Italian

Ebook: (ISBN: 978-1-942231-15-8) p84, illus., index, bibl.

Hardcover: (ISBN: 978-1-942231-44-8), 8½x11, 84p, illus., index, bibl.

It's National Poetry Month, and Blake Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Eugenio Montale

What could be more timely, than an exclusive interview, first published in the London Times, with the Italian poet, Eugenio Montale, who had just won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975, and had delivered the Nobel Award Lecture entitled "What is Poetry"? The young Melinda Camber Porter, Oxford University graduate and London Times correspondent, traveled to Montale's home in Milan, Italy in 1976 and conducted an in-depth interview in which Montale opened up about his vision of the world and why he was driven to write poetry.

With this publication, Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation With Eugenio Montale, we have an opportunity to listen to the strong voice of Eugenio Montale discussing literature and its role in society. Eugenio Montale describes his observations of the driving forces of human nature that he explored through his journalism, painting and poetry. During the prime of his life, he watched the rise and fall of Fascism in Italy, and his experiences remain relevant today as he discusses the importance of the individual’s conscience, the poet’s role in society, and the dangers of ideologies, the mass media, and consumerism.

“Nowadays, it is becoming harder to distinguish between artistic and commercial life. The role of the artist has been reduced to his success or failure in commercial terms… these mass-produced voices are not those which will tell us whether we are heading for disaster and, if so, how to prevent it.” This statement expressed by Eugenio Montale, when speaking to Melinda Camber Porter at his home in Milan, Italy in 1976, after receiving the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Foreward by Canio Pavone, Professor of Italian Studies, who knew Melinda Camber Porter, introduces us to Eugenio Montale and their conversation. In addition, the book includes both the English and Italian Nobel Prize Lecture by Eugenio Montale.

Melinda Camber Porter passed away of ovarian cancer in 2008 and left a significant body of work in art, journalism, and literature. With her background as a journalist for the Times of London, her questions explored the creative process used by many widely acclaimed cultural figures, filmmakers, and writers. The Melinda Camber Porter Archive wishes to share these conversations with the public to ensure the continuation and expansion of the ideas expressed in her creative works.

Events:

Dates of many scheduled book exhibitions and readings at book stores, galleries, libraries, and museums are forth coming with exact dates and times.

A major exhibition with readings is now scheduled for September 15 to October 15, 2016 at the National Museum of Music and Art Gallery located at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Music_Museum located at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota and The University of South Dakota John A. Day Gallery is one of the largest modern university exhibition facilities with over 185 feet of linear wall space and nearly 2,900 square feet. From September 15 to October 15, 2015 the Art Gallery will be dedicated solely to the exhibition of the art, books (including Montale’s) and films of Melinda Camber Porter http://www.usd.edu/fine-arts/uag/john-a-day-gallery) .

Melinda Camber Porter asks Roy Lichtenstein, “What kind of emotions were you expressing?” and Roy Lichtenstein answers, “The emotions Ideal with are placement and a kinesthetic sense of position and color. I am removed from the emotions I am depicting because they are usually ironic or are even silly sometimes. But the emotion a painting contains should be a unity. And it is another emotion altogether.”

Melinda Camber Porter (1953 - 2008) was born in London and graduated from Oxford University with a First Class Honors degree in Modern Languages. She began her writing career in Paris as a cultural correspondent for The Times of London. The Boston Globe describes her book, Through Parisian Eyes (Oxford University Press), as "a particularly readable and brilliantly and uniquely compiled collection." She interviewed many cultural figures during her career including: Nobel Prize winners Saul Bellow, Gunter Grass, Eugenio Montale, and Octavio Paz; and many leading filmmakers and writers. Her novel Badlands, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, was set on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was acclaimed by Louis Malle, who said: "better than a novel, it reads like a fierce poem, with a devastating effect on our self-esteem," and by Publishers Weekly, which called it, "a novel of startling, dreamlike lyricism." A traveling art exhibition celebrating Melinda's paintings, curated by the late Leo Castelli, opened at the French Embassy in New York City in 1993. Peter Trippi, Editor of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine said: "In our era of slickly produced images, teeming with messages rather than feelings, Melinda's art strikes a distinctive balance between the achingly personal and the aesthetically beautiful." Robin Hamlyn, world expert on William Blake and senior curator Tate Britain, said about Melinda Camber Porter's watercolors, "I believe that all great art is, in its essence, defined by fearlessness. Both Melinda Camber Porter's and William Blake's works exemplify and illuminate the fearlessness that is part of the very essence of all great art. "Melinda Camber Porter passed away of ovarian cancer in 2008 and left a significant body of work in art, journalism, and literature. The Melinda Camber Porter Archive wishes to share her creative works with the public to ensure the continuation and expansion of the ideas expressed in her art, journalism, and literature. The Melinda Camber Porter Archive of Creative Works comprises two series of books. Volume 1 are books of journalism. Volume 2 are books of art and literature. [ISSN: 2379-2450 (Print); 2379-3198 (E-book); 2379-321X (Audiobook).]

Eugenio Montale (1896 – 1981) produced five volumes of poetry in his first fifty years as a writer, when the Swedish Academy awarded the Italian poet and critic the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature they called him "one of the most important poets of the contemporary West," according to a Publishers Weekly report.

He had a career as a free-lance poet and man of arts and letters, who also painting throughout his life. He began his career as a critic in Genoa, Italy, 1922-26; a member of editorial staff of Bemporad (publishing house), Florence, Italy, 1927-28; a curator for Gabinetto Vieusseux Library, Florence, 1928-38; a free-lance writer in Milan, Italy, 1938-48; a literary editor for Corriere della Sera, Milan, 1948-73, and finally music critic, 1955-81.

The Times [London] observed that both poets Montale and Elliot possessed similar styles and "a common predilection for dry, desolate, cruel landscapes." One of Montale's English translators, Jonathan Galassi, echoed the enthusiastic terms of the Swedish Academy Award in his introduction to The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale in which he referred to Montale as "one of the great artistic sensibilities of our time."

Blake Press Catalog (request a catalog):

V1N1: Melinda Camber Porter In Conversation With Eugenio Montale, Milan, Italy 1976

V1N2: Melinda Camber Porter In Conversation With Roy Lichtenstein: Green Street Mural 1983

V1N3: Melinda Camber Porter In Conversation With Wim Wenders, Paris, Texas 1983

V2N1: Fashion In The Time Of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), by Melinda Camber Porter

V2N2: Luminous Bodies: Circles of Celebration, by Melinda Camber Porter

V2N3: Luminous Bodies: Circles of Mourning, by Melinda Camber Porter

V2N4: Night Angel, by Melinda Camber Porter, Composer Carman Moore

V2N5: Night Angel, by Melinda Camber Porter, Composer Keith Bright

Milan, Italy 1976

Foreward by Canio Pavone, professor of Italian Literature

Drawings and text by Melinda Camber Porter and Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature

Eugenio Montale’s Nobel Prize Lecture in English and Italian

Ebook: (ISBN: 978-1-942231-15-8) p84, illus., index, bibl.

Hardcover: (ISBN: 978-1-942231-44-8), 8½x11, 84p, illus., index, bibl.

Blake Press, Joseph R Flicek, flickejr@pipeline.com and www.MelindaCamberPorter.com