Sunday was Mother’s Day and my thoughts (and heart) went to my own mother, of course, but also to all the mothers in the world today who no longer have anyone to celebrate them: there are, at this very moment, numerous wars where civilians almost always pay the highest price; there are children lying under ruins, children running from bombs, children being denied basic necessities, children deported, children imprisoned. This translation is for them.

Giorno per giorno   Giuseppe Ungaretti   I “Nessuno, mamma, ha mai sofferto tanto…” E il volto già scomparso ma gli occhi ancora vivi dal guanciale volgeva alla finestra, e riempivano passeri la stanza verso le briciole dal babbo sparse per distrarre il suo bimbo…   II Ora potrò baciare solo in sogno le fiduciose mani… E discorro, lavoro, sono appena mutato, temo, fumo… Come si può ch’io regga a tanta notte?…   III Mi porteranno gli anni chissà quali altri orrori, ma ti sentivo accanto, m’avresti consolato…   IV Mai, non saprete mai come m’illumina l’ombra che mi si pone a lato, timida, quando non spero più…   V Ora dov’è, dov’è l’ingenua voce che in corsa risuonando per le stanze, sollevava dai crucci un uomo stanco?… La terra l’ha disfatta, la protegge un passato di favola…   VI Ogni altra voce è un’eco che si spegne ora che una mi chiama dalle vette immortali…   VII In cielo cerco il tuo felice volto, ed i miei occhi in me null’altro vedano quando anch’essi vorrà chiudere Iddio…   VIII E t’amo, t’amo, ed è continuo schianto!…   IX Inferocita terra, immane mare mi separa dal luogo della tomba dove ora si disperde il martoriato corpo… Non conta… Ascolto sempre più distinta quella voce d’anima che non seppi difendere quaggiù… M’isola, sempre più festosa e amica di minuto in minuto, nel suo segreto semplice…   X Sono tornato ai colli, ai pini amati e del ritmo dell’aria il patrio accento che non riudrò con te, mi spezza ad ogni soffio…   XI Passa la rondine e con essa estate, e anch’io, mi dico, passerò… ma resti dell’amore che mi strazia non solo segno un breve appannamento se dall’inferno arrivo a qualche quiete…   XII Sotto la scure il disilluso ramo cadendo si lamenta appena, meno che non la foglia al tocco della brezza… E fu la furia che abbatté la tenera forma e la premurosa carità d’una voce mi consuma…   XIII Non più furori reca a me l’estate, né primavera i suoi presentimenti; puoi declinare, autunno, con le tue stolte glorie: per uno spoglio desiderio, inverno distende la stagione più clemente!…   XIV Già m’è nelle ossa scesa l’autunnale secchezza, ma, protratto dalle ombre, sopravviene infinito un demente fulgore: la tortura segreta del crepuscolo inabissato…   XV Rievocherò senza rimorso sempre un’incantevole agonia di sensi? Ascolta, cieco: “Un’anima è partita dal comune castigo ancora illesa…”   Mi abbatterà meno di non più udire i gridi vivi della sua purezza che di sentire quasi estinto in me il fremito pauroso della colpa?   XVI Agli abbagli che squillano dai vetri squadra un riflesso alla tovaglia l’ombra, tornano al lustro labile d’un orcio gonfie ortensie dall’aiuola, un rondone ebbro, il grattacielo in vampe delle nuvole, sull’albero, saltelli d’un bimbetto…   Inesauribile fragore di onde si dà che giunga allora nella stanza e alla freschezza inquieta d’una linea azzurra, ogni parete si dilegua…   XVII Fa dolce e forse qui vicino passi dicendo: “Questo sole e tanto spazio ti calmino. Nel puro vento udire puoi il tempo camminare e la mia voce. Ho in me raccolto a poco a poco e chiuso lo slancio muto* della tua speranza. Sono per te l’aurora e intatto giorno”.

