Поетът

The paths by which a writer penetrates beyond the borders of his homeland are very different and complex. Having followed their winding paths, the artist often receives new dimensions from different eras and among different peoples, is "discovered by those who are not even aware of them in their time. There is something very characteristic of the fate of a writer in the way in which he is assimilated outside his homeland. Sometimes, having vividly expressed the trends of his time, having created a unique style and handwriting, the artist powerfully conquers the minds of his era, his work becomes a banner, a slogan, a platform, and often in the end - because the last stage of the rapid assimilation of a unique talent is almost always epigonism - and a literary fashion. Such is the fate of some great artists of the Western European classics of the last century (Byron, Schiller). There are also writers who remain almost undiscovered by their contemporaries, in order to measure their value from other eras or among other peoples. Such is the fate of Stenda Often literary fashion opens a green light for some unhealthy literary trends. The fame of such literary ephemera, the most characteristic example of which in our country is perhaps Przybyszewski, only testifies to the aesthetic level of famous circles during the era.

Poets are less fortunate than prose writers in that, due to the structure of their original speech, they are more difficult to reach for a foreign reader. The translation of a poem far exceeds the difficulties posed by the translation of a work of fiction into prose. That is why there is a great discrepancy in the popularity of poets and prose writers. While a poet of great magnitude, Alberto Moravia, has long since crossed the borders of his homeland through the translations of his novels, a Giuseppe Ungaretti is known abroad to a very narrow circle of readers, mainly poets. I believe that we can more easily imagine contemporary Italian literature without Moravia than today's Italian poetry without Ungaretti. For the author of "The Buried Port", of "A Sense of Time", of "Alegria" is a moment in the development of contemporary Italian and European poetry.