[Quasimodo's] voice is not only unique in contemporary European poetry but it is a voice of rarest distinction: absolutely free of rhetorical inflation, at once generous and fastidious, un "fashionable" yet representative of an entire generation. The formal perfection of his verse is matched by both solidity and urgency of matter; in other words, Quasimodo is the least vapid of poets, even as he is one of the purest by those exigent standards to which Mallarmé, Rilke, and Valéry have accustomed us, the dedicated readers and judges of lyric poetry.

Italian critics have made much of Quasimodo's changes of style, of his evolution from complete internality, or subjectivity, into a writer of verse that is public and largely available, because of his new concern with extra personal issues and relevancies. Provocative though they are, considerations of this sort tend to base themselves on psychological rather than artistic evidence. Unquestionably the late war brought on a crisis in Quasimodo's career as a poet: from 1940 onward there is less listening to the "inner voice," a marked shift from the personal to the general tragedy. Unquestionably, too, that shift of thematic attention has resulted in certain stylistic modifications, which I am the last to undervalue. But what strikes the reader most forcibly is the continuity of Quasimodo's work, not its discontinuity. I would even hesitate to speak of the later work as being richer, or more mature, or more complex, than the poems contained in Ed è subito sera. From first to last Quasimodo is an extraordinarily subtle but rather simple poet, compared with such writers as Montale, Eliot, Yeats. His poetic extensions have been lateral rather than in (intellectual) depth; his gains have been gains in technical mastery, made possible by the influx of fresh subject matter. Yet even in his latest work the prevailing mode is that of the chant intérieur, the continuous melodic line in the manner of Eluard or Reverdy. There are certain traits, too, which he shares with Montale: a strong distaste for the anecdotal conduct of the poem; his determination to allow the initial emotion to shape the occasion—not of the poem, but that occasion which is, itself, the poem.

The pieces contained in Giorno dopo giorno are his most formal compositions, Leopardian up to a point, at least in diction and the technical management of the hendecasyllable. Yet Quasimodo's sensibility is entirely different from this or any other predecessor. His nostalgia points to no Nirvana (Leopardi) or Platonic eros (il dolce stil nuovo), no Christian or pagan cosmic essence (Pascoli, Carducci). Rather, it seeks to relocate emotion in a primordial purity of perception and compassion, a paradisiacal state of radical innocence. That innocence is, most frequently, associated with nature, the basic vegetative conditions of the earth….

While Quasimodo lacks the intellectual complexity and male power of Montale, he excels the latter in sheer lyrical intensity. That lyricism is sustained in poem after poem, throughout the body of his work. Passages of deliberate prosiness—there are many of those in his latest book—only serve to give further resonance, a subtler edge, to the welling up of music from within: They never contradict the song, nor do they destroy any "poetic illusion." For of illusion there is none in Quasimodo; every word means exactly what it says, even as it shades into the unsayable; every statement is authentic and involves, along with the poet's inwardness, the total constellation of this earth as we know it; as we can never forget it, save at our peril. For this earth is incomparable—impareggiabile—precisely because we and it are one; comparison can neither raise it in our esteem nor dwarf it. This co-extension of man and earth is, to me, the most significant—and most affecting—aspect of the poet's work. Quasimodo triumphs in the abolition of both facile dualism and mystical vagueness, in the resolute allegiance to what is and, since it can be, will be. (p. 17)