SOURCE: "Conception of Time and Language in the Poetry of Cesare Pavese," in Italian Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 29, Spring, 1964, pp. 14-34.

On October 28, 1935 Pavese made the following entry in his diary: "Poetry begins when a simpleton says of the sea: 'It looks like oil!'" The Burning Brand, translated by A. E. Murch, 1961. Immediately, however, he added that this discovery actually is not the most precise description of a flat calm. It is merely the pleasure of having perceived the similarity, the titilation provided by the establishment of a mysterious relation between the thing perceived and the idea of the thing, between the man who sees the object and his unconscious need to express it with a parallel, an image, a symbol. Pavese points out that this is how a typical poem begins, it is based on an idea. But then it is necessary to finish it. How? He...