Ungaretti's Critical Writings on Petrarch and the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition

Author(s): Ernesto Livorni

Source: Annali d'Italianistica , 2004, Vol. 22, Francis Petrarch & the European Lyric
Tradition (2004), pp. 337-360
Published by: Arizona State University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24010009

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Ernesto Livorni

Ungaretti's Critical Writings on Petrarch and the Renewal of

the Petrarchan Tradition

Giuseppe Ungaretti is the poet and critic who, in the fist half of the twentieth
century, is most responsible for an influential reading of Petrarch's poetry.1
Ungaretti's writings on the poet of Laura are crucial in setting some of the firm
tenets of Petrarch's poetry as well as for the understanding of Ungaretti's own
poetry. The importance of memory, the identification of poetry and absence of
the desired object, the refinement of the poetic language at the risk of obscurity:
these are some of the main elements that through the work of the poet of
Sentimento del tempo pass on to Petrarch's literary criticism as well as to the
poets of the following generation, especially Piero Bigongiari, Mario Luzi and
Andrea Zanzotto.2 One needs only to keep in mind the role played by Giuseppe
De Robertis as a critic of Ungaretti and Hermeticist poetry as well as critic of
Petrarch in order to have a sense of the contiguity of interests between the two
poetic projects; furthermore, in reading De Robertis' studies on Petrarch, one
cannot overlook the heavy influence that Ungaretti's own readings of the poet
must have had on his friend and critic.3

1 One of the first and strenuous readers of Ungaretti's criticism is Ancheschi, "Ungaretti e
la critica," in Letteratura 35-36 (1958), special issue dedicated to the poet; now in
Barocco e Novecento con alcune prospettive fenomenologiche.
2 On this aspect, see at least Barberi Squarotti, "Alcune premesse per una descrizione del
linguaggio ungarettiano," in Letteratura 35-36 (settembre-dicembre 1958), now in
Astrazione e realtà 145-74; Noferi, "Le poetiche critiche novecentesche 'sub specie
Petrarchae'" in Le poetiche critiche novecentesche 225-99.
3 See Giuseppe De Robertis, "Valore del Petrarca," in Studi. The article is, by no chance,
contemporaneous with two other studies, which are closely related to it: Contini, Saggio
d'un commento alle correzioni del Petrarca volgare 1943 (however, the date on the essay
is 1941); and Ungaretti, "Il poeta dell'oblio," now in Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita d'un
uomo. Saggi e interventi 188-97; here forward quoted as SI. Noferi ("Le poetiche critiche
novecentesche 'sub specie Petrarchae'") runs a convincing parallel between De Robertis'
initial refusal of Petrarch's poetry at the time of La Voce and Ungaretti's L 'allegria; she
also points out (236-37n4) that De Robertis' article of re-evaluation of Petrarch sprang
out of the lectures at the University of Firenze in the academic year 1939-1940, when he
was explicitly recalling the relationship between Ungaretti's and Petrarch's poetry. One
notices a line of continuity from De Robertis and Ungaretti to Noferi, "Per una storia
dello stile petrarchesco," in Poesia, Quaderni internazionali V, VI, VII; now in
L'esperienza poetica del Petrarca. Calcaterra ("Nuovi orientamenti negli studi
Annali d'italianistica 22 (2004). Petrarch & the European Lyric Tradition.

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338 Ernesto Livorni

One of the debates that run through modern Italian poetry involves the
referential tradition of the lyrical mode. As the poetic expression increasingly
softens the difference between epic and lyric, the borders of the two becoming
ever more imperceptible, Dante and Petrarch reemerge as the models of a poetry
that aims at transcending the constraints of the genre. If epic poetry as such is
not considered possible any more, lyric poetry tends to assume some of the
tenets of epic. Thus, already Leopardi chooses a Dantesque title for his poems,
in which, however, the Petrarchan lesson is unmistakable. Moreover, the title
Canti becomes to him what oeuvre is to Mallarmé: the identification of a poietic
project engaging the entire life span of the author. By the same token, both
Pascoli and D'Annunzio, in quite different and often opposite modes, proposed
the intersection of epic and lyric poetry according to strategies that often betray
the Dantean bias.
It is not by chance that the heir of these often contradictory tensions in
nineteenth-century Italian poetry, Hermeticism, is the most striking example of
the attempt to satisfy at once the two tensions of epic and lyric poetry in the
twentieth century. Indeed, telling statements by those poets confirm, among
other aspects, this merging of lyric and epic. Thus Ungaretti gathers all his
poetic and critical works under the title Vita d'un uomo, suggesting the epic of
the individual hero who through the form of the fragment gives way to the lyric
and yet builds the journey not only within each collection, but indeed throughout
the several books of poems, now understood as steps of the journey itself.4 To be
sure, the decision to give such a title to his oeuvre may be referred to many
influential precedent examples that Ungaretti kept in mind throughout his life,
the main one being probably Mallarmé and his notion of the Livre.5 However,
the notion of the unity of writing and living is already familiar to Petrarch, as the
Canzoniere and several passages of the Familiares letters testify.6 Ironically, the
relationship between life and art, one of the issues ruling the cultural panorama
of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries — that is, the period of
formation of young Ungaretti, embodied in Italy by the example of Gabriele
D'Annunzio — constitutes a link between Symbolist poetics and Petrarch's

petrarcheschi" in Nella selva del Petrarca 1-34) is useful for an overview of the critical
debate on Petrarch in Italy from Francesco De Sanctis to Ungaretti's return from Brazil.
4 Regarding the "distinctive character of the Petrarchan journey," see Greene, "Petrarch
viatorThe Vulnerable Text: Essays in Renaissance Literature (quotation from p. 18).
5 Mallarmé, "[Notes en vue du 'Livre']," in Oeuvres complètes 214-28.
6 See at least Familiares I, i. As known, the unity of writing and living is also a crucial
aspect of the unity of lyric and epic in the Canzoniere. On this important aspect, on which
already De Sanctis dwelled (Saggio critico sul Petrarca, chap. 3), see at least Barolini;
Greene, "Petrarch: The Ontology of the Self," The Light in Troy 104-26; Mazzotta, "The
Canzoniere and the Language of the Self," "Ethics of Self," in The Worlds of Petrarch
58-79; 80-101; Santagata, I frammenti dell'anima', Santagata, sections 15-24 of
"Introduzione" to Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere (1996) lxiv-ci; Stock; Wilkins.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 339

lesson. It is no surprise, then, that in the 1929 interview with G. B. Agnoletti,

Ungaretti states:7 "La nozione di tempo è ormai data come storia dell'anima e
d'un'anima, in quei termini cioè che svilupperà il romanticismo. Già nel
Petrarca, già negli umanisti, va smarrendosi il senso della rivelazione, s'avvia il
tempo, a diventare realtà unica." It is a crucial statement, as it points out
immediately a link between Petrarch and Ungaretti's poetry through two
notions: first of all, the notion that one's own existence is a spiritual story
refined in the book of memory; and second, the notion of time, which is so
prominent in the poetry that Ungaretti is writing in the years of the interview
that it occupies the very title of the collection: Sentimento del tempo. By his own
admission, with that collection Ungaretti starts looking at tradition more
consciously, even rewriting his first collection according to the tenets of a lyrical
parabola of Italian poetry from Petrarch to Leopardi:8 "[...] c'è nel Sentimento
un lato tecnico: la ripresa di un rapporto più intimo con la nostra tradizione
poetica, a partire dal Petrarca e dal Tasso." By the same token, although with a
different bent, Montale claims: "Ho scritto un solo libro." He cultivates the
project of titling his third collection Romanzo, before choosing La bufera e
altro.9 If these are the most obvious instances, one should be aware that the
poetry of Quasimodo and Luzi as well as Zanzotto, especially at the beginning
of their poetic careers, points toward the fulfillment of the same ideal.10

