Giuseppe Ungaretti & Jean Paulhan, 1921-1968
Giuseppe UngarettiJean PaulhanIt is quite exceptional for literary relationships to transform into true, total, deep friendships, stronger than adverse historical vicissitudes from which they could have emerged broken. Yet this was the relationship that brought Jean Paulhan and Giuseppe Ungaretti closely together for almost fifty years. French first, from a family belonging to the cultivated circles of the South, philosopher and first a teacher, then a most competent and acute writer and essayist, a Calvinist tempered by unfailing skepticism, a man of wit with piquant and tireless curiosity but of a reserved temperament, almost shy in person, with a calm voice; Italian the second, son of semi-illiterate Lucca peasants whom family poverty had forced to emigrate to Africa, Catholic and believer after a brief phase of atheist and libertarian adolescence, poet, exuberant by nature, speaking loudly and rolling the R's, his eyes inflamed, ready by passion to indulge in transports of anger: what pushed them towards each other, to then keep them united for always? Without doubt, apart from the probable attraction of the opposite of oneself, first of all the common generosity of heart, an identical feeling of the sacred character of friendship, the same faith in art and reciprocal respect on a human and professional level; secondly, the love for their two countries, the hope (and the dream) that in a Europe to be rebuilt from top to bottom, France and Italy, forgetting old resentments and rivalries, could finally move forward side by side, as an example of tolerance and collaboration between men.
Publisher : Gallimard