Giuseppe Ungaretti

Elena Coda (Purdue University)

Ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo, Columbia University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.1: Italian Writing and Culture, 453-present.
Vol. editors: Carla Bregman (Independent Scholar - North America), Jo Ann Cavallo (Columbia University)

Dates

Born 10 Feb 1888
Died 2 Jun 1970
Activity 1910-1970

Places

Born in Egypt
Active in Italy; France

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Ungaretti's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Giuseppe Ungaretti was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on February 8, 1888, of Italian immigrants originally from Lucca. He lost his father as a young child and his mother supported the family by running a bakery on the outskirts of the city close to the Sahara. The view of the desert, with its vast emptiness, would have a great impact on Ungaretti’s complex perception of history and humanity. As he would later note, commenting on his native city:

The imagery of desolation was obsessive within me from my very first poems. It was the desert that defined it in me: out of the desert were born, in my far-off infancy and youth, the notion and feeling of the infinite, of the primal, of the fall of all things into nothingness. (qtd. in Cary 1993, 138)

The imagery of desolation was obsessive within me…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2865 words

Citation: Coda, Elena. "Giuseppe Ungaretti". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 February 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11845, accessed 21 November 2024.]