7 Ungaretti, "La poesia contemporanea è viva o morta?" (the quotation is on p. 189).

8 "Intervista con F. Camon," in Camon (a cura di), II mestiere di poeta-, the quotation is
on p. 840. Spezzani ("Per una storia del linguaggio di Ungaretti fino al Sentimento del
tempo" 91-160, especially 148-51) points out the oppositions "luce/ombra; vita/morte;
carne/anima-, durare/passare-, sorte, ecc.: parole "chiave" queste di chiara ascendenza
petrarchesca" (148). See also Savoca, "'Luce', 'notte' e 'corpo' nel Petrarca di Ungaretti"
(Parole di Ungaretti e di Montale 31-45). To stress the common motives that Ungaretti's
second collection has with Petrarch's poetry, one may paradoxically say that the titles of
the three chapters ("Metamorphoses," "Landscapes," "Chiaroscuro") comprising the first
part of Sturm-Maddox's book Petrarch's Laurels may very well be descriptive of
motives running through Sentimento del tempo. See also Sturm-Maddox, Petrarch's
Metamorphoses.
9 Montale, "Ho scritto un solo libro [Intervista di Giorgio Zampa, 1975]," Il Giornale
nuovo, Milano, 27 giugno 1975; now in Montale, Sulla poesia 601-07: "Ho scritto un
solo libro, di cui prima ho dato il recto, ora do il verso." Montale's irony does not belong
to Ungaretti, but it still allows us to see the nostalgia for a sense of unity in one's own
whole work. See also Bigongiari's note to his collection Stato di cose-, now in Tutte le
poesie (1933-1963), 365-66: "Ed ecco perché questo libro non è un canzoniere, e se mai
aspira all'apertura del romanzo, ivi compreso il necessario condizionamento ideologico,
un romanzo che non ha scelto la sua historia, che anzi ne è stato provocato, e dunque
punto per punto necessitato" (366).
10 The most important writings by Luzi in this respect are in L 'inferno e il limbo-, now
also in Luzi, Scritti 23-89. The writing by Zanzotto is "Petrarca fra il palazzo e la

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340 Ernesto Livorni

In doing so, in merging the modes of the lyric poem in the larger frame of
the epic journey, these poets focus on the two lines of the Italian tradition, Dant
and Petrarch, and strive for their reconciliation. If the poetry they write is th
end-product of such a reflection, the Hermeticist poets support with several
critical essays their understanding of that tradition and their desire to renew it
through a new solution that allows them not to renounce either one of the two
models. To be sure, the critical engagement of these poets varies, and it is an
aspect that must be taken into consideration even in relation to their different
poetic aims. Thus, Ungaretti is prominent for his critical writings on Petrarch,
whereas Montale and Quasimodo maintain a low profile in this respect; and
finally Luzi and Zanzotto elaborate a sort of summary of the positions th
Hermeticists take toward Dante and Petrarch, moving forward according t
poetic needs that are no longer those embraced by the Hermeticist poets. In their
poetry, however, all these poets remarkably reveal a strong sense of Petrarch'
poetics, which may be explained by at least pointing out the labor on the wor
that the Hermeticists undertook, especially in Ungaretti's work and, following
him in this respect, the line represented in particular by Quasimodo and Luzi.
The emphasis on the appreciation of the chosen words in the poetic text and the
réévaluation of the auditory function of poetry are but two tenets tha
immediately link Hermeticism to Petrarch, albeit through the recent experience
and influence of French Symbolism. In this respect, it is Ungaretti's firs
collection, titled L'Allegria in its final version, which is the pivotal moment in
the turn that modern Italian poetry takes in the first half of the twentieth century
Therefore, I will focus especially on the critical writings by Ungaretti on
Petrarch in order to see how the poet-critic offers a new shape for the
interpretation of Laura's poet, as well as, on the one hand, the traditiona
opposition between Dante and Petrarch, and, on the other, the line of legacy that
from Petrarch leads to Tasso, then to Leopardi and, finally and implicitly, to
Ungaretti himself." My aim is to show how the poet of Sentimento del tempo
invited also by biographical circumstances, participated as a poet in the critica
debate on Petrarch's poetry, contributing sensibly to the construction of notion
that have become commonplaces in the understanding of th^Canzoniere.
Furthermore, two stylistic devices are essential to Ungaretti's as well as
Hermeticist poetics: the fragment and the variant, the latter corresponding in
linguistic terms to what the variation is in thematic terms. Since L'Allegria,
Ungaretti's poetry is one of fragments, in vain unearthed from the buried seapor

cameretta," in Fantasie di avvicinamento (1991), now in Scritti sulla letteratura

Fantasie di avvicinamento 262-71.

11 On the continuity and differences between Petrarch and Leopardi, see Ungaretti, "Il
mito dell'antico in Leopardi," "Idee del Leopardi intorno ad usi della lingua, e prime
indicazioni sulla metrica delle canzoni e sul rapporto col Petrarca," "Rapporto con il
Petrarca e introduzione al commento delP'Angelo Mai'" (VL 673-80, 789-800, 854-70).

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 341

of inspiration in the attempt to reach the Absolute. This project requires the
constant labor of the variants, with the understanding that the poetic text at least
travels towards the approximation of the Absolute. Petrarch elaborated this
method of composition for the Canzoniere: the revisions of the poems and the
distribution, regardless of the chronological order of composition, are just two of
the main tenets followed by the poet of Laura in the constant organization of the
love story within the single poem as well as the whole collection.

1. Ungaretti Reader of Petrarch

When Ungaretti first wrote II porto sepolto, the model of Petrarch had not been
explicitly acquired and embraced yet, nor was it in the further elaborations of
that collection in the next decade.12 More apparent was the study of the French
Symbolist poets, from Baudelaire to Rimbaud and Mallarmé. However, the
rhetoric of light was already part of Ungaretti's poetics. Besides "Il porto
sepolto," which gives the title to the collection and is a programmatic poem,
poems such as "Mattina" remark the constantly surging desire for light that
poems like "Perché?" more obviously declare.13 In fact, in this poem there is
already the opposition between darkness and light, which becomes so crucial to
the poetics of Sentimento del tempo:

Ha bisogno di qualche ristoro

il mio buio cuore disperso

Negli incastri fangosi dei sassi

come un'erba di questa contrada
vuole tremare piano alla luce.

In fact, one stanza of "Perché?" suggests the future developments of Ungaretti's

poetry:

Guardo l'orizzonte
che si vaiola di crateri

12 As it is well known, Ungaretti revised his first collection even while working on his
second, Sentimento del tempo. This is a brief history of publications of the first
collection: Il porto sepolto (1916); Allegria di naufragi (1919), Il porto sepolto (1923);
L'Allegria (1931; definitive edition: Milano: Mondadori, 1942).
13 "Il porto sepolto," "Mattina" and "Perché?" were written, respectively, on June, 1916;
on January 26, 1917 and in 1916; they are now in Ungaretti, Vita d'un uomo. Tutte le
poesie, 1969, 23, 55-56, 65; here forward quoted as TP. Translations into English may be
found in Ungaretti, Life of a Man', Selected Poems', Selected Poems, 2002.

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342 Ernesto Livorni

Il mio cuore vuole illuminarsi

come questa notte

almeno di zampilli di razzi.14

Thus, even though the references to light are seldom in comparison to

Sentimento del tempo, one can assert that in the first collection the examples
provided are strong and significant cases of the importance that Petrarch as poet
of light gained while Ungaretti polished his first collection and wrote the second
one.

