In 1969 Philippe Jaccottet translated for the magazine Aquila the poem Dunja by Giuseppe Ungaretti. The study aims to highlight the singularity of this translation, shedding light on the genetics of its writing: that is to say to penetrate the invisible side of translating in which both the author and the translator participate. Starting from the terminological clarification of the notion of transparency, it applies itself to elucidate the translator’s strategies by highlighting the dialectic of hermetics and hermeneutics. The juxtaposition of the poem’s versions, elaborated by Jaccottet during the work in progress, provides information on the stages of transparent translation starting with the lexical work which concerns the search for equivalence. It reveals furthermore the hesitations and doubts of a wise translator, aware of the impossibility of understanding the poetic statement by neglecting its emotional, imaginal and prosodic aspects. In order to reach the conclusion that this is indeed a “relevant” translation, resulting from a meticulous work on the potentialities of the target language, which does not hesitate to transgress its grammatical norms with the purpose of preserving the foreignness of the source text.