Day by day   Giuseppe Ungaretti   I “No one, mamma, has ever suffered so much…” And the face already departed yet the eyes still alive from the pillow looked to the window, and sparrows filled the room towards the crumbs babbo scattered to distract his child…   II Now only in sleep can I kiss the trusting hands… And I converse, work, have just changed, fear, smoke… How can I possibly bear such night?…   III The years will bring who knows what other horrors, but I could feel you near me, you would have comforted me…   IV Never, you will never know how much light is shed upon me by the shadow at my side, timid, when I have lost hope…   V Now where, where is the innocent voice which, running, resounded in the rooms, lifting from his troubles a weary man?… The earth has dissolved it; it is protected by a fairy-tale-like past…   VI Every other voice is an echo that fades now that one calls to me from the immortal summits…   VII In the heavens I search for your happy face, and my eyes in me see nothing else when they too God wishes to close…   VIII And I love you, I love you, and it is constant torture! …   IX Ferocious land, enormous sea separate me from the site of the tomb where now dispersing is the tormented body… It does not matter…I hear ever more clearly that voice of the soul I could not protect here below… It isolates me, evermore joyous and friendly with every passing minute, in its simple secret…   X I’ve returned to the hills [1], to my beloved pines and of the rhythm of the air the native sound I will no longer hear with you, crushes me with every breath…   XI The swallow passes and with it summer, and I too, I tell myself, will pass… But may there remain of the love which plagues me not mere mark a fleeting bewilderment would that from this hell I attain some serenity…[2]   XII Under the axe the disillusioned bough falling barely laments, less than even the leaf at the touch of the breeze… And it was fury that felled the tender form and the gentle love of a voice consumes me…   XIII No more furies does the summer bring me, nor spring its anticipations; you can draw to a close, autumn, with all your silly glories: for a fruitless longing, winter extends the most clement of seasons…[3]   XIV Already in my bones has descended the aridness of autumn, but, extending from the shadows, comes everlasting a mad radiance: the secret torture of sunken sunset…   XV Will I forever recall without remorse an enchanting agony of the senses? Listen, blindman: “A soul has departed this common suffering still unscathed…”   Will it crush me less not to hear the vivid cries of his pureness than to hear almost extinct in me the fearful tremor of guilt?   XVI At the dazzling light that darts from the panes cuts a reflection at the table linen a shadow, to the volatile shine of a jug return swollen hydrangeas from the bed, a drunken swift, the skyscraper in a glow of clouds, on the tree, the skipping of a small child…   Inexhaustible thunder of waves maybe then reach the room and at the disquieting crispness of an azure line, every wall slips away…   XVII It becomes mild and perhaps nearby you pass saying: “May this sun and all this space calm you. In the pure wind you can hear time advancing and my voice. I have in me gathered little by little and closed the mute surge of your hope. I am for you the dawn and day unending.”      Translation ©Matilda Colarossi 2025

I don’t think I have ever translated anything as difficult, as heart-wrenching as this poem, a series of fragments, a diary of sorts which Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote for his son, Antonietto, who died at only nine years of age of appendicitis in 1939. The family was in Brazil at the time; in 1936, in fact, Ungaretti had been called to São Paulo, to teach Italian literature at the university there.

Giorno per giorno was written later, between 1940-1946. It is from the collection Il dolore (1947) which marks the most tragic moments of the poet’s life. Thus after the death of his son and the overall condition of mankind caused by the war, he returns to “the essential and communicative style of his early collections; the tears, cries, prayers, and suffering re-emerge in his verses not in their brutal starkness, but, nonetheless, as a direct source of his poetry, for which the word acts as a veil simply for the reserve that is characteristic of the lyrical filter.” [4]

Sunday was Mother’s Day and my thoughts (and heart) went to my own mother, of course, but also to all the mothers in the world today who no longer have anyone to celebrate them: there are, at this very moment, numerous wars where civilians almost always pay the highest price; there are children lying under ruins, children running from bombs, children being denied basic necessities, children deported, children imprisoned. This translation is for them, my belated “Mother’s Day” translation for all the mothers and all the children.