The Thirties was the crucial decade for the definition of that poe
that, for better or worse, is known as Hermeticism. Francesco Flora
the derogatory definition in his 1936 volume entitled La poesia erme
elected Ungaretti and Valéry to the status of models of that kind of
Regardless of the striking differences among the Italian poets often
under this conventional label, Hermeticism has been extended to inc
poets operating especially in Florence in that decade, the true except
in fact Ungaretti, by 1936 living in Brazil, and Quasimodo, by then
Milan.15 In fact, one may say that living in Brazil and teaching at the
of Sao Paulo becomes a further stimulus for Ungaretti to reflect on
poetry. Already in 1937 he wrote a substantial number of lectures on
before moving on to the discussion of Leopardi's poetry, which offe
of Sentimento del tempo the completion of an ideal lineage from Petr
own poetry, going through that of Michelangelo, rather than
Leopardi, ft is not by chance that a further development in the under
Petrarch's poetics takes place in 1943, that is, upon Ungaretti's return
1942. The critical discourse that the poet develops on Petrarch in th
spends in Brazil is crucial to an appreciation of the pivotal role H
poets played in their consideration of Petrarch's poetry within the f
modern poetry. Thus, Ungaretti's reflection on Petrarch moves acco
three stages: a first one, while revising II porto sepolto into L'Allegr
1916, when the first edition of the former was published, to 1931,
latter title was definitely adopted; a second one, from 1936 to 1
lecturing at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, after completing
del tempo and beginning to work on La terra promessa-, and a third
1943 to 1950, after his return on Italian soil and while working on t
collection as well as II dolore. I will discuss these three stages under

14 The contrast between daylight and dark night is also in "Godimento" {

sento la febbre / di questa / piena di luce //[...]// Avrò / stanotte / un rimor
latrato / perso nel / deserto."
15 Besides the already mentioned Luzi and Montale, one should consider th
Piero Bigongiari and Alessandro Parronchi, but also Leonardo Sinisgalli
Gatto, who in that decade move to Firenze.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 343

"Petrarch Poet of Light," "Petrarch Poet of Memory" and "Petrarch Poet of

Oblivion," borrowing these definitions directly from Ungaretti's critical
writings.

2. Petrarch Poet of Light

Without a doubt, Ungaretti identifies Petrarch as his ideal interlocutor at the
very beginning of his critical exercises on his own poetry. In "Verso un'arte
nuova classica" (1919), the poet begins by tracing a poetic lineage from Petrarch
to Leopardi and then to Baudelaire:16 "Chi sappia meditare sulle cose dell'arte,
vedrà che dal Petrarca, le esperienze occorse e tesoreggiate, in cinque secoli,
non si trasmutano in poesia che coll'apparizione del Leopardi." Thus, at the very
beginning of Ungaretti's own poetological reflections, one sees those two Italian
poets who mark Ungaretti's entire parabola. Furthermore, in another early essay,
"Punto di mira" (1924), which is an explanation of the intentions of his poetry
up until then, Ungaretti elaborates important remarks on Petrarch ("Punto di
mira" SI 285-302). It is crucial to consider that at the very beginning of the essay
Ungaretti gathers around his project the three models of Dante, Petrarch and
Leopardi, the project being that of illumination, to use Rimbaud's image: "II
primo compito dell'artista è di far luce in sé." The novelty is not in the contrast
Ungaretti highlights between Dante and Petrarch, nor in the sense of continuity
from Petrarch to Leopardi; the novelty lies in the approach to the responsibility
that poetry carries within itself: the enlightening experience that poetry is, serves
first of all to bring clarity to the inner world of the artist.17 That sentence is the

16 Ungaretti, "Verso un'arte nuova classica," in II Popolo d'Italia, Milano, 10 marzo

1919 (now SI 13-16). Ungaretti must have been so perfectly aware of the importance of
this piece that he polemically ended his "Risposta all'anonimo" (Il Tevere, Roma, 16-17
maggio 1929; now in SI 203-04) specifying that he remarked Petrarch's actuality since
1919, in an article in II popolo d'Italia, which is, in fact, "Verso un'arte nuova classica."
This piece should have been the preface to the second edition of II porto sepolto, which
instead was published without a preface and with the title Allegria di naufragi. It should
be kept in mind that the Twenties are in Europe the years of the rappel à l'ordre, which
in Italy are embodied politically in the Fascist regime, which Ungaretti supports, and
literarily in the journal La ronda, which is published in the years 1919-1922. Regarding
La ronda and Petrarch, see Boni, "Ungaretti e Petrarca," Ungaretti e Petrarca 72-73.
Boni is one of the few critics to doubt Ungaretti's essays on Petrarch as innovative, even
pointing out that his reading of Petrarch as "poeta della memoria" runs parallel to
Goffredo Bellonci's 1939 article "Il nostro Petrarca," whereas other statements, such as
the superior quality of the poems in morte vis-à-vis those in vita of Laura, are borrowed
at least from De Sanctis and Carducci.
17 The contrast between Dante and Petrarch is maintained in other essays: "Cause
dell'attuale crisi," Gazzetta del popolo, Torino, 28 febbraio 1931, now in SI 257-61;
"Naufragio senza fine," Gazzetta del Popolo, Torino, 21 ottobre 1931, now in SI 262-66;
"[Il pensiero di Leopardi]" (1933/1934), SI 324-43 (especially 333-34); "[Poesia e

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344 Ernesto Livorni

prose rendition of "Il porto sepolto," the poem in which the very remains of the
journey that is poetry itself are defined with another term that is important to
Petrarch: "quel nulla/ d'inesauribile segreto."
In other passages of "Punto di mira," Ungaretti points out that the loss of
religious value in language creates a semantic and spiritual void that needs to be
filled by the need to build a new tradition (SI 287): "[...] Ecco un dramma
moderno. Le parole hanno perso il loro valore religioso. [...] E in attesa d'essere
sorretti da un'altra tradizione, tocca a ciascuno di formarsela andando alla pesca
della propria ideologia e della propria mitologia. Tale è la nostra non invidiabile
sorte." There is an ethical preoccupation in Ungaretti's words, which may seem
at first a paradoxical one for the poet who in 1928 returns to Catholicism. The
poetic lineage from Petrarch to Leopardi is to be preferred to Dante's model in
order to reconnect the forgotten religious value to the poetic word. This certainty
remains with Ungaretti in the first university lectures delivered in Brazil in
1937. The distinction he draws between Dante and Petrarch, in light of the
essence of humankind, is telling: whereas the former aims at "l'uomo nel suo
assoluto religioso e morale," the latter aims at "l'uomo nel suo assoluto
psicologico e metafisico." To Ungaretti it is this distinction that marks Dante's
poetry as "storica," and Petrarch's as "lirica."18 In the meantime, in "Punto di
mira" Ungaretti points out the exhaustion of the allegorical discourse after
Petrarch as an issue that modern poetry must face and solve (SI 288): "[...] ciò
ch'è discorso allegorico in Petrarca, è rappresentazione immediata in Leopardi."
One possible path that allows the recovery of allegory is the musicality of
language. If it is true that Ungaretti is thinking of French Symbolism as it
unfolds from Baudelaire to Mallarmé, both regarded as poets in the Petrarchan
tradition, he finally admits it (SI 300):19 "[...] il fatto sta che lo studio del

civiltà]" [1933/1936], now in SI 303-23 (especially 310); "[Idea del tempo e valore della
memoria in Petrarca]" [1937], VL 549-55; "Indefinibile aspirazione" (1947/1955), SI
741-46 (especially 744); "Prima invenzione della poesia moderna [Sul Canzoniere di F.
Petrarca]," VL 727-54 (especially 727-31). At any rate, it is an obvious inheritance of
previous criticism on Petrarch and the debate on the two medieval poets. Suffice to
consider Foscolo's essays on Petrarch, which, according to Boni (Ungaretti e Petrarca
96), offer several considerations to Ungaretti's reading of Petrarch. The three names of
Dante, Petrarch and Leopardi occur also in some of the university lectures delivered in
Brazil: "Definizione dell'umanesimo" (1937), VL 471-82 (especially 472, 481-82).
18 Quotations are from "Introduzione alla metrica" [1937], VL 520.
19 Ungaretti makes such claim on Baudelaire already in 1919 ("Verso un'arte nuova
classica"), whereas on Mallarmé in 1926 ("Innocence et mémoire"). Regarding the role
of Mallarmé as link to Petrarch, see De Robertis, "Sulla formazione della poesia di
Giuseppe Ungaretti", TP; Boni, Ungaretti e Petrarca 73-77. It may not be only a
coincidence that De Robertis, friend of Ungaretti, besides eminent critic of both
Petrarch's and Ungaretti's poetry, wrote in the essay on Petrarch in Studi 32-46, which is
important regarding a new direction in the studies of Petrarch's style, mentioning

