Like Leaves in Autumn: Giuseppe Ungaretti and the Beauty of Poetry facing the Horrors of War

veradapozzo8

17 hours ago

2 min read

Little artwork by me, illustrating the poem Soldati (Soldiers, 1918) written by the great Italian modernist poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970).

I had the chance to start reading poems at a very early age, long before studying them at school, and I wrote my very first poem when I was eight. To me, Poetry carries every Life's Mysteries and it is like Oxygen: I could never imagine a World without Poetry, without Dead and Living Poets to read and to listen to and without Passionate Readers and Listeners of Poetry. Alas!, the World have never paid attention to Poets; and in our sad, lazy, stupid, nervous and confused times, Poetry is shamefully ignored and neglected, while the people listen to politicians who are just spoiled brats governing their Country as tyrants.

During World War I, amidst blood and mud, Giuseppe Ungaretti revealed himself as a Poet; he befriended Guillaume Apollinaire, another Metic and great Poet, who had not the chance to outlive the Grande Guerre.

I would love to have a time machine in order to go to Paris, meet Apollinaire, Ungaretti and prevent his childhood friend and poet Moammed Sceab from killing himself. The first poem Ungaretti wrote in his memory is stuck in my mind since I was eight and I still keep in mind this poor young man who could have been another great poet.

At the end of World War II, Ungaretti's embarrassing friendship with Benito Mussolini costed him the expulsion from the University of Rome, where he had been appointed in 1942 as Professor of Modern Literature, but soon his colleagues voted for his reintegration.

We have the great chance to watch and hear Giuseppe Ungaretti reading his own poems. After In memoria, the poem dedicated to Moammed Sceab that I linked above,

how Ungaretti defines Poetry,

a short interview from 1961 and five poems about the war.

San Martino del Carso

When I was nine, I had to learn and to recite by heart I Fiumi and I still remember my awful and ignorant teacher who read and "explained" us this beautiful poem without understanding it: she took the words "urna" and "reliquia" literally and told us that the soldier had fallen drop dead in the river. I dared to say that the soldier was the poet himself, alive and bathing in the river, and she scolded me.

In my school there were better teachers, well-read and kind; I was very unlucky to have a teacher so ignorant and mean.