Dino Campana
August 21, 2010

Dino Campana is a great Italian poet.

I encountered him more than 30 years ago.
…What poets are there in the world now?…
If I don’t know that, there is no way I can understand the world… That was what I thought.

Was it published by Chikuma Shobo?… I believe it was two volumes, in a black box that was not very large, a collection of contemporary poets of the world… There was a time when I bought it and read it avidly.

There were wonderful poets bursting forth like a celebratory ball… in Spain, in Sweden, and elsewhere.
Poems like jewels, one after another.

Among them, the poet named in the title captured my heart the most.

Twenty-five years ago, through a fortunate connection, I opened a branch in Rome… It has long been closed for business now (wry smile), but I am glad even just to have opened a branch in that country.

Of his poems, the one I think nothing can surpass is a poem titled “Song of the Worker Italo-Francese” (translated by Sachiko Ozora).

Like a tower of steel, in my heart scorched by dusk
my spirit comes back to life
for a silent kiss.

If that is a poppy-colored garden
if it is an infinite elegy
on the summits of the Alps
might there be fragments of poor Italian labor?
Perhaps among the poplar trees.
At the edge of eyes scorched by dusk
if a shepherd girl appears
for some reason the tower goes away

O gleam of the severed poplar.
Like a tower of steel
in my heart scorched by dusk
my spirit comes back to life
for an infinite kiss.

Italy

I love you with boundless sorrow
O gleam of fragments of the heart
your labor, dyed by the light on the mountaintop
you made a road leading into the mountains
with a little song and much vino.
You came silently, so close beside me
that you could reach the red mantle of the stars
you lay hidden so deep
that even from the depths of foreign soil you could be answered

Italy

I cannot abandon you
O gleam of heartless Italian fragments
believe me, we shall take pride in you
like fresh virgins

Like a tower of steel
in my heart scorched by dusk
my spirit comes back to life
for an infinite kiss

…I even think there is nothing greater than this poem, sung in such a way.

Because his poetry exists, I love Italy—the beautiful and wonderful country it already is, the country of Rome, the Eternal City—three times as much.

I now hope that the six television companies crowded together in a narrow area of Tokyo will immediately spread out across Hokkaido, Tohoku, Chubu, Kinki, Chugoku, Kyushu, and Shikoku, find fragments of the hearts and souls of Japanese workers who have long been oppressed, in their mountains, forests, and seas, and keep showing them, keep portraying them.

Your moving there would also immediately bring prosperity to those regions.

Apart from that, is there anything you, who are not what are called workers and who must think of yourselves as intellectuals, ought to do?

By their very nature, intellectuals exist for the happiness of workers; indeed, they exist only because workers exist.
For there can be no happiness for intellectuals while workers suffer in poverty.