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 345

Baudelaire e del Mallarmé mi ha indotto a uno studio meticoloso, intrinseco del

Petrarca." He follows this statement with a remark that points out the
importance of music in his more recent poetry (SI 300: "E così mi assediarono
soprattutto preoccupazioni d'indole musicale"), exemplified by his own poem
"Alla noia" (TP 108).20
This poem, which is one of the first poems of Sentimento del tempo, is first
of all a condensed philosophical reflection on time through Bergson's
philosophy. In the years of writing that collection of poems, Ungaretti detached
himself from the French philosopher's approach to the question of time and
embraced Plato's understanding with the mediation of the Neo-Platonists and,
just as important, St. Augustine.21 In fact, one may detect the presence of the
Christian philosopher especially in the references that link this poem to "Caino"
and "Dannazione": the lines "Memoria, fluido simulacro,/ Malinconico
scherno,/ Buio del sangue [...]" in "Alla noia" echo the following lines in
"Caino" (TP 172): "Mai non vedrò nella notte del sangue? // Figlia indiscreta
della noia,/ Memoria, memoria incessante,/ Le nuvole della tua polvere,/ Non
c'è vento che se le porti via? // Gli occhi mi tornerebbero innocenti,/ Vedrei la
primavera eterna // E, finalmente nuova,/ O memoria, saresti onesta." By
opposition, the last lines of "Dannazione" are linked to the issue of memory
raised in the other two poems in question (TP 176): "E non cerco se non oblio /
Nella cecità della carne." Memory is always caught in time, it is an apparent and
vain freeze of time, a phantasmatic illusion of humankind's control over time. It
is a "fluido simulacro" and "Buio del sangue" because of the ineluctable
fluctuation in which it is caught: the fluctuation of time as well as that of the
experiencing self through time, which inexorably makes an inevitable becoming
of his own being. Therefore, the "cecità della carne" is only apparently a
synonym of that darkness of the fluidity: flesh, unlike blood, is still, and thus
destined to become more and more so with time. Oblivion sought in the flesh is
only the other side of the coin of the illusory comfort of memory. In this respect,

Mallarmé; on the question of Ungaretti's and De Robertis' lectures on Petrach, see

Noferi, "Le poetiche critiche novecentesche 'sub specie Petrarchaealso the article on
De Robertis' literary criticism "L'ascesi stilistica" (both in Le poetiche critiche
novecentesche).
20 On Ungaretti's insistence on the importance of music in his poetry, see "Riflessioni
sulla letteratura," Gazzetta del Popolo, Torino, 13 marzo 1935, now in SI 274-76.
21 On the influence of these philosophers on Ungaretti's poetry, see; Macrì, "II
simbolismo nella poetica di G. Ungaretti," in Bo et al., Atti del Convegno Internazione le
su Giuseppe Ungaretti 201-31 (especially the section "Petrarca, Platone, Bergson" 223
30); now in La vita della parola; Montefoschi, "Bergson e la poetica di Ungaretti";
Petrucciani, "L'idea, la memoria la nuova nascita: Ungaretti e Platone (con tracce
parigine)," now in Poesia come inizio: altri studi su Ungaretti 15-36; Pupilli, "Il mito
della memoria-anamnesi in Ungaretti e in Platone," in Atti del Convegno Internazionale
su Giuseppe Ungaretti 1249-1258.

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346 Ernesto Livorni

the lines of "Caino" are telling: memory is the product of the ennui, as
Baudelaire, Leopardi and Petrarch are teaching Ungaretti in those years. Perhaps
Ungaretti himself gives the best explanation of this image of memory in
"Naufragio senza fine":22

[...] C'è, in un commento al Petrarca del Castelvetro, una spiegazione: Per etimologia,
dice il Castelvetro, leggiadro significa che riduce la noia. E una spiegazione terribile. I
tali condizioni, con tale animo, per vincere il tempo, per separare un po' l'uomo dalla
natura, spietata allettatrice, vanità adorabile, il pudore non aveva se non una risorsa: g
accorgimenti, il funambolismo, la disperazione del puro mestiere. Sempre il verso di
Dante e del Petrarca, con qualche ritocco.

The reduction, if not the extinction, of the ennui may be granted by the techn
involved in the artificium.23 It is this labor that should ideally resolve th
collaborative tension between "Innocenza e memoria," as Ungaretti titled the
three writings he published in 1926.24 Quite explicitly in the second of these
writings, Ungaretti presents a synthetic view of the shift from innocence to
memory throughout the history of poetry:

C'è stato un tempo nel quale i poeti, come tutti i loro contemporanei, non solo credevano
nel soprannaturale, ma sapevano esattamente com'era fatto e potevano facilment
rappresentarlo. La forma primordiale della poesia [...] è inno d'abbandono in Dio.
poco a poco nasce il sospetto che quel soprannaturale non sia immagine della natur
Mettiamo che il sospetto sia nato col Petrarca. Da quel momento non s'è più pensato ch
Dio si facesse natura perché l'uomo, a suo agio, lo potesse interpretare. La poesia cess
d'essere verbo del Signore. Ogni oggetto tornò a prendere, insieme all'uomo, il su
carattere di creatura, e la divinità, allontanatasi, tornò ad essere l'inconoscibile.
Apparizioni della memoria venivano in luce dalla natura contemplata, e la poesia s
esauriva in un giuoco di riflessi. L'uomo s'era chiuso nella sua profondità, la memoria.
(TP 132)

22 This is Ungaretti's reply to the questionnaire of the "Inchiesta mondiale sulla poesia
promoted and published by La Gazzetta del Popolo, in Turin, 21 ottobre 1931, p. 3. It
now in SI 262-66; the quotation is on p. 263.
23 It may be useful to consider that the adjective "leggiadro" occurs three times i
Ungaretti's poetry, always in Sentimento del tempo: at the beginning of "Le stagioni,"
poem written in 1920 ("0 leggiadri e giulivi coloriti"); toward the end of "1914-1915,
written in 1932 ("Giù giù sino agli orizzonti d'oceani / Assopiti in pescatori alle vele, /
Spiegate, pronte in un leggiadro seno"); in the second line of "Danni con fantasia,
written in 1928 ("Se ti tocco, leggiadra, geli orrenda,"). These poems are in TP 105-06
161-62, 167.
24 They were published in Italian in II Mattino, Napoli, 21-22 maggio 1926, and in
L'Italiano, Bologna, no. 12-13 (7 ottobre 1926): 3; and in French with the title
"Innocence et Mémoire" in La Nuovelle Revue Française, Paris, 1er Novembre 1926, pp.
527-30. They are all in SI 129-38.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 347

Memory is the new divinity of modern poetry from Petrarch on, according to a
historical process that strengthens the sense of the self while relying on the
technical development. In fact, it is the rapid affirmation of technology and of
the notion of the machine as the repository of memory that has at once rendered
godlike both memory and its emblem, the machine.25 It is according to this
approach to memory that Ungaretti interprets Petrarch while teaching in Brazil.

