Giuseppe Ungaretti | |
|---|---|
 Ungaretti in Italian infantry uniform duringWorld War I | |
| Born | (1888-02-08)8 February 1888 |
| Died | 2 June 1970(1970-06-02) (aged 82) Milan, Italy |
| Occupation |
|
| Nationality | Italian |
| Period | 1912–1970 |
| Genre | lyric poetry,free verse |
| Subject | literary criticism |
| Literary movement | Symbolism Futurism Dada Hermeticism |
Giuseppe Ungaretti (Italian:[dʒuˈzɛppeuŋɡaˈretti]; 8 February 1888 – 2 June 1970) was an Italianmodernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leading representative of theexperimental trend known asErmetismo ("Hermeticism"), he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th-centuryItalian literature. Influenced bysymbolism, he was briefly aligned withfuturism. Like many futurists, he took anirredentist position during World War I. Ungaretti debuted as a poet while fighting in thetrenches, publishing one of his best-known pieces,L'allegria ("The Joy").
During theinterwar period, Ungaretti worked as a journalist withBenito Mussolini (whom he met during hissocialist accession),[1] as well as a foreign-based correspondent forIl Popolo d'Italia andGazzetta del Popolo. While briefly associated with theDadaists, he developed Hermeticism as a personal take on poetry. After spending several years in Brazil, he returned home during World War II, and was assigned a teaching post at theUniversity of Rome, where he spent the final decades of his life and career.
Ungaretti was born inAlexandria,Egypt into a family from the Tuscan city ofLucca.[2] Ungaretti's father worked on digging theSuez Canal, where he suffered a fatal accident in 1890.[2] His widowed mother, who ran a bakery on the edge of theSahara, educated her child on the basis of Roman Catholic tenets.[2]
Giuseppe Ungaretti's formal education began in French, at Alexandria's Swiss School.[2] It was there that he became acquainted withParnassianism andSymbolist poetry, in particular withGabriele d'Annunzio,Charles Baudelaire,Jules Laforgue,Stéphane Mallarmé andArthur Rimbaud.[2] He also became familiar with works of the ClassicistsGiacomo Leopardi andGiosuè Carducci, as well as with the writings of maverick authorGiovanni Pascoli.[2] This period marked his debut as a journalist and literary critic, with pieces publishedRisorgete, a journal edited byanarchist writerEnrico Pea.[2] At the time, he was in correspondence withGiuseppe Prezzolini, editor of the influential magazineLa Voce.[2] A regular visitor of Pea'sBaracca Rossa ("Red House"), Ungaretti was himself a sympathizer of anarchist-socialist circles.[3] He abandoned Christianity and became an atheist. It was not until 1928 that he returned to the Catholic faith.[4]
In 1912, the 24-year-old Giuseppe Ungaretti moved to Paris, France. On his way there, he stopped in Rome,Florence andMilan, meeting face to face with Prezzolini.[2] Ungaretti attended lectures at theCollège de France and theUniversity of Paris, and had among his teachers was philosopherHenri Bergson, whom he reportedly admired.[2] The young writer also met and befriended French literary figureGuillaume Apollinaire, a promoter ofCubism and a forerunner ofSurrealism.[5] Apollinaire's work came to be a noted influence on his own.[2] He was also in contact with the Italian expatriates, including leading representatives ofFuturism such asCarlo Carrà,Umberto Boccioni,Aldo Palazzeschi,Giovanni Papini andArdengo Soffici,[6] as well as with the independent visual artistAmedeo Modigliani.[7]
Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Ungaretti, like his Futurist friends, supported anirredentist position, and called for his country's intervention on the side of theEntente Powers.[8] Enrolled in the infantry a year later, he saw action on theNorthern Italian theater, serving in thetrenches.[9] In contrast to his early enthusiasm, he became appalled by the realities of war.[8] The conflict also made Ungaretti discover his talent as a poet, and, in 1917, he published the volume offree verseIl porto sepolto ("The Buried Port"), largely written on theKras front.[10] Although depicting the hardships of war life, his celebratedL'Allegria was not unenthusiastic about its purpose (even if in the poem "Fratelli", and in others, he describes the absurdity of the war and the brotherhood between all the men); this made Ungaretti's stance contrast with that ofLost Generation writers, who questioned their countries' intents, and similar to that of Italian intellectuals such as Soffici,Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,Piero Jahier andCurzio Malaparte.[11]
By the time the1918 armistice was signed, Ungaretti was again in Paris,[8] working as a correspondent forBenito Mussolini's paperIl Popolo d'Italia.[12] He published a volume of French-language poetry, titledLa guerre ("The War", 1919).[13] In 1920, Giuseppe Ungaretti married the Frenchwoman Jeanne Dupoix, with whom he had a daughter, Ninon (born 1925), and a son, Antonietto (born 1930).[8]
During that period in Paris, Ungaretti came to affiliate with theanti-establishment and anti-art current known asDadaism. He was present in the Paris-based Dadaist circle led byRomanian poetTristan Tzara, being, alongsideAlberto Savinio,Julius Evola,Gino Cantarelli,Aldo Fiozzi andEnrico Prampolini, one of the figures who established a transition from Italian Futurism to Dada.[14] In May 1921, he was present at the Dadaist mock trial ofreactionary authorMaurice Barrès, during which the Dadaist movement began to separate itself into two competing parts, headed respectively by Tzara andAndré Breton.[15] He was also affiliated with the literary circle formed around the journalLa Ronda.[13]
