When the soldier Giuseppe Ungaretti saw his first volume of poetry, Il porto sepolto (The Buried Port), published in 1916, Italian writers and artists were in the process of restoring their nation to cultural prominence. Creative young Italians were reviving an appreciation for Italy's artistic and literary traditions. After World War I that appreciation influenced the founding of the Roman cultural journal La Ronda--issued from April 1919 to November 1922 and then in a special number in December 1923--with its goal of preserving past glories amid modernity. Vincenzo Cardarelli, editor in chief of La Ronda, looked back to a classical model for Italian poetry and prose before the time of the nation's unification, rejecting post-1860 writers such as Giosuè Carducci, Giovanni Pascoli, and Gabriele D'Annunzio in favor of Giacomo Leopardi. Ungaretti was to be one of the contributors to La Ronda, and he would exalt the works of Leopardi...