3. Petrarch Poet of Memory

The University lectures on Petrarch held at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil
in 1937 are often based on commentaries such as those by Sapegno and
Chiorboli, who are explicitly mentioned, but also by Foscolo, De Sanctis, and
Carducci and Ferrari, besides Castelvetro and Monti.26 Ungaretti focuses for that
first academic year on the definition of Humanism as the cultural period that
shapes the Italian fifteenth century. It is a striking choice: in Ungaretti's view
Humanism is "la convivenza della sapienza pagana, della sapienza greco
romana col Cristianesimo."27 This cohabitation starts with Petrarch, who inherits
St. Augustine's legacy.
In this context, Petrarch is still the poet of light. Light is metaphor for the
sense of measure necessary to apprehend history, not only in its ephemeral and
transitory status, but for what it can offer of the universal knowledge. It is not by
chance that Ungaretti couples St. Jerome's lamentation over Rome as captive of
the barbaric hordes led by Alaricus and Petrarch's own sense of the eternity of
Rome.28 The importance of Rome caput mundi is one of the painful obsessions
in Petrarch's life and works, at the time when the residence of the Pope was
instead Avignon and in vain the poet hoped for the Pope's return to Rome
during his lifetime. The engagement in the political adventure of Cola di Rienzo
already reveals Petrarch's illusory conflation of the glorious past with the
present time, in urgent need of resurgence. Many of the Familiares and Seniles
letters, besides the epic poem Africa, confirm Petrarch's sorrow over Rome, his

25 This argument is further developed by Ungaretti in "Influenza di Vico sulle teorie

estetiche d'oggi," a lecture held in Brazil in 1937 and published in SI 344-62;
"L'ambizione dell'avanguardia," published first as a letter to Leonardo Sinisgalli in
Civiltà delle macchine in 1953, in II Verri, Milano, 8.10 (ottobre 1963): 42-45; now in SI
870-73. The starting point may be a 1941 unpublished lecture, "Prima invenzione della
poesia moderna [Sul Canzoniere di F. Petrarca]"; see also Montefoschi's information on
the text, ibid., 1454-56. Many passages from this text, as Montefoschi points out, are
inserted in "Il poeta dell'oblio."
26 See Montefoschi's notes in VL 1420-24.
27 "Definizione dell'Umanesimo" [1937], in VL 473.
28 To be sure, this primacy of Rome that the poet of Sentimento del tempo is implicitly
supporting is also linked to the poet's support of the Fascist regime. On this issue see
Montefoschi, "Introduzione," in Ungaretti, Invenzione della poesia moderna. Lezioni
brasiliane di letteratura (1937-1942) (23); Andreano, Dalla luce all'oblio 70-71.

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348 Ernesto Livorni

desire for a renewed splendor of that city and his firm belief in its eternal role
the center of both political and religious life. Ungaretti identifies himself with
this myth. If political reasons play a role during the years of the Fascist regime
it is primarily the sense of Italian language and poetry that invites him t
consider memory the foundation of that culture. After writing La terra
promessa, he is still fascinated by Rome, as an article like "Interpetazione d
Roma" and, even more importantly, the notes to Sentimento del tempo
accompanying the complete collection of his poems, bear out.29 Thus, one is not
surprise to see that, while in Brazil, he places the anonymous "poeta italiano" —
that is, himself — at the end of a lineage that from Petrarch and throug
Leopardi develops in the name of memory?0

Vedremo, in altre lezioni del nostro corso, come, attraverso il Cavalcanti e il Petrarca,
l'uomo non metterà molto tempo per arrivare a cercare, risolutamente, tutto il suo bene,
tutto il suo concetto dell'universo nella memoria, senza neanche più fingersi ch'ess
possa essere Dio, e vedremo come anche talvolta gli parrà irrisoria questa sua certezza
dei limiti umani; ma come da questa disperata certezza gli nascerà l'umanissimo coragg
che dal Petrarca al Leopardi illumina il poeta italiano.

This interpretation of the poetry from Cavalcanti to Petrarch as the replacement

of the notion of God with that of memory was already implicit, as seen, i
Ungaretti's own articles titled "Innocenza e memoria." For this reason Petrarch
loves Plato, because the Greek philosopher is a poet himself — claims Ungarett
—, "non essendovi immortalità senza bellezza, una bella forma, una forma
immortale alle idee della sua memoria nelle quali l'universo s'è ordinato."
In the 1937 university lectures Ungaretti interprets Petrarch according to the
idea of time as it measures up to memory and its value. The provisional title he
gives to one of the most important lectures on Petrarch is "[Idea del tempo e

29 The notes to Sentimento del tempo are in TP 529-42; the quotations are from 531-32.
The essay "Interpretazione di Roma'" first appeared in French, translated by Philippe
Jacottet, as "Préface" to the volume Rome. Peintres et Ecrivains xi-xxii; then, as
"Presentazione" in Massimo Di Massimo, ed., Eternità di Roma 9-12. Shortened, it
appeared simultaneously in Capitolium (1968) and as a pamphlet titled Interpretazione di
Roma. Discorso di Giuseppe Ungaretti per il 2721° Natale di Roma (1968). This last
version ends with a telling sentence, deleted in the final version, which emphasizes the
idea of universality in Catholic terms: "Di quel seme, che in questi anni compie la sua
martoriata maturità millenaria per apparire nell'intera sua fecondità universale, Cristo,
nella sua infinita pietà, ci ricorda che insieme al Romano ne è oggi custode l'uomo d'ogni
patria."
30 "Indole dell'italiano" [1937], in VL 513. The next quotation is from the same lecture, in
VL 515. It is important to point out that in that first year of university lectures Ungaretti
was teaching a course focused on Petrarch and a parallel one on more general topics, of
which the lecture in question is part.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 349

valore della memoria nel Petrarca]." The other lectures on Petrarch's poetry
delivered in this first year are, in fact, close readings of specific sonnets, which
Ungaretti chooses as exemplary of the main ideas he lays out in this lecture:
"[Sui sonetti del Petrarca: "Quand'io son tutto vòlto in quella parte," "Or che '1
ciel e la terra e '1 vento tace," "Tutta la mia fiorita e verde etade"]" (1937); and
"Sul sonetto del Petrarca: 'Quand'io son tutto vòlto in quella parte'" (1937).31
The three sonnets, numbered respectively RVF XVIII, CLXIV, CCCXV, seem
to have been chosen also because of their position within the Canzoniere and the
history of Petrarch's love for Laura.32 The discussion of sonnet XVIII is
particularly suggestive to Ungaretti, for he informs us that he started thinking
about it when he was in Italy to give a lecture in Arezzo in 1934, and continued
working on it after returning to Italy, as pages in "Il poeta dell'oblio" confirm.
Especially in the two lectures the titles of which create the expection of close
readings of the texts, Ungaretti does not miss the opportunity to read the poems
en poète. In particular, in the first of these two lectures, he refers to troubadoric
poetry as hermetic poetry (VL 563-64), thus creating a subtle connection
between that poetry, Petrarch's and his own. After all, the polemic attack by
Flora in the book titled La poesia ermetica and published in 1936 was still
recent and the wound open. Furthermore, Ungaretti's insistence on the line "e
m'è rimasa nel pensier la luce" and the phrase "le parole morte" in RVF XVIII is
a signal of the reflection he had already started on La terra promessa, after the
publication of the definitive edition of Sentimento del tempo in 1936.33
In these lectures there is also, inevitably, a strong reflection on time and its
relationhip to memory. Continuing the suggestive interpretation proposed in
"Innocenza e memoria," Ungaretti insists that the novelty of Petrarch's poetry is

31 "[Sui sonetti del Petrarca [...]]" (1937), in VL (LB) 556-72; "Sul sonetto del Petrarca:
'Quand'io son tutto vòlto in quella parte'" (1937), in VL (LB) 573-583. At the beginning
of "Secondo discorso su Leopardi," in Paragone 1.10 (1950): 3-35, now in 5/451-96,
Ungaretti recalls these three sonnets by Petrarch. Ungaretti interprets Sentimento del
tempo as well according to three moments, in "Ungaretti commenta Ungaretti," in La
Fiera Letteraria 18.37 (15 settembre 1963): 1-2; 18.38 (22 settembre 1963): 1-2; now in
5/815-28.
32 Ungaretti is perhaps considering the discussion of the life and work of the man and
artist Petrarch through three sonnets that in turn are emblematic of three different stages
of his love and life-time story with Laura, according also to a scansion of the temporal
sequence so dear to Petrarch (e.g., Familiares I, I) and his model, Saint Augustine.
33 Montefoschi annotates (VL 1422): "[...] il poeta compie la sua consueta operazione di
'innesto', di trasferimento alle ragioni della sua poesia di motivi petrarcheschi, nella
stagione che prepara la Terra promessa, la stagione del declinare degli anni, del distacco
dalL'ultimo sogno di giovinezza' (M 70, 546), della malinconia della sera, del buio
incombente rischiarato soltanto dalle luci della memoria."

