Infinity is the word …
Perhaps “Mattina” is Ungaretti’s best-known poem, partly because of its extreme brevity. It is a landscape poem with no landscape in it, no history, and no person but the poet. It comes from a soldier’s view of nature, being written presumably after or during a night in the open, in danger; for Ungaretti began his career as Italy’s war poet of the Great War. The many meanings to be savored in each word are an effect deliberately aimed at by Ungaretti, which caused him to be given the doubtless irritating label of “hermetic”.
Get Antonio Gallo’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The question is simple: how do you translate into English this thought? We know that it is morning, the Poet said it. There are multiple, different possibilities: I bring myself light out of immensity. I turn on my own endless free light. I light me from endless space. I become an illumination of myself with unlimited color. I throw on me infinite light. I display myself in light from unmeasured. I’m enlighted immensely. Immensity fills me with light.
