Giuseppe Ungaretti

Giuseppe Ungaretti was born on 10 February 1888 in Alexandria, Egypt in a family from the Tuscan city of Lucca.

Ungaretti's father died in 1890 while working on the digging of the Suez Canal Project.

His widowed mother ran a baker’s oven to support her family and raised her child in Roman Catholic faith.

He studied in Alexandria’s Swiss School till 1905. There he learnt about the Parnassianism and Symbolist poetry and also became acquainted with the works of classicists. During the same time, he began working as a journalist and literary critic. A few of his pieces came out in a journal edited by Enrico Pea, ‘Risorgete’.

In 1912, he went to Paris to study at the Collège de France and the Sorbonne. There he came under the influence of surrealists like Guillaume Apollinaire and furiststs like Umberto Boccioni, Ardengo Soffici and Giovanni Papini.

In 1915, Ungaretti enrolled in the infantry and he was posted at the Northern Italian theatre during the World War I.

He was shaken by the brutalities of war and in 1917 published his first volume of poetry, ‘Il porto sepolto’ (‘The Buried Port’) which was mostly written during his term at the Kras front.

When the 1918 armistice was signed, Ungaretti returned back to Paris, and started working as a reporter for Benito Mussolini's paper ‘Il Popolo d'Italia’.

In 1919, he published a volume of French-language poetry, titled ‘La guerre’ (‘The War’). This volume stands out against the works of the ‘Lost Generation’ poets because it did not altogether dismiss the purpose of war.

After coming back to Paris, he became increasingly associated with the Dadaists like Tristan Tzara and Enrico Prampolini.

Ungaretti's first collection of verse, Il porto sepolto (1916) is considered to be his most influential work as it departed from the traditional forms of poetry.

‘L'Allegria’, previously called ‘L'Allegria di Naufragi’, is another important work where Ungaretti combines the poetic style of ‘poètes maudits’ and his experiences as a soldier.