Introduction and Translation by Jonathan Galassi Montale's 'Posthumous Diary', now available for the first time in an English translation, is a collection of brief poems to a woman named Annalisa Cima that, when published 15 years after his death in 1981, created an unprecedented uproar in the world of Italian literature. Winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature, this volume of Montale's most private poems deal with death and solitude, but also with friendship and the consolations of art that unify us and shield us from despair.