Cristina Campo

Cristina Campo was the pen name of Vittoria Maria Angelica Marcella Cristina Guerrini (April 28, 1923 – January 10, 1977), an Italian writer and translator.[1] She also published under the pseudonyms Puccio Quaratesi, Bernardo Trevisano, Giusto Cabianca and Benedetto P. d'Angelo.[2]

The daughter of Guido Guerrini and Emilia Putti, she was born in Bologna and grew up in Florence. During World War II, she began translating into Italian literary works by authors such as Katherine Mansfield, Eduard Mörike and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. She began to attend the salon of Anna Banti in Florence. She contributed to various publications including Paragone, Conoscenza religiosa and Questo e altro, and also started the column "Posta letteraria" in Corriere dell'Adda with Gianfranco Draghi. She began translating works by Simone Weil into Italian.

In 1955, she moved to Rome which marked a major change in her life. In 1956, she published a poetry collection Passo d'addio.[2] From 1956 to 1961, she wrote a number of scripts for the Italian national radio system RAI.[2] She also translated works by William Carlos Williams and John Donne into Italian.[3] In Rome, she met Elémire Zolla. He introduced her to Eastern philosophies and mysticism. They both were members of the group "La voce", which was opposed to liturgical changes introduced in the Catholic church by the Second Vatican Council. Together, they edited the 1963 anthology I mistici.[3] Her mother died in 1964 and her father died the following year. She was so disturbed by these events that she left her home and moved first into a pension and then, in 1968, to an apartment.[3] She died in Rome of a heart attack at the age of 53.[1][3]

Her poetry and translations were later collected in La tigre assenza, first published in 1991.[2] In 2020, the Nexus Institute published "The Unforgivables", an English translation of Campo's essay "Gli imperdonabili" by Will Schutt. [4]