Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition - Hardcover

Ungaretti, Giuseppe; Frisardi, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374260753 ISBN 13: 9780374260750

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002

Synopsis

A major new translation of one of Italy's greatest modern poets

Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) was a pioneer of the Modernist movement in Italian poetry and is widely regarded as one of the leading Italian poets of the twentieth century. His verse is renowned and loved for its powerful insight and emotion, and its exquisite music. Yet, unlike many of his peers, Ungaretti has never been adequately presented to English readers. This large bilingual selection, translated with great sensitivity and fidelity by Andrew Frisardi, captures Ungaretti in all of his phases: from his early poems, written in the trenches of northern Italy during World War I, to the finely crafted erotic and religious poetry of his second period, to the visceral, elegiac poetry of the years following the death of his son and the occupation of Rome during World War II, to the love poems of the poet's old age.

Frisardi's in-depth introduction details the world in which Ungaretti's work took shape and exerted its influence. In addition to the poet's own annotations, an autobiographical afterword, "Ungaretti on Ungaretti," further illuminates the poet's life and art. Here is a compelling, rewarding, and comprehensive version of the work of one of the greatest modern European poets.

About this title

About the Author

Giuseppe Ungaretti was one of Italy's greatest modern poets.

Andrew Fisardi's poems, essays, and translations have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and other periodicals. A native of Massachussetts, he lives in Orvieto, Italy.

Reviews

This edition, well-translated and annotated by poet-essayist Frisardi, brings the modernist achievement of Ungaretti (1888-1970) to light. Most searing here are the WWI poems, "Up in the light vault/ the spell is broken// And I plummet into myself// And go dark in my nest."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The eldest and many say finest modern Italian poet, Ungaretti (1888-1970) was born to Tuscan parents in Alexandria. Hence, he was at once a birthright heir of the Renaissance and the child of a quintessentially international city within sight of an ancient culture's desert-bound remains; lush Tuscan hills and empty Egyptian desert are his poetry's mental as well as physical landscapes. He saw action in WW I, endured a dear friend's suicide in Paris, and participated in the postwar birth of modernist French and Italian poetry and art. He eventually settled in Rome, decamping only for an academic appointment in Brazil, during which first his brother and then his nine-year-old son died. With so much tragedy in a life lived largely in a crucible of twentieth-century calamity, that he wrote frequently about death is unsurprising, nor is it wonderful that he became engaged in a profoundly tenuous search for God. His spare poetry, beautiful in two languages in this edition, is the difficult but deeply engaging and affecting record of his quest. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Sample poems from first chapter:

IN MEMORY OF
Locvizza, September 30, 1916

His name was
Mohammed Sceab

Descendant
of emirs of nomads
a suicide
because he had no homeland
left

He loved France
and changed his name

He was Marcel
but wasn t French
and no longer knew
how to live
in his people s tent

where you hear the Koran
being chanted
while you savor your coffee

And he didn t know how
to set free
the song
of his desolation

I went with him
and the proprietress of the hotel
where we lived
in Paris
from number 5 Rue des Carmes
an old faded alley sloping downhill

He rests
in the graveyard at Ivry
a suburb that always
seems

like the day
a fair breaks down

And perhaps only I
still know
he lived

RESTING
Versa, April 27, 1916

Who will come with me through the fields

The sunlight is scattered in diamond
drops of water
over the supple grass

I am surrendered
to the leanings
of the limpid universe

The mountains open out
in deep draughts of lilac shadow
and row with the sky

Up in the light vault
the spell is broken

And I plummet into myself

And go dark in my nest

(The poems "In Memory Of" and "Resting" appear in Giuseppe Ungaretti, "Selected Poems," Farrar Straus Giroux. Translation copyright © 2002 by Andrew Frisardi.)

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374260753
• ISBN 13: 9780374260750
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320