[The "I" of "I fiumi" (The Rivers)] defines itself more strongly and completely than anywhere else in L'allegria. (p. 584)

Bits of personal history rise to the surface, whether the persona evokes his lost Africa or his more recently abandoned Paris. Mostly, though, in the other poems it is a nonhistorical self that emerges (or seeks resubmersion in the All), with fragments of memory floating around. But in "I fiumi" the "I" takes stock of its whole history; it repossesses its vital ambience; it momentarily finds the "innocent country" elsewhere so poignantly missed, and strikes roots in its native soil without having to surrender its mobility. It is a historical self. Accordingly, the poem takes shape as a total epiphany rather than as a fragmentary illumination. It does not merely pierce and subvert, it orders and recapitulates—a rare operation for any modern poet whose beginnings must be subversive...