27 Facts About Dino Campana

Dino Campana's fame rests on his only published book of poetry, the Canti Orfici, as well as his wild and erratic personality, including his ill-fated love affair with Sibilla Aleramo.

Dino Campana is often seen as an Italian example of a poete maudit.

Dino Campana's father Giovanni, who was always affectionate and understanding with Dino, was an elementary school principal, and forthright member of the community, but had a weak and neurotic character.

Dino Campana's mother, Fanny Luti, came from a wealthy family but was an eccentric and compulsive woman, affected by mental illness.

Dino Campana would often wander the hills, forgetting about family duties, but was overly attached to Dino's brother Manlio, born in 1888.

In 1900, at approximately fifteen years of age, Dino Campana was diagnosed with the first symptoms of nervous disturbances, was medicated and sent to an asylum.

Dino Campana completed his elementary education in Marradi - his third, fourth and fifth gymnasium years at the Salesiani di Faenza.

In 1905, after being denied entry into the military as an officer in Ravenna, Dino Campana enrolled in faculty of pharmaceutical chemistry in Florence, but after only a few months he returned to Bologna.

Dino Campana did not finish university and had a difficult time finding his true calling.

Dino Campana had an irrepressible desire to escape and dedicate himself to a life of vagrancy, which he accomplished by undertaking various jobs.

Dino Campana was judged with suspicion both because his physical traits were considered too German, and due to the vigorous way he discussed poetry and philosophy.

Between May and July 1906, Dino Campana made a first trip to Switzerland and France, which ended with his arrest in Bardonecchia and his admission to the mental asylum Imola.

In 1907, not knowing what to do about their son's madness, Dino Campana's parents sent him to stay in Latin America with a family of Italian immigrants.

Dino Campana left out of fear of being sent back to the asylum.

Dino Campana's parents supported the move to send him to America, in the hope that it would help him recover, but it seems that the passport was valid only for arrival - likely an attempt to get rid of him, since living with Dino Campana had become unbearable, at that point.

Dino Campana's continual pleading only won him the contempt and indifference of the cultural milieu that revolved around the 'red shirts' of the Caffe Giubbe Rosse.

Finally, exasperated, Dino Campana threatened to come with a knife to take justice from the 'infamous' Soffici and his associates, whom he called 'sciacalli'.

An erratic autodidact, Dino Campana taught himself functional French, German and English- enough to read the Symbolists and Whitman in the original languages.

In 1915, Dino Campana again went travelling, without a fixed goal: passing through Turin, Domodossola, and then Florence.

Dino Campana wrote to Emilio Cecchi and began a short correspondence with the author.

The letter was written while Sibilla was on holiday at the Villa La Topaia in Borgo San Lorenzo and Dino Campana was in a critical condition at Firenzuola, recovering from a partial paralysis on his right side.

In 1918, Dino Campana was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Castel Pulci, in Scandicci, where he was to remain until his death.

The only surviving accounts of this period of Dino Campana's life are in the interviews with the psychiatrist Carlo Pariani, who confirmed the irrefutable diagnosis of Dino Campana's mental state: Disorganised schizophrenia - an incurable and extremely serious form of schizophrenia.

Dino Campana died, seemingly from sepsis on March 1,1932.

Dino Campana's poetry is a new poetry in which sounds, colors and music are blended in a powerful vision.

The title of Dino Campana's only published work alludes to the Orphic Hymns, a literary genre developed in ancient Greece between the second and third century AD and characterized by a non-classical theogony.

The current edition of Dino Campana's collected writings is Dino Campana Opere.