ABSTRACT: This essay explores the poetry book Millimetri by Milo De Angelis as a specific expression of contemporary tragic: a type of tragic that, trough Nietzsche, Heidegger and Hebbel, establishes a specific relation with the myth. Millimetri presents some aspects that modernity eludes: the paradoxical responsibility for destiny, the sense of decision, the will of accomplishment. The aim of this essay is to clarify the metaphysical – or the nihilistic – connection between the principle of tragedy and being, and to establish the influence of this connection over the linguistic logic of present poetry.

KEYWORDS: Tragedy, tragic, mith of Er, Milo De Angelis, Millimetri.