Poetry is the mainstay of oral tradition and, over centuries, can communicate the innermost values of diverse cultures, in celebrating World Poetry Day, March 21, UNESCO recognizes the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.
A decision to proclaim 21 March as World Poetry Day was adopted during UNESCO’s 30th session held in Paris in 1999. Its purpose is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the original UNESCO declaration says, to “give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements”.
One of the main objectives of the Day is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.
The observance of World Poetry Day is also meant to encourage a return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, to promote the teaching of poetry, to restore a dialogue between poetry and the other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and to support small publishers and create an attractive image of poetry in the media, so that the art of poetry will no longer be considered an outdated form of art, but one which enables society as a whole to regain and assert its identity.
We celebrate this day by proposing three great Italian poets of the ‘900, Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo and Giuseppe Ungaretti, whose poetry is a poem of moods, of inner refolding expressed in a soft and subdued tone, with a refined language and evocative that fades any direct reference to the experience in a game of allusions.
Eugenio Montale (12 October 1896 – 12 September 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature for his distinct poetics that, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the symbol of a vision of life without illusions.
The House By The Sea
The journey ends here:
in the petty cares that divide
the spirit that no longer utters a cry.
Now the minutes are equal and fixed
like the rhythm of the pump’s wheel.
A rotation: a spouting of rumbling water.
Another: more water, sometimes a creak.
The journey ends on this beach
that slow regular tides attempt.
The sea reveals nothing but idle vapours
the vigorous murmurs of shells
conceive; and rarely among the tranquil
mutations of islands of migrating air
Corsica’s ridge or Capri appears.
You ask if all things vanish
in this little mist of memories;
if in this torpid hour, or in the sigh
of breakers every destiny completes.
I would say to you, no; the hour
approaches when you will pass beyond time;
perhaps only those who so wish become infinite,
and you may do so, who knows, not I.
I think for most it may be no salvation,
but some subvert every design,
make every crossing, discover what they desire.
First I would grant your crossing yourself,
that way of escape
uncertain as foam or a wrinkle
in the risen fields of the sea.
I grant you my miserly hope as well.
At daylight, weary, I cannot increase it:
my offer as pledge of the fate you evade.
The path ends with the brave
whom the tide gnaws with its ebb and flow.
Your heart close to me that hears me not
already sets sail perhaps for eternity.
The Repertoire
The repertoire of memory is worn: a leather suitcase
that has borne the labels from too many hotels.
Now there remains some sticker I dare not
unpeel. We must think of the porters,
the doorman at night, the taxi-drivers.
The repertoire of your memory
has shown me you yourself before you left.
There were names of various countries, dates
and sojourns and at the end a blank white page,
but with rows of dots…as if to suggest,
if it were possible: ‘to be continued’.
The repertoire of our memory cannot be imagined
as cut in two thus by a knife. It’s a single sheet with traces
of stamps, abrasions, and a few spots of blood,
It was no passport, not even a testimonial.
To be of service, even to hope, would have still meant life.
Giuseppe Ungaretti (8 February 1888 – 2 June 1970) was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned with futurism. Like many futurists, he took an irredentist position during World War I. Ungaretti debuted as a poet while fighting in the trenches.
Italy
I am a poet, a unanimous
cry, am
a cleat of dreams
a fruit
of innumerable conflicting grafts
ripened in the hothouse
But the same earth bears
your people
as carries me
Italy
In this, the uniform
of your soldier, I rest
as if
it were the cradle
of my father
Star
Star, my only star,
in the poverty of the night, alone,
for me, alone, you shine,
in loneliness you shine;
But, for me, star
that never will stop from lighting,
a too short time is granted you,
you lavish me a light
that in me does nothing but
sharpen my despair.
.
Salvatore Quasimodo (August 20, 1901 – June 14, 1968) was an Italian novelist and poet. In 1959 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times”.
Street in Agrigentum
There is still the wind that I remember
firing the manes of horses, racing,
slanting, across the plains,
the wind that stains and scours the sandstone,
and the heart of gloomy columns, telamons,
overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey
with rancour, return on the wind,
breathe in that feather-light moss
that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven.
How alone in the space that’s still yours!
And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more,
the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea,
where Hesperus streaks the sky with morning:
the jew’s-harp vibrates
in the waggoner’s mouth
as he climbs the hill of moonlight, slow,
in the murmur of Saracen olive trees.
Nostalgia and Regret
Now the day breaks
night is done and the moon
slowly dissolved in serene air
sets in the canals.
September is so alive in this country
of plains, the meadows are green
as in the southern valleys in spring.
I have left my companions,
I have hidden my heart behind ancient walls,
to be alone, to remember.
Since you are further off than the moon,
now the day breaks
and the horses’ hooves beat on the stones.
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