The year after his marriage, Ungaretti returned to Italy, settling in Rome as aForeign Ministry employee.[8] By then, Mussolini had organized theMarch on Rome, which confirmed his seizure of power. Ungaretti joined in theNational Fascist Party, signing the pro-fascistManifesto of the Italian Writers in 1925. In his essays of 1926–1929, republished in 1996, he repeatedly called on theDuce to direct cultural development in Italy and reorganize theItalian Academy on fascist lines.[16] He argued: "The first task of the Academy will be to reestablish a certain connection between men of letters, between writers, teachers, publicists. This people hungers for poetry. If it had not been for the miracle ofBlackshirts, we would never have leaped this far."[16] In his private letters to a French critic, Ungaretti also claimed that fascist rule did not implycensorship.[16] Mussolini, who did not give a favorable answer to Ungaretti's appeal,[16] prefaced the 1923 edition ofIl porto sepolto, thus politicizing its message.[17]
In 1925, Ungaretti experienced a religious crisis, which, three years later, made him return to the Roman Catholic Church.[8] Meanwhile, he contributed to a number of journals and published a series of poetry volumes, before becoming a foreign correspondent forGazzetta del Popolo in 1931, and traveling not only to Egypt,Corsica and the Netherlands, but also to various regions of Italy.[8]
It was during this period that Ungaretti introducedErmetismo, baptized with theItalian-language word for "Hermeticism".[18] The new trend, inspired by both Symbolism and Futurism, had its origins in bothIl porto sepolto, where Ungaretti had eliminated structure,syntax and punctuation, and the earlier contributions ofArturo Onofri.[18] The style was indebted to the influence of Symbolists fromEdgar Allan Poe to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé andPaul Valéry.[18] Alongside Ungaretti, its main representatives wereEugenio Montale andSalvatore Quasimodo.[18]
Despite the critical acclaim he enjoyed, the poet faced financial difficulties.[8] In 1936, he moved to the Brazilian city ofSão Paulo, and became a Professor of Italian atSão Paulo University.[9] It was there that, in 1939, his son Antonietto died as a result of a badly performedappendectomy.[8]
In 1942, three years after the start of World War II, Ungaretti returned toAxis-allied Italy, where he was received with honors by the officials.[8] The same year, he was made a Professor of Modern Literature at theUniversity of Rome.[9] He continued to write poetry, and published a series of essays.[8] By then,Hermeticism had come to an end, and Ungaretti, like Montale and Quasimodo, had adopted a more formal style in his poetry.[18] At Rome, Ungaretti mentored the poetElio Filippo Accrocca, whose work was greatly influenced by Ungaretti's.[19]
At the close of the war, following Mussolini's downfall, Ungaretti was expelled from the faculty owing to his fascist connections, but reinstated when his colleagues voted in favor of his return.[8] Affected by his wife's 1958 death, Giuseppe Ungaretti sought comfort in traveling throughout Italy and abroad.[8] He visited Japan, theSoviet Union, Israel and the United States.[8]
.jpg)
In 1964, he gave a series of lectures atColumbia University in New York City, and, in 1970, was invited by theUniversity of Oklahoma to receive itsBooks Abroad Prize.[8] During this last trip, Ungaretti fell ill withbronchopneumonia, and, although he received treatment in New York City, died while under medical supervision in Milan.[8] He was buried inCampo Verano (Rome).[8]
L'Allegria, previously calledL'Allegria di Naufragi, is a decisive moment of the recent history of Italian literature: Ungaretti revises with novel ideas the poetic style of thepoètes maudits (especially the broken verses without punctation marks ofGuillaume Apollinaire'sCalligrammes and the equality between verse and a single word),[20] connecting it with his experience of death and pain as a soldier at war. The hope of brotherhood between all the people is expressed strongly, together with the desire of searching for a renovated "harmony" with the universe,[21] impressive in the famous verses ofMattina:
M’illumino
d’immenso
I illuminate (myself)
with immensity
A famous poem regarding the First World War isSoldati (soldiers), which emblematically and emotionally describes their feelings of uncertainty and fear:
Si sta come
d'autunno
sugli alberi
le foglie
It's like being
in the autumn
on the trees
the leaves
In the successive works he studied the importance of the poetic word (marked byHermeticism andsymbolism), as the only way to save the humanity from the universal horror, and was searching for a new way to recuperate the roots of the Italian classical poetry.[23] His last verses are on the poeml'Impietrito e il Velluto, about the memory of thebright universe eyed Dunja, an old woman that was house guest of his mother in the time of his childhood. Here is the end:
Il velluto dello sguardo di Dunja
Fulmineo torna presente pietà
The velvet in the bright gaze of Dunja
Rapid returns as present mercy[24]
Although Ungaretti parted company withErmetismo ("Hermeticism"), his early experiments were continued for a while by poets such asAlfonso Gatto,Mario Luzi andLeonardo Sinisgalli.[18] His collected works were published asVita di un uomo ("The Life of a Man") at the time of his death.[13]
Two of Ungaretti's poems ("Soldiers – War – Another War" and "Vanity") were made into song by American composerHarry Partch (Eleven Intrusions, 1949–50); and eleven poems were set by the French-Romanian composerHorațiu Rădulescu in his cycleEnd of Kronos (1999). Fragments of his poetry are set by composer Michael Mantler in Cerco un Paese Innocente, a work recorded in 1994.
Austrian-Hungarian composerIván Eröd used his poems in four of his works: "Tutto ho perduto" Op. 12 (1965), "Canti di Ungaretti" Op. 55 (1988), "Vox lucis" Op. 56 (1988–89) and in his last work "Canti di un Ottantenne" Op. 95 (2019), completed only several days before his death in June 2019.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