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350 Ernesto Livorni

the understanding of the soul as memory:34

[...] il tempo ha inizio e muove la memoria che l'ha mosso, quando l'atto è compiut
quando la felicità è passata e non potrà mai più fare ritomo: [...] Ecco quello che i
Petrarca farà sentire: che abbiamo coscienza delle cose quando non sono già più. L
novità della poesia del Petrarca più precisamente è questa: le cose fuggenti che, quand
non sono già più, s'accumulano incessantemente in noi, affinché l'uomo possa
incessantemente rivelarsi a se stesso, fanno sentire e seguire al Petrarca lo scorrere d
tempo, il proprio invecchiamento, come una perdita della felicità incessantement
rinnovata e incessantemente rinnovata in modo sempre più gravoso.

There is an interest in the phenomenology of memory as a crucial component o

the self and of its relationship with the world. In this formulation is at work th
poetics of absence that is so essential to Hermeticism, as Ungaretti himsel
points out about his own poetry in the notes on Sentimento del tempo just by
evoking Petrarch {TP 535): "Il Petrarca parte dall'idea di assenza: Laura è u
universo assente, un universo da recuperare. Si recupera, ricorrendo alla poesia
facendo recuperare alle nostre lingue l'esperienza delle antiche lingue, dell
lingue classiche." In 1937, however, the reflection on time and memory still
reveals traces of Bergson's philosophy from the first sentence of "[Idea d
tempo e valore della memoria in Petrarca]" {VL 549): "L'individuo umano è
chiuso dentro limiti temporali che vanno dalla sua nascita alla sua morte:
chiuso nella sua durata."
Death is the interruption of one's own duration; however, the death of the
other is not only that to the survivor, but also the reflection of one's own
destiny. Laura's death is the forced recognition of Petrarch's finitude as well; it
is the acceptance of memory as the only sublimation possible of the possession
of happiness, which can be sensed but never reached. Ungaretti reflects on the
meaning of the death of the beloved in Petrarch's poetry, placing it next two
previous other powerful and mystical experiences in the history of Italian
literature of the Middle Ages besides Dante: St. Francis of Assisi and Jacopone
da Todi. To Ungaretti the difference between the two lies in the sense given to
death and, therefore, to memory as the ability to reconcile the human and earthly
understanding of love with the divine and supernatural one.
Thus the experience of his wife's death is crucial to Jacopone's conversion
and poetic expression: Jacopone finds the poetry of the divine through the death

34 Ungaretti is very likely thinking of and elaborating on Petrarch, De Remediis (I, 1, 92),
in turn modeled on Saint Augustine's conception of time in Confessions XI. But
ultimately, Ungaretti's terms of "innocenza" and "memoria," on the one hand, and
"effimero" and "eterno," on the other, respond not only to the terms of French
Symbolism as elaborated especially by Baudelaire, but also to Petrarch's themes both in
the Canzoniere and Trionfi. See, in this respect, also Ungaretti, "Significato dei sonetti di
Shakespeare," in La Voce delle arti e delle lettere', now in SI 551 -70.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch <& the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 351

of the other.35 Petrarch's sense of memory moves along the same lines, but is
complicated and tormented by the melancholic awareness that memory is just
that: memory. Memory has replaced the divinity at the cost of projecting the self
within the inner dimension of the past that can never be retrieved. Ungaretti is
working toward what he calls "la prima immagine" in the "Canzone" opening
La terra promessa (TP 241-42), which is also an allusion to Petrarch's
"immagine prima."36 The vain value of memory is redeemed only by its being
the deposit of the past, and this knowledge of the past is what constitutes
humanity. In the case of the individual, Laura is to Petrarch past itself; thus
through the love for her, memory acquires an active function of preservation of
the ruins. On the other hand, memory helps to understand that the future is only
destined to accumulate more ruins after time consumes it. That is how memory
replaces the sense of eternity with the human understanding of the infinite. The
privileged relationship between the human and the divine, which is still so
essential in Dante, changes perspective through the focus on the idea of
humankind and the relationship that humankind sets within itself between the
absolute and its historical expression: in other words, the distinctive relationship
runs according to the idea of time which is not set anymore against an idea of
eternity, but instead lives within itself the tension between an absolute time and
the individual time of one's own self. Ungaretti is reading Petrarch with the
coordinates set by Baudelaire in Le Peintre de la vie moderne: it is not by
chance that the poet of Sentimento del tempo stresses that this tension remains
true in western poetry from Petrarch until Romanticism.

4. Petrarch Poet of Oblivion

Right after his return to Italy, in the midst of World War II, Ungaretti writes
another essay on Petrarch, what Diacono and Rebay consider "il testo definitivo,
si può dire, di Ungaretti sul Petrarca." The essay is titled "Il poeta dell'oblio."37

35 For a discussion of Jacopone's and Petrarch's poetry, see Boccignone, "Un albero
piantato nel cuore (Jacopone e Petrarca)." One may speculate on the parallel role that
Saint Augustine played in the conversion of both Petrarch and Ungaretti, at least in
literary and philosophical terms, on which see: Calcaterra, "Sant'Agostino nelle opere di
Dante e del Petrarca" (Nella selva del Petrarca 247-360); Quillen, Rereading the
Renaissance: Petrarch, Augustine, and the Language of Humanism', Robbins, "Petrarch
Reading Augustine: 'The Ascent of Mont Ventoux.'"
36 See also Ungaretti's lectures held at Columbia University in 1964, especially the
second one on "la prima immagine," now in TP 551-54. Regarding Petrarch's poetry, one
thinks immediately about "l'immagine vera" in RVF CXXVI "Chiare, fresche et dolci
acque" (v. 60).
37 SI 398. "Il poeta dell'oblio" appeared in Primato', now in SI 398-422. As Diacono and
Rebay annotate, "In esso sono sicuramente confluiti precedenti discorsi petrarcheschi, da
quello tenuto alla Compagnia degli Artisti a Napoli sul Sentimento di Roma nel Petrarca
nel dicembre del 1935, alla Commemorazione di Petrarca dell'ottobre del '41 a San

