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Translations of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970)     Giuseppe Ungaretti was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied at Paris, and fought in the Italian army in World War 1, where he began to write poetry, first published as Il porto sepolto (1916, The Buried Port). He became professor of Italian literature at São Paulo, Brazil (1936–42) and at Rome (1942–58). While still in school in Egypt, Ungaretti became acquainted with French symbolist poetry, particularly that of Stéphane Mallarmé. The example of the French symbolists, and later that of Paul Valéry and Apollinaire, led him to adopt his particular hermetic "technique of obscuration." His poems, characterized by symbolism, compressed imagery, and modern verse structure, became the foundation of the hermetic movement (from ermetico ‘obscure’, a term used by a critic of his work). Such a closed diction derives its characteristics from the basic symbolist beliefs in the magic qualities of the word and the conviction that the poet is the keeper of arcane secrets. Thus, as Ungaretti once said, true poetry must have the "obscure sense of revelation." He won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1970.
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