Il Taccuino del Vecchio:

Volume 7 of the Images and Texts series by Luigi Majino and Roberto Sanesi. A finely printed work with 2 signed Richter lithographs.

Guiseppe Ungaretti 1888 -1970 himself described poetry as the ability to express oneself 'with absolute candor, as if it were the first day of creation.' In this quest for purity and attempt to restore to words their original virginity, Ungaretti was following the paths traced out by the French symbolists, Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Apollinaire. Like them, he believed that a poem should suggest rather than describe, and that words have an evocative content beyond their everyday significance. However, when Ungaretti had done his essential work of purification, a change occurred in his diction. 'The lean syntax grew complex, the tenuous surface opaque, and the heart of the matter crowded, contorted with sorrows and perplexity.'

Hans Richter 1888 - 1976 experienced the twentieth century's political nightmares first-hand, from combat in War I in which he was severely wounded, to persecution by the Nazis and artistic censure in the Soviet Union. He never saw his art as separate from the conflicts and sufferings of humanity, but instead devoted his art to the creation of a better society.