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352 Ernesto Livorni

The essay is the expansion of the 1937 university lecture "[Sui sonetti de
Petrarca: Quand'io son tutto vòlto in quella parte, Or che 7 ciel e la terra e 7
vento tace, Tutta la mia fiorita e verde et ade}." It is also the further elaboration
of Ungaretti's own poetic discourse on time and memory from Sentimento de
tempo to II dolore (1947) and La terra promessa (1950), which finds in
Petrarch's poetry his own emblem. Several references to Virgil invite us not
only to reflect on the affinity that Petrarch bears with the Latin poet, but also t
consider the poems Ungaretti was writing in the Forties.38
After beginning with a swift glance at Virgil's lines depicting the night in
Aeneid 4:524-25, and pairing them with Tasso's rendition in Gerusalemme
liberata 2:96, and more importantly with Dante's Inferno 1, Ungaretti finally
dwells on Petrarch's sonnet CLXIV: "Or che '1 ciel e la terra e '1 vento tace."
Ungaretti painstakingly traces the formal nuances of the two quatrains until he
pauses before the memory of Laura and states (SI 402): "A questo punto, il tema
poetico principale del Petrarca s'è delineato, ed è che, dell'universo il centro è la
memoria umana, che l'universo si tormenta solo nell'uomo, nella notte
dell'essere umano resa bella da alcune luci della memoria." At first, it seems
that the remark is in agreement with the predicaments on Petrarch elaborated in
the Twenties, as the beauty of the lights of memory seems to suggest. There is a
sense that Ungaretti is retracing his own interpretative steps by accurately
choosing Petrarch's sonnets. For instance, the second poem that he intends to
briefly analyze is sonnet XVIII, "Quand'io son tutto vòlto in quella parte,"
which, as we have seen, was the object of an entire university lecture in 1937. In
fact, although the sonnet is often considered of stilnovistic derivation, the poet
of Sentimento del tempo remarks (SI 402): "Nessun altro mi sembra contenere
con maggiore eloquenza il nuovo messaggio." Once again, it is the term "luce"
that carries the novelty of this poetry, to such an extent that for Ungaretti the line
"e m'è rimasa nel pensier la luce" (RVF 18:3) would suffice to prove it. The
discussion further develops the paragraph elaborated in the 1937 university
lecture, where Ungaretti had written (VL 570): Laura "per l'amore del Petrarca
non potrà essere se non oggetto di memoria, luce rimasta nel pensiero; ma non
sarà un ideale, sarà una realtà; un'amara realtà." In "Il poeta dell'oblio" such a
statement is complicated in the implicit contrast between history and absence,
two entities which are indeed allies and the two faces of memory:

Paolo del Brasile." They also point out that one of the earliest typed-written versions bore
the title "Appunti sul poeta del ricordo." See also Ungaretti, "Prima invenzione della
poesia moderna," in Invenzione della poesia moderna 177-202. Regarding Ungaretti's
1943 essay, see also Andreano; Boni, Ungaretti e Petrarca 87-93; Savoca, "'Luce,'
'notte' e 'corpo' nel Petrarca di Ungaretti," in Parole dì Ungaretti e di Montale 35-43.
38 On the importance of Virgil in Ungaretti's La terra promessa, see Petrucciani, Il
condizionale di Didone. Studi su Ungaretti, which includes several suggestions on
Petrarch, especially 72-82, 131-36.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 353

[...] Il Petrarca non ha più per punto di riferimento se non il tempo, anzi, meno, il
passato, i ricordi nella chiusa memoria e gli è apparsa Laura.
Gli è apparsa, e subito è anche ricordo, è anche passato, luce che già gli appare anche
dall'assenza, e, assente, lo fa smaniare, e incantarsi, e smaniare.
Difatti si può parlare di virtuosità, e mi domando se ci fu mai un altro artista che ebbe
tanta scaltrezza stupefacente da farci sentire in quattro soli versi la presenza materiale e la
presenza del ricordo così fuse Luna nell'altra, eppure così separate, e farci sentire che il
passaggio dall'una all'altra è brevissimo: breve, e possiamo averne strazio, ma è la
condizione umana.

"Luce", e la parola volge dentro di sé come un universo, e non solo per gusto d'elegante
maniera la sorteggia per la rima, quattro volte cambiandole senso, ed una è lei, Laura,
beatitudine, e l'altra è il ricordo di lei che lo fa delirare, e la terza è la sua stessa propria
vita minacciata e rosa dal ricordo, e l'ultima è luce che in lui fa notte.
(5/403)

Memory, then, is not only the repository of time past, which is the aspect of light
in this function; memory is also the certification of absence of what is
remembered, which is the aspect that in turn foreshadows the light of that
function.39 The insistence on the brevity of the passage lfom the material
presence to the memorial one is emphasized by the awareness of grief
accompanying the shift. Yet, that is the essence of human condition, as
Ungaretti states echoing the title of Henry Malraux's masterpiece. The facets of
meaning acquired by the repetition of the term "luce" help Ungaretti in tracing
these shifts, which ineluctably take him to the oxymoronic light, which is night
as well.40
It has been proposed that Ungaretti's interpretation is here conditioned by
the loss of his own son Antonietta in 1939, while still in Brazil.41 Certainly, the

39 Besides the several instances from the Canzoniere, Ungaretti may rely on Petrarch's
statements at least in Familiares VII, xii ("Nunc autem illius temporis memoria et amara
mihi simul et dulcis est; hinc mulcet hinc cruciaf'); also Seniles XIII, xi.
40 Savoca succintly states: "È, mi pare, tra questi due poli (luce-memoria da un lato e
notte-oblìo dall'altro) che si articola il ritratto critico, umano e poetico, del Petrarca di
Ungaretti. Ed è tra questi due estremi che si sottende anche gran parte del 'segreto' della
poesia di Ungaretti" (32).
41 Rebay (Le origini della poesia di Ungaretti 26-33, 113-16), Noferi ("Postilla. Alcuni
rilievi sulla presenza del Petrarca nella poesia di Ungaretti"), and Andreano ("Richiami
petrarcheschi per le rime in morte del figlio") offer tight comparisons of the poems of II
dolore and passages in Petrarch. For a reading of Petrarch's poetry as a poetic of absence,
see Noferi, "Il Canzoniere di Petrarca: scrittura del desiderio e desiderio della scrittura,"
in II gioco delle tracce 43-67, which makes use, among other and quite different
theoretical approaches, of Ungaretti's critical suggestions. The implications of lines such
as the first ones of the canzone LXXI, "Perché la vita è breve" ("Perché la vita è breve, /
et l'ingegno paventa a l'alta impresa, / né di lui né di lei molto mi fido; / ma spero che sia
intesa / là dov'io bramo, et là dove esser deve, / la doglia mia la qual tacendo i' grido" vv.

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354 Ernesto Livorni

event, which culminated a series of mournful losses (the deaths of the poet's
mother in 1930 and brother in 1937), affected the poet's understanding of his
own art as well as that of Petrarch, as the death of the beloved forced Ungaretti
to live first-hand the situation portrayed by the author of the Canzoniere. Yet,
some university lectures already contain considerations that alert us to what
becomes apparent in the critical reflection of the Forties. In fact, while
concluding the 1937 lecture "[Idea del tempo e valore della memoria in
Petrarca]," Ungaretti stresses the distinction between Dante's and Petrarch's
sense of loss of the beloved and thus identifies the latter's poetic operation ( VL
555): "Invece il Petrarca ci fa sempre sentire la realtà d'una donna, ce la fa
sentire con un desiderio vivacissimo, ma reso pulito da un sommo pudore, e ce
la fa proprio sentire questa realtà di Laura per il tempo che sente scorrere in sé,
per il proprio progressivo invecchiare, giorno per giorno, minuto per minuto,
verso la morte." It is not by chance that one of the most touching poems
Ungaretti wrote on his son's death is titled "Giorno per giorno.'42
It is crucial that one accepts the oxymoron "luce che in lui fa notte" in order
to understand the philosophical depth of Petrarch's poetry: the intertwining of
memory and oblivion. In fact, Ungaretti does not hesitate to link this very trope
to the reflection on time and eternity that from Plato to St. Augustine reaches
Petrarch. If one is aware of this reflection, then one can appreciate how light is
also night and memory is also oblivion:

[...] Anche l'oblio fa parte della memoria, è esperienza nostra oscuratasi in noi, è la
nostra intema notte. L'oblio del divino testimonia nella nostra memoria d'uno stato di
perfezione dell'umana natura sprofondatosi nelle tenebre dei tempi. Un'esperienza
anteriore alla nostra personale durata, può, lucidissima, tornarci in mente, e possiamo

1-6), must have not escaped Ungaretti, who organizes most of the poetry of II dolore
around the notion of "grido" as the voice's expression of grief; see also the vv. 76-79 in
Petrarch's canzone CV: "Mai non vo' più cantar com'io soleva" ("De' passati miei danni
piango e rido, / perché molto mi fido in quel ch'i' odo. / Del presente mi godo, et meglio
aspetto, / et vo contando gli anni, et taccio et grido").
42 De Robertis ("Sulla formazione della poesia di Ungaretti," in Ungaretti, Vita d'un
uomo. Poesie disperse; now in TP 405-21), concluding his study, writes: "Così, se la
poesia di Ungaretti prima era un parlare tacendo [...] e dava l'impressione d'un dono fin
troppo felice, l'altra grida tacendo, arde, consuma; e lascia ogni tanto qualcosa di
inespresso, la cui storia si cercherà inutilmente nelle varianti e rielaborazioni" (420).
Savoca has noted this exchange between Ungaretti's poetry and criticism: "Forse ha un
senso notare che un titolo intermedio del Segreto del poeta è stato proprio Giorno per
giorno (in La Fiera Letteraria, 1° novembre 1953), e che questo sintagma lessicale
ricorreva già nella prima lezione brasiliana su Petrarca, [...]" (32). Rebay (Le origini della
poesia di Ungaretti 26-33, 113-16) and Noferi ("Postilla. Alcuni rilievi sulla presenza del
Petrarca nella poesia di Ungaretti," in Le poetiche critiche novecentesche 282-299,
especially 283-86) isolate in this poem several borrowings from Petrarch.

