Notes on Italian culture
Thinking about scents and their significance reminded me of a poem by the famous Italian poet Eugenio Montale, which is one of my favourites. In this poem, entitled “I Limoni” (“The Lemons”), he describes the almost mystical experience that he has when he sees the lemon trees and is inebriated by their scent. He starts by distinguishing himself from other poets saying that while they prefer extravagant plants, he likes to talk about common trees, such as lemons, in their everyday environments: ditches, puddles, alleys, verges. Nonetheless, lemon trees for him are more than they appear. In their simplicity, they become a metaphysical symbol, a sign of some ‘divine’ presence in the everyday world. If we are patient enough to quietly sit to observe and smell the lemons, these become a secret passage to the deepest secrets of life.

Ascoltami, i poeti laureati
si muovono soltanto fra le piante
dai nomi poco usati: bossi ligustri o acanti.
lo, per me, amo le strade che riescono agli erbosi
fossi dove in pozzanghere
mezzo seccate agguantano i ragazzi
qualche sparuta anguilla:
le viuzze che seguono i ciglioni,
discendono tra i ciuffi delle canne
e mettono negli orti, tra gli alberi dei limoni.

(…)

Vedi, in questi silenzi in cui le cose
s’abbandonano e sembrano vicine
a tradire il loro ultimo segreto,
talora ci si aspetta
di scoprire uno sbaglio di Natura,
il punto morto del mondo, l’anello che non tiene,
il filo da disbrogliare che finalmente ci metta
nel mezzo di una verità.
Lo sguardo fruga d’intorno,
la mente indaga accorda disunisce
nel profumo che dilaga
quando il giorno più languisce.
Sono i silenzi in cui si vede
in ogni ombra umana che si allontana
qualche disturbata Divinità. Listen to me, laurel-wreathed poets
move only among plants
with noble names: boxwood acanthus or privets.
I, for one, love roads that lead to grass covered
ditches where in partly
desiccated puddles children
catch the occasional eel:
the lanes that coast these banks
descend through tufts of cane
and open onto orchards thick with lemons.

(…)

You see, in this silence in which all things
abandon themselves and seem close
to betraying their ultimate secret,
we sometimes expect
to find a fault in Nature,
the dead nub of the earth, the weak link,
the thread that untangled finally places us
within reach of a truth.
Our eyes search all around,
our mind probes accords partitions
in the fragrance that sweeps over us
when the day is most sluggish.
It is the stillness in which we see
in every human shadow that drifts away
some disturbed Deity.