Wonder Wednesday: Giuseppe Ungaretti
Some Wednesdays, we just like to spin some classics. Today, the great Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti deserves the spotlight with three soul-opening poems.
San Martino del Carso
Of those houses
nothing but some shreds of wall
remain
Of the many
I had ties with
not even that
Remains
But in my heart
not a cross is missing
My heart is
The most ravaged village.
Weight
That farmer
trusts the pendant
Of Sant Anthony
And treads lightly
But so alone and so bare
With no illusion
I carry my soul
Nostalgia
When
the night is to vanish
approaching spring
And seldom
Someone passes by
On Paris condenses
A dark color
Of weep
On the song of a bridge
I contemplate
The endless silence
Of a feeble
girl
Our maladies
melt together
And like taken away
We remain.
A literary minimalist, Giuseppe Ungaretti (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe uŋɡaˈretti]; 8 February 1888–2 June 1970) was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic.
Ungaretti is considered by some critics the greatest Italian poet of the 20th Century, and has been the leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo (“Hermeticism”).
He served an infantryman on the lower Isonzo front with the 3rd Army from 1915 until early 1918 — many of his poems are in fact war-inspired. Ungaretti’s pure style was achieved by condensation to essentials and is in the tradition of the French Symbolists.
Translation by Dario Cannizzaro.
