SOURCE: Anceschi, Luciano. “Ungaretti 1919-1927: The Word ‘Broken into Pauses’.” Forum Italicum (1992): 25-35.

In the following essay, translated by John deMeo and David Jacobson from the Italian version originally published in 1974, Anceschi investigates the arc of Ungaretti's poetic career by examining his work in relationship to Futurism.

I. a Poetic “master”

Ungaretti has been the most penetrating, influential, and—if I may put it this way—insinuating master of poetry Italy has had in this century. This seems more a statement of fact than a mere opinion of his readers. It must be said that he formulated a system that served his own poetry but was useful to younger poets as well; and that, whatever the outcome of his own poetry, the lesson he provided created a line of continuity between past and present, a line further extended by those critics most receptive to the so-called “new lyricism...