Giuseppe Ungaretti [E1] [I1] [F1] [S1], 1888-1970, Italian poet, critic, and translator, born in Alexandria, Egypt. Ungaretti spent his youth in North Africa, where he was greatly influenced by nomadic culture. In Paris, where he studied, he formed friendships with members of the literary and artistic avant-garde. His service in the Italian infantry during First World War [E1][I1] [F1] [S1] provided the background for his first mature poems, written in the trenches, which deal with love and the precariousness of life. Ungaretti's style had already achieved a remarkable purity by condensing his poetic expression to its essentials. Working in the tradition of the French symbolists , he stressed the musical properties of the individual word and the illuminating power of a single striking image. Ungaretti's poetry was spare and intense; he employed unconventional syntax and eschewed the elaborate rhetorical structures. Because of the allusive yet self-contained quality of his verse, the movement that he inaugurated in poetry was named Hermeticism. The poems in Sentimento del tempo (1933) and Il dolore (1947) mark a return to the traditional meters of Italian poetry. Ungaretti also wrote essays and translated the works of Shakespeare, Racine, and others. He taught at the University of São Paolo in Brazil before accepting a chair at the University of Rome (1942). His works are collected in 12 volumes under the title Vita d'un uomo (tr. Life of a Man, 1969 and 1974).

A literary minimalist, Giuseppe Ungaretti is considered by some critics the greatest Italian poet of the 20th Century. He served an infantryman on the lower Isonzo front with the 3rd Army from 1915 until early 1918. In the spring, he was transferred to the Western Front where Italian forces fought with distinction. In his most famous war poem, Rivers, he alludes to his birth in Egypt, his youth in Tuscany and his service on both fronts during the Great War. Ungaretti's pure style was achieved by condensation to essentials and is in the tradition of the French Symbolists. His works are collected in the 2 volumes of Life of man portions of which are available in English translation.

Fratelli

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