SOURCE: "Eugenio Montale's 'Motets': The Occasions of Epiphany," in PMLA, Vol. LXXXII, No. 7, December, 1967, pp. 471-84.

In the following excerpt, Cambon arques that thematic and formal unity links the "Motets" in The Occasions.

The Centrality of the twenty "Mottetti" to Montale's decisive second book, Le Occasioni (1939), has been noted by such critics as Ettore Bonora and Silvio Ramat [in La poesia di Montale (1965) and Montale (1965), respectively]. Despite their probings, however, much remains to be done towards an organic understanding of this remarkable series of poems. Since this part of Montale's work relates to much else he has written before and after, I shall not attempt to isolate it from the rest of the Occasioni book, but merely to keep my focus on what is after all a kind of book within the book. A tighter unity prevails among the "Motets" than among the other poems in the volume...