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Back	Notes The project organizer said: "Could you please write a piece on Dino Campana! Dino Campana, the famous Italian poet!" None of my friends had ever heard of Campana. Nor had I, and even the Italians I asked didn't really know him. I thought: a famous Italian poet who is unknown, that's interesting! And, of course, it's also a little strange. But then when you begin to read what is known about Dino Campana, it all makes sense. Dino Campanas life might be compared to the life of a minor comet which appears with a beautiful, radiant tail but which, before it even begins its journey, is suddenly snatched out of the sky by dark shadows. Campana was a young and enthusiastic poet who indeed might even have revelled in such pathetic metaphors as the above. His work was known and was perhaps feared in literary and futurist circles. Campana was a force to be reckoned with. lt so happened that he gave his original manuscript of Canti Orfici to the influential poet Soffici, after which he never saw it again. Soffici, this "literary mafioso", claimed that he had returned the manuscript, which was untrue. Campana wrote to him, at first begging and later threatening to kill him. He had no copy of the original. His every last drop of energy was expended in locating the verses in his memory and translating them onto paper. It is believed that he was mad and that his madness was hereditary. The last fourteen years of his life were spent in an asylum. I think instead that he wanted to end it all: "the sole justification for his existence" as he called it, was hidden inside the original manuscript, the contents of which he could no longer recall. In 1974 this "sole justification for his existence" was found in a drawer in Florence. Sixty years too late for Dino Campana. Moritz Rinke, May 1997 Il Gesto
SCENE I	Campana sits immobile among the cushions of his cell in a lunatic asylum. As he awakens he thinks back to his boyhood and his departure from Marradi, his native town, Dino, Campands alter ego, appears. While Dino is rebelling against the suggestion that he is mad, from behind a mirror appears his mother, obsessive shadow inhabiting his mind.
SCENE 2	Carlo, his assistant, enters reciting Campana's poetry. He sees Dino who declares that Carnpana is not mad and that he must he released. Dino draws his attention to the importance of rewriting and publishing "Canti Orfici", which has been stolen and concealed by Soffici.
SCENE 3	Carlo recognizes Dino as the poet and they discuss rewriting the "Canti" from memory.
SCENE 4	In reconstructing the Canti from memory, Dino and Campana are reminded of Sibilla Aleramo, the other obsessive female presence in the poet's life. Orfeo, Dino's travelling cornpanion appears, and inspires Dino's mernory of his poetry.
SCENE 5	Discussion of Dino's poetry style. Sibilla appears and Dino is irresistibly attracted to her. Orfeo is unable to restrain him.
SCENE 6	Silent scene
SCENE 7	Dino succurnbs to passion. Campana tries desperately to warn him off. There is an animated discussion between Dino and Sibilla about the relative value of their writing and regard for each other.
SCENE 8	Sibilla reads fragments of Dino's letters; ill and devoid of poetic inspiration, he nonetheless remembers her with ernotion. Campana is arrested at Novara in 1917 for vagrancy. Some months later, the poet is admitted definitively to an asylum.
SCENE 9	Dino and Campana bound together in a white cell. In a play of mirrors, the mother and Sibilla appear dancing atango.A blonde Germanwoman singing Wagner leads Orfeo by a rope.
SCENE 10	Campana has a fever. The grey men appear, with expressions of total calm. Do they symbolize the normal world of madness? Carlo wonders whether all that has happened on stage has been a dream.
SCENE 11	Campana is on stage raving. He bears the familiar voices of Sibilla praising bis work, of Dino in the midst of a fevered outburst, of Orfeo inviting him to follow him and of Carlo who has taken it upon himself to print his poetry. At the end, Campands voice can be heard: “All trust in life is lost ... but love for life is still possible, only a different kind of love...”