Giuseppe Ungaretti and the Visual Arts: the Constructionof Listening and Refractions of a Letter to Bruna

Abstract

This article analyzes Giuseppe Ungaretti’s (1888-1970)
relationship with the visual arts through his correspondence with Bruna Bianco (1966-1969). Taking letter 41 as its radiating core, the study examines how the poet’s aesthetic reflections on artists such as Picasso, Vermeer, Cézanne, Fautrier, and others intertwine with his own poetic conception. The investigation reveals the light-shadow dialectic, central to Ungarettian poetics, manifested both in his critical analyses and in the recurring metaphor of the beloved as “luce” (light). The essay maps the convergences between biography and artistic creation, highlighting how this amorous correspondence constitutes a privileged space where Ungaretti revisits his existential and poetic trajectory. The construction of a dialogical listening with Bruna emerges as a mediating element that transcends age asymmetry, allowing the poet to semantically re-elaborate the experience of time. This cartographic analysis of the intersections between artistic criticism and epistolary amorous expression demonstrates how Ungaretti’s late aesthetics articulates tensions between the ephemeral and the eternal, the corruptible and the incorruptible, in a constant search for baroque harmony that excludes neither disharmony nor existential cruelty.