‘Bring me the sunflower’ by Eugenio Montale”. Review by Alessandria today

In “Portami il girasole”, Eugenio Montale explores with intense lyricism the theme of the incessant search for orientation and meaning. The poem is an invitation, a plea for a sunflower that can endure and transform the desolation of a land “burned by the salt” into a symbol of hope and unstoppable attraction towards the light.

The Symbolism of the Sunflower

The sunflower, with its yellow face that tends towards the “mirroring blues” of the sky, becomes a metaphor for the human soul that aspires to the light of enlightenment and clarity in a world that often appears dark and indecipherable. Montale uses this plant, crazy with light, to represent the desire to rise above the inhospitable and harsh conditions of everyday reality.

A Vision of Fading and Clarity

The poem evokes the idea that the truest essence of things is in their tendency to vanish, “bodies are exhausted in a flow / of colours”. In this fading, Montale glimpses the possibility of a higher existence, in which life disperses and purifies itself, becoming “music” and “vaporizing life as essence”.

An Invitation to Transformation

Through the figure of the poet, who asks to be taken towards the “blond transparencies” where the sunflower finds its meaning, Montale invites us to join this search for transcendence. It is not a simple escape from reality, but an active commitment to seeking a transformation that can reveal the light hidden within the difficulties of life.

In “Bring me the sunflower”, Montale offers a poem of hope and an inescapable attraction to light and clarity, while recognizing that the path towards transparency is crossed by challenges and the need to face one’s own “anxiety”. It is a poem that he calls to a deeper awareness, to a spiritual awakening that can be born even in the most scorched soil, if only one has the courage to transplant a sunflower crazy with light.

Bring me the sunflower by Eugenio Montale
Bring me the sunflower so I can transplant it
in my soil burned by the salt,
and you show the mirrored blues all day
of the sky the anxiety of his yellow face.

Dark things tend towards clarity,
bodies are exhausted in a flow
of colours: these in music. To fade
it is therefore the adventure of adventures.

Bring me the plant that leads
where blonde transparencies arise
and life vapors as essence;
bring me the sunflower crazy with light.

Read also:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenio_Montale