A nice little book from Handsel Press has just crossed our desk: “Montale in English,” edited by Harry Thomas. It’s a slim compendium of translations and homages – often providing several translations of one poem – by many of the usual, and best, suspects: William Arrowsmith, Jonathan Galassi, Charles Wright, Allen Mandelbaum. Few things could be better than more Eugenio Montale in English, and looking through the new volume brought to mind that W.W. Norton hasn’t published any new volumes of the Arrowsmith translations for a while.

The most recent was “Satura” in 1998, and our understanding was that Arrowsmith had left translations of all of Montale in manuscript with the implication that Norton would keeping bringing the volumes out until the oeuvre was complete. Curious, we gave a ring to Norton to see what was in the works.

Jill Bialosky, Arrowsmith’s editor at Norton, said she wasn’t aware of any of Arrowsmith’s Montale that had not yet been published. When Arrowsmith died in 1992, Norton had brought out his translations of “The Storm and Other Poems” (1984) and “The Occasions” (1987). Then came two posthumous volumes: “Cuttlefish Bones” (1994) and “Satura: 1962-1970.” Ms. Bialosky said she didn’t think there were any translations left.

Looking through the books themselves, however, we found this delightful note by the distinguished poet Rosanna Warren, in the Arrowsmith version of “Cuttlefish Bones” (W.W. Norton):

When William Arrowsmith died on February 20, 1992, he left in manuscript his translations of every volume of poems by Eugenio Montale arranged by the poet himself, except for “The Storm and Oth er Things”(“La bufera e altro”) and “The Occassions” (“Le occassioni”), which had already appeared from Norton in W.A.’s translation. “Altri versi,” put together for Montale by Giorgio Zampa and published a few months before the poet’s death in 1981, was not included; nor, for obvious reasons, was “Diario postumo,” edited by Annalisa Cima and not published in toto until 1996.

The next logical step was a call to Ms. Warren. A professor of literature at Boston University, it was she who edited and prepared “Cuttlefish Bones” and “Satura: 1962-1970” for publication. She told us that two Montale collections from Arrowsmith – “Poetic Diary: 1971 and Poetic Diary: 1972” and “Poetic Notebook 1974-77” – have yet to be published.

In 1997, she put aside the remaining manuscripts and returned to her own work, which she’d been neglecting. Our inquiry, eerily, came just as she’d been thinking again about the remaining translations. “I have been feeling guilty about the manuscripts, and I am one of his literary executors,” she said. “But it’s a considerable job and has to be done by someone who knows the work.”

These manuscripts lack Arrowsmith’s end notes, which are among the very best writing on Montale in English and one of the things that makes his other versions of Montale so valuable. They need an editor who can work with Arrowsmith’s translations and compile good annotations. “There’s a lot of scholarship on Montale,” Ms. Warren said. “To do it responsibly, the editor of these books should know that scholarship.”

Ms. Warren was Arrowsmith’s student at Johns Hopkins University and his colleague at Boston University. They shared a love for Montale, and he had been showing her his translations for years. “Montale is an enduring poet, and I’m confident that I’ll find someone who’d like to take on the task – or that I’d come to a point in my work where I’d like to take on the task,” she said.

For now, the Arrowsmith in the new “Montale in English” will have to do. This being the 80th anniversary of “Ossi di sepia,” Montale’s first and most famous book, we’ll plump for the first stanza of a favorite, “Meriggiare pallido e assorto,” one of the so-called “short bones”:

To laze at noon, pale and thoughtful,
by a blazing orchard wall; to listen,
in brambles and brake, to blackbirds
scolding, the snake’s rustle.

That’s Arrowsmith. In “Montale in English” you also get Jonathan Galassi, Edwin Morgan, and the editor himself, Harry Thomas:

Sit the noon out, pale and lost in thought
beside a blistering garden wall,
hear, among the thorns and brambles,
snakes rustle, blackbirds catcall. (Galassi)

Dozing at midday, dazed and pale,
beside a scorching orchard wall,
hearing the twigs and dry scrub make
a crack for the blackbird, a rustle for the snake. (Morgan)

To pass the noon, intent and pale,
beside a scorching orchard wall,
and hear in the dry thorny brake
clicking thrushes, a rustling snake. (Thomas)

Translation is a fragile art, well served by a book like “Montale in English.”