Ungaretti is known to have claimed four nations as "home"—Egypt, the place of his birth; France, where he was schooled; Brazil, where he spent six years in his first teaching position; and Italy, his ancestral home and the country in which he spent the majority of his life. By far the greatest cultural, historical, and social influences on the poet at the time he was writing material for The Promised Land were World War II and the reconstruction period that followed.

As a younger man, Ungaretti had supported Mussolini and Italian fascism because he believed the movement would bring about better conditions and rights for exploited workers and help to stabilize a chaotic post—World War I Italy. When it became clear that Mussolini's real plans were based on racism and tyranny, Ungaretti denounced fascism and admitted that his previous attraction to it had...