Many of you appreciated the short verse by Quasimodo, so today may I write about another poet from the same period, representing Italian Hermetism.
Morning
I’m illumined
with immensity.
Giuseppe Ungaretti (1917)
These few words are known by every Italian student, as the entire poem is made up of just these words.
How long does it take to write or translate only few words?
And how long does it take when those words are spoken softly by an entire nation—young and old alike—at the sight of the rising sun?
How long does it take when the words become what G. De Robertis called “inebriating expansions of the soul”?
Ungaretti’s original version of the poem was much longer:
Sky and Sea
I’m illumined
with immensity
by a swift
motion,
a glance.
Giuseppe Ungaretti (1916)
Though the poet was already “reducing his words to the essential,” he later chose to remove the final three lines.
By doing so, he amplified the impact of the first two.