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 355

scordarci di casi nostri d'un momento fa.

(S/408)

The passage anticipates aspects of Ungaretti's own poetics that are expanded in
the four lectures on the "Canzone" delivered at Columbia University in 1964,
thus revealing the strict link between Ungaretti's reflection on Petrarch and his
own poetry. By the same token, the new occurrence of a term heavily marked as
distinctive of Bergson's philosophy, "durata," confirms Ungaretti's loyalty to
his themes since his first writings on Petrarch. But, most of all, is remarkable the
explicit inclusion of oblivion within the realm of memory under the emblem of
the night. Ungaretti had poetically elaborated this aspect of the duality of
memory; now, however, he is paying homage to Petrarch as the poet who taught
him to think in these terms: "Un poeta parte sempre dai sensi, ma sempre per
arrivare al [...] cantar che nell'anima si sente," claims Ungaretti with the
support of Leopardi's "L'infinito" (SI 415). Yet, in the semantic contrast
between senses and feeling, "sensazione" and "sentimento," one apprehends the
tension that runs throughout Sentimento del tempo.43 It is not surprising, then,
that the final pages of the essay contemplate even several returns of images of
L'allegria, this time revisited in the renewed light of Petrarch's poetry and
Ungaretti's own existential experience. Laura's death offers "la pura misura del
tempo" (SI 419). Ungaretti reaches this understanding through a discourse that
reveals the refractions of his own poetry. Thus, "l'egoismo carnale del
superstite" (SI 420) stands before the recognition of Laura's death: this survivor
is now far away from the experience of "un superstite lupo di mare" in "Allegria
di naufragi," who was able to undertake the journey again in an eternal cycle in
which the lightness of life prevailed over the burden of the shipwreck. By the
same token, the statement according to which "Una creatura vivente è, per la sua
stessa condizione di creatura, in balìa della sua miseria" recalls the experience of
"I fiumi," in which the creature in question seeks harmony, the lack of which
means desperation, and of "Sono una creatura."
In the central section of "Il poeta dell'oblio" there is a statement that at first
may seem puzzling: "[...] Roma e oblio furono due idee che s'accompagnarono
e guerreggiarono con veemenza nell'animo del Petrarca" (SI 408-09). The link
between the Eternai City and oblivion is embodied in the emblem of the
monument: Rome itself is one great and unique monument that history builds
constantly over its own ruins, trying to resist the pervasive work of oblivion. In
the notes to Sentimento del tempo the poet is more explicit, linking Rome and
Petrarch in the name of the culture of ruins; that is, of the visual fragments of the

43 Other elements help to feel the personal engagement in this interpretation of Petrarch's
poetry: the most striking one is the memory of his illusion of being a young erudite and
his idea to link Petrarch's trope of the gaze to the East and its notions of exile, nostalgia,
desire (SI 405-06).

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356 Ernesto Livorni

past that are there to keep the memory of those times alive. At the same time,
those ruins show the other and dark side of the past, a side that awaits it
fulfillment in the future to come. As the ruins are such now because what used
to make them a whole has disappeared and it is possible to reconstruct that
whole only through the efforts of memory, by the same token those ruins are
doomed in the future to follow what preceded them into oblivion. Petrarch lived
Rome with these feelings of agony and it is such emotional and cultural
understanding of the Eternal City that allowed Ungaretti to empathize and share
Petrarch's love for Rome: "[...] Petrarca si trovava — ed ecco come Roma
arrivò a diventare la mia città — in presenza di rovine e la sua memoria, la
memoria d'un uomo che volesse di nuovo illuminare con una ripresa di possesso
dell'antica esperienza, la memoria non gli offriva di quell'antico che rovine, che
aspetti mutilati" (TP 531-32).
Rome is also a monument in so far as it etymologically admonishes future
generations to remember the past. This centrality of the monument as reminder
must have been in Ungaretti's mind when he wrote "Petrarca monumentale," an
article occasioned by the publication of the Canzoniere edited by Gianfranco
Contini and Alberto Tallone.44 In what is his last writing on the poet, Ungaretti
publishes again the pages on sonnet CLXIV, "Or che 'I ciel et la terra e '1 vento
tace," ending the article with his remarks on memory. These are also the years in
which the work on La terra promessa reaches its final stage: if the presence of
Petrarch's lesson, together with that of Virgil, is quite apparent in this collection,
it is in "Recitativo di Palinuro" that perhaps one can fully appreciate Ungaretti's
debt to the poet of the Canzoniere, in light as well of the reference to "Petrarca
monumentale." The steersman Palinurus, faithful to Aeneas and to the dream of
the Promised Land so much so to sacrifice himself for that dream, becomes
"Piloto vinto d'un disperso emblema," but also monument "nell'immortalità
ironica d'un sasso."45 Petrarch and his Canzoniere have assumed the dimension

44 Ungaretti, "Petrarca monumentale"; now in SI 423-29. In the Rome edition of the

newspaper the article appeared on the same day with the date "20 aprile 1950" and with a
different title: "Un'edizione monumentale."
45 "Recitativo di Palinuro" was fist published in Poesia, n. 7, giugno 1947; La terra
promessa in 1950. The quotations are, respectively, from the poem and from Ungaretti's
notes to it (TP 251, 566). It is superfluous to recall that this poem is a sestina, a metrical
form that Ungaretti adopts consciously imitating first of all Petrarch; see at least Shapiro,
"The Ship Allegory" in Hieroglyph of Time (Ungaretti's poem is discussed on pp. 221
32). After all, even the "Canzone" had previous provisional Petrarchan titles: with the
title "Frammenti" it was published in Alfabeto, 15-31 luglio 1948; then, with the title
"Trionfo della fama" it was published in La rassegna d'Italia, a. IV, n. 3, 1949. Piccioni
("Le origini della Terra Promessa," in Ungaretti, La terra promessa. Frammenti; now in
TP 427-64) explains: "È una Canzone che dalla grazia solenne del Petrarca, dopo essersi
fermata a specchiare le sconcertanti profondità leopardiane, arriva sulle labbra d'un uomo
d'oggi per spiegarne l'anima: è la poesia di tono sublime che trova di nuovo il modo di

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 Ungaretti on Petrarch & the Renewal of the Petrarchan Tradition 357

of a monument, now justified by the editorial occasion; Ungaretti, with La terra

promessa, has virtually ended his Vita d'un uomo. The book becomes the
memory of a lifetime, shored against the ruins of the oblivion of eternity.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

liberamente splendere" (449). Piccioni also points out "le citazioni petrarchesche che
Ungaretti segna frettolosamente, [...]. Definizioni, insomma, di quel sentimento del
perire dove trova forza la più alta vena del Petrarca" (TP 462-63). The critic ends his
article insisting on the understanding of poetry as absence that Ungaretti and Petrarch
share.

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358 Ernesto Livorni

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