"Mario Luzi gave a voice to the soul." - Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Former President of Italy

The trouble with meeting somebody renowned for the beauty of their poetry and the profundity of their thought is that all too often a dismaying chasm separates the sublime nature of their artistic achievement from the reality of their lives.

Mario Luzi, who at the time of this interview in February 2004, was Italy's foremost living poet, and twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, would be a disappointment to those who believe genius is synonymous with excess and eccentricity. The 90-year-old man who ushers me into his study is the epitome of unassuming affability. With unflagging courtliness, he answers my questions. It quickly becomes apparent that there is no trace of ego in the man; the only thing that is of real importance to him is getting to the truth of a matter.

Luzi visited Ireland on a few occasions, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Queen's. He was drawn to the country, because of "something occult and profound" he intuited in the nature of the place, giving rise to "a contrast between a superficial cordiality and something darker flickering beneath the surface".

This contrasts sharply with what he admires most about his homeland, as "Tuscany's main claim to fame has been an ability to harmonize opposing forces."  I suggest this could also be applied to his Catholicism, which has coordinated the centrifugal forces of the populist and the legalistic into a solidly intellectual edifice. "Analytical" he adds. "There is a strongly analytical thrust to my Catholicism, which I garnered from writers such as Pascal, Racine, Mauriac and Bernanos."

Born in 1914 in Florence, Mario Luzi made a name for himself as a poet at a very early age. By the 1930s, the city had become a flourishing centre of literature, having attracted writers such as Montale, Gadda, Palazzeschi, Vittorini, Gatto and Pratolini.  Luzi's first collection, La Barca, appeared in 1935 and brought him immediate recognition. By 1940 he had established himself as the leading exponent of the Hermetic movement, with collections such as Avvento notturno (1940) Un brindisi (1945) and Quaderno gotico (1945). His poetry is characterised by an affinity with Symbolism, resulting in allusive lyrics of great beauty and remarkable technical mastery. 

Due however to this early fame, his reputation subsequently became indelibly linked to the Hermetic movement, and his Catholicism merely a means for compartmentalizing and neutralizing him. This is, of course, a reductive reading of the man and the poet.

From the earliest stages, however, certain enduring themes are evident. Luzi was a young man during World War II, and this gave rise to his preoccupation with the effects of war and violence, and the absence of liberty.  His poetry can be seen as a tireless exploration of the negative effects of history. Another recurring motif is Luzi's certainty of the spiritual nature of the universe.

Then in 1963 there was a turning point. The collection Nel magma demonstrated a need to delve into contingency, giving rise to a style less reliant on aesthetic perfection and more prose-orientated. This afforded Luzi scope for grappling with juxtaposed themes such as time and eternity, change and identity, being and becoming. Such is the sway that time holds over our lives, he remarked, that man can conceive of eternity only as an infinite quantity of time.

His last great period of writing opens with Viaggio terrestre e celeste di Simone Martini (1994), and concludes with Dottrina dell' estremo principiante (2004). This late flowering produced poetry of a crystalline beauty, permeated by an exploration of the transcendental. Luzi's poetry here acquires the qualities of a prism, in which the play of light and colour throw into relief a mind questing for meaning and truth.

This quest led Mario Luzi to explore philosophies from the East. "I greatly admire some thinkers from India," he tells me. "Above all Aurobindo, who attempted to interpret Indian culture through the lens of European historicism, without betraying it. One can learn a lot from them: this idea of the intrinsic perfectibility of man, which will eventually bring him to a point where he can perceive the Divine. We have a greater prophetic strain, while Indian spirituality is probably more interiorized and intellectualized. But undoubtedly it possesses its own beauty too - the poet Tagore is so richly suggestive."

Central to Luzi's poetry is the figure of the seeker. What have you sought from life, and what teachings has it given you, I ask him. “It is hard to limit this concept to a single judgement. All I can say to you is that my life has always been leading somewhere. Ever since I was a boy, I have felt the necessity to justify myself and justify my presence here.  So I studied and I tried to understand – not as a means to an end but simply because that was the path I had to take and of course the ultimate end - the telos - was the search for truth. Before I even knew it that was the path I had embarked upon. And truth is not fixed; it is a living entity that comes about continuously. That is why, in my poetry, there are both static moments and moments of prophecy. Profemi - the annunciation of something that has not yet come into being."

And life itself, with all its sufferings - is it more of a burden or a gift?  "For me, being alive is in itself a reward. Even if our existences have been ever so brief, we have still been in the world, we have been alive. Just think of all the potential lives that have never managed to come into being, have never got as far as life, but wanted to live. Instead, we have had the great boon of participating in this prodigious miracle that is life. In a poem of mine entitled Seme ("Seed"), I have said that life is the author of itself.  Certainly, life can be tough and unfair. But non-life, blackness, lightlessness, is worse.  So it is a gift that has been made to us - and this is in itself a miracle of rightness, equilibrium and power."

Mario Luzi was one of the few great artists whose stature as a person was on a par with the elevation of his work. Just four days after this interview, he died peacefully in his sleep.