A SEASONED BRUTINA
Drusilla Tanzi, small in stature, objectively ugly like Marcie of the Peanuts, short-sighted to such an extent that she seemed to wear glasses instead of glasses, often ill, was the main muse of the great poet Eugenio Montale. The Nobel Prize winner also married her when they were both ahead of their time, despite the fact that the poet had had throughout his life young, beautiful and cultured lovers.
He always preferred her, however, until the very end.
How come?
Many people underestimate the seductive potential of certain women who are objectively not beautiful, but who have other talents. Just as many women, looking in the mirror and not finding themselves in the canons of beauty of their time, are discouraged and resigned, not considering that an ugly seasoned - read the nice book by Carmen Covito - , such as Drusilla, for example, can have a more lively love life than many beautiful women.
"I have known a nice and intelligent her admirer ... she has the bizarre name of Drusilla ..." with this letter from Montale to Svevo, we get to know this woman, differently beautiful, in a writing dated 1927.
Drusilla is forty-two years old and Montale thirty-one. She is also married and has a son. Despite everything between the two, a very strong feeling blossoms, which will withstand many bad weather. Montale gave her the nickname "Moscow", because of her great short-sightedness, but fell in love with her despite being married to another, Matteo Marangoni, a famous art critic, and mother of a child.
But the poet is young and very sensitive, despite the serious and almost grumpy appearance, to the feminine charm. Free from marriage commitments with Drusilla, he will be fascinated by many women, until the end of his days, cyclically.
The first relevant woman in the sentimental history of Montale was really irresistible, an American young woman with blue eyes, combed like a little boy, Irma Brandeis, immortalized by him in the poems of that period as Clizia. Irma, very much in love, would like Montale to follow her to America in the thirties, among other things the years of fascism and racial laws ("Clizia" was Jewish), but Drusilla, with whom he has a parallel story, twice threatens suicide. The poet does not start. Drusilla, the ugly one, wins.
The second woman is famous, she is the great Italian poet Maria Luisa Spaziani she meets when she is twenty-six and he is fifty-two, she is beautiful and talented, he is clumsy but already intellectual acclaimed by the public. In the letters the nicknames of Fox and Bear will be given. She is not yet married but is about to do so, he actually can not give her more than an affectionate friendship, according to the words of Spaziani, or probably an 'erotic friendship, according to the lexicon of love of Francesco Alberoni. She is getting married. They are also frequented afterwards, but above all on an intellectual level. Drusilla, the ugly girl, wins again.
How could she have defeated such a competition? Why was Montale so attached to this woman?
The answer, once again when it comes to the love stories of poets that we often deal with in the magazine, can be read in the most beautiful poems of Montale of maturity: the collection called Xenia, which hides her Drusilla in twenty-eight lyrics, all dedicated to her, recently disappeared.
It is to her and only to her that he dedicates one of the most beautiful love poems of the twentieth century:
I have descended, giving you my arm, at least a million stairs
and now that you're gone, it's empty on every step.
Even so, our long journey was short.
My journey is still going on, and I don't need it anymore
coincidences, reservations,
the traps, the glimpses of those who believe
that reality is what you see.
I went down millions of stairs giving you the arm
not already because with four eyes maybe you can see more.
I came down with you because I knew that of us
the only real pupils, though so obfuscated,
were yours.
The poet's pain at his loss is unquenchable.
After his death Montale understands why he loved Drusilla and only Drusilla
Drusilla, despite the "distractions" of her man, has always been her guide, her point of reference and their relationship has the flavor of everyday affectionate and participatory, of consolidated and indispensable love.
She is as touching as he seeks her everywhere, as he still wishes to be advised, speaks to him, as he had always done in their lives together, as a modern woman, courageous, combative as she was, and extremely intelligent.Drusilla, in fact, is a woman full of surprises: she is even a literary character. In fact, she is aunt Drusilla: "she who always broke her glasses" in "Family Lexicon" by Natalia Ginsburg, of which she was really the aunt in life. And Montale also appears in a short cameo in the book, as his companion, with her also on that occasion.
If at the beginning their relationship was affected by the emotional blackmail of "Moscow", in the moment of the min.