Dino Campana

Dino Campana Poems

Dino Campana Biography

Dino Campana (20 August 1885 – 1 March 1932) was an Italian visionary poet. His fame rests on his only published book of poetry, the Canti orfici ("Orphic Songs"), as well as his wild and erratic personality, including his ill-fated love affair with Sibilla Aleramo. He is often seen as an Italian example of a poète maudit. Campana was born in Marradi, near Faenza, northern Italy. He was the son of Giovanni, an elementary school teacher, a good man but of weak and neurotic character, and of Fanny Luti, a strict and compulsive woman, affected by mental illness, who would pathologically attack her son Manlio, Dino’s younger brother, born in 1887. Campana spent a serene youth in Marradi, but in 1900, at approximately fifteen years of age, he came to be diagnosed with the first nervous disturbances that did not, however, prevent him from completing the several cycles of Italian school. He completed his elementary education in Marradi - his third, fourth and fifth gymnasium years at the college of Salesiani di Faenza. He then undertook his liceo studies, partially at the Liceo Torricelli of the same city, and partially in Carmagnola, at another college. However, when he returned to Marradi, the nervous crises were sharpened, together with frequent jolts of humour - symptoms of a difficult relationship with his family (above all his mother) and his hometown. The future poet obtained his liceo certificate at Carmagnola. In 1903 he enrolled himself at the University of Bologna, in the chemistry faculty, in order to pass through to the faculty of pharmaceutical chemistry in Florence, but he did not succeed in finishing his university career and had difficulty in finding his true calling. This he could only find hints of in writing poetry, and it was to this pursuit – between periods of exaltation and depression – that he applied himself.)

The Best Poem Of Dino Campana

L’invetriata

La sera fumosa d’estate
Dall’alta invetriata mesce chiarori nell’ombra
E mi lascia nel cuore un suggello ardente,
Ma chi ha (sul terrazzo sul fiume si accende una lampada) chi ha
A la Madonnina del Ponte chi è chi è che ha acceso la lampada? – c’è
Nella stanza un odor di putredine: c’è
Nella stanza una piaga rossa languente.
Le stelle sono bottoni di madreperla e la sera si veste di velluto:
E tremola la sera fatua: è fatua la sera e tremola ma c’è
Nel cuore della sera c’è,
Sempre una piaga rossa languente.

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