The poem, Giorno per giorno, is made up of various stanzas, fragments, written by the poet for his son.

Nessuno…tanto: these are the words that open the poem, the words Antonietto speaks to his mother. It is an expression of suffering: the child’s face is already marked by death but his eyes are still alive as his father tries to distract him by throwing crumbs to the birds. I believe the hardest part for me to read and translate was, in fact, this first line, because death, especially when it doesn’t touch us directly, can sometimes become abstract, the victims mere numbers.

Death is almost never sudden, almost never without an understanding that the end is near, like with little Antonietto, almost never without suffering. So, again, my heart goes to the children, and to the mothers and fathers who watch as death slowly takes away everyone they ever loved.

The numerous anastrophes made deciphering the poem difficult and translating it even more difficult. Sometimes I followed the poet’s lead, other times I didn’t.

Along with the inverted syntax, as I already mentioned, there were words that struck me and definitely challenged me. Here are a few: crucci (which is affliction, torment, sorrow, but also often with a hint of spite or resentment); schianto (from the verb schiantare, which means collapse, or a break, split, crash, but also, figuratively, sudden and very sharp pain; it is part of a line that is widely recognised and quoted); martoriato (from the verb martoriare, martyr(ise), means to torment, especially in expressions like tormented body, flesh etc., and alludes to severe and prolonged physical suffering); demente fulgor (demente which means demented, insane, mad, also means senseless, foolish, brainless, and is used, in this case, to describe fulgor which means splendour, brilliance, glitter, or radiance); inabissato (from inabissare: to sink, to plunge, to throw into the depths, but the root of the word is abyss, strengthening the sense of loss, the darkness all around. From Treccani: As int. pron., to sink, to sink into the abyss, that is, into the depths of the sea or lake; fig.: to sink into despair).

*Strangely, in one of my books (Poesia del Novecento in Italia e Europa) the word dolce replaces the word muto, and not all the fragments/stanzas are included (as is the case on many online sites). I have not been able to discover why, if it regards an earlier or later edition. The edition I used here is from Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita di uomo 106 poesie 1914-1960, Oscar Mondadori 1969, pp157-161.

[1]The hills in this line refer to Rome, the patrio accento, to which he returned from Brazil. [2]These lines are so enigmatic that I have read them out loud to my whole family, but no one seems to know exactly what the poet means. I have researched all the anthologies I own, all the textbooks in my collection, and all the ones I could access online but nulla, nothing, zip, zilch―most of the texts I own do not even share this particular stanza: they provide fragments 1-2-8-12 or 1-3-5-6-8-10-13-17. I have, therefore, decided to take it upon myself to interpret these lines as I think they were meant to read, because I must: I have no choice. And it got me wondering (not for the first time, in fact) about translation, and how difficult it is, and how hard we have to work, and how AI can never, ever replace a translator. You see, the translator is not just a reader of a text, not just a lover of poetry, not just a mad researcher; they don’t have the luxury of reading, relishing, and simply skipping to the next line. They are not teachers who can suggest wisely (if they have done the research, and a solution already exists), interpret freely (if a solution doesn’t exist), or leave it to the students to try their hand at solving it (I know, I have been both a student and teacher of poetry). The translator must choose. The translator must know. And when all the research possible leads nowhere, they must, in any case and every case, provide a solution. I have provided mine. But since I am on an anti AI crusade, this is what a very widely used AI site proposes: “But remnants of the love that rends me Not only sign a brief tarnish If from hell I come to some quiet.” Go figure… [3]This stanza underlines the feelings of the poet beautifully: summer no longer ignites his passions, spring no longer anticipates summer, the autumn colours and fruit (silly glories) mean nothing to him; only winter, for him the mildest of seasons, understands his pain. [4]“Giuseppe Ungaretti” in Poesia del novecento in Italia e Europa, I Volume, edited by Edoardo Esposito (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 2000), p310.

Painting: Peter Paul Rubens, Consequences of War, 1638-1639

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