The Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) was the creator and major representative of Italian hermetic poetry.

Giuseppe Ungaretti was born on Feb. 10, 1888, in Alexandria, Egypt, of Italian parents who had emigrated from the countryside around Lucca. At an early age he lost his father, who had been working as a laborer on the Suez Canal project; his mother continued to run a baker's oven to maintain the family. Until 1905 Ungaretti frequented the Istituto Don Bosco and the École Suisse Jacot, and in 1912 he went to Paris to study at the Collège de France and the Sorbonne. He met and befriended poets and artists such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Georges Braque, and Amedeo Modigliani. In 1915 his first poetry was published in the journal Lacerba.

During World War I Ungaretti served as an infantry soldier on the Italian front and in the Champagne...