Dino Campana, one of Italy’s greatest poets, immortalized the spirit of workers in his masterpiece Song of the Worker Italo-Francese.
This essay reflects on his enduring legacy, the author’s encounter with his work, Italy’s cultural beauty, and a sharp call for Japanese intellectuals and media to rediscover the voices of laborers and regions beyond Tokyo.
On August 21, 2010, the author introduces the Italian poet Dino Campana's "Song of the Italo-French Worker," encountered over 30 years prior, and expresses his profound admiration.
Through the poem's spirit of labor and deep affection for Italy, the author strongly urges Japan's Tokyo-centric TV stations to decentralize to regional areas and focus on portraying the hearts of laborers.
This essay re-examines the true role of intellectuals.
2010/08/21
Dino Campana was a great Italian poet.
I encountered him over 30 years ago. ...I wondered who the poets of the world were at that time... I thought, "If I don't know that, how can I understand the world?"
Was it Chikuma Shobo? It was a collection of modern world poets, in a small black box binding, perhaps two volumes... There was a period when I bought them and devoured them.
Wonderful poets, like kusudama flowers, in Spain, Sweden, etc. Countless poems like jewels.
Among them, the poet who captivated my heart the most was the one in the title.
25 years ago, by chance, I established a branch in Rome... though it's been closed for a long time now (bitter smile).
I feel it was worth it just to have opened a branch in his country.
Among his poems, the one I believe to be unsurpassed is titled "Song of the Italo-French Worker" (translated by Yukiko Ozora).
Like a tower of steel, in the burnt heart of twilight my spirit revives for a silent kiss.
If that were a poppy-colored garden If it were an infinite elegy At the peaks of the Alps Are there not fragments of poor Italian labor?
Perhaps among the poplar trees.
If a shepherd girl is reflected in the burnt rim of twilight eyes somehow the tower departs
The glimmer of severed poplars.
Like a tower of steel in the burnt heart of twilight my spirit revives for an infinite kiss.
Italy
With boundless sorrow I love you Glimmer of heart's fragments Your labor, stained by the light on the mountain peaks You made roads through the mountains With a few songs and much vino.
You came silently beside me, reaching even to the red cloak of the stars, so deeply submerged that you were answered from the depths of foreign soil.
Italy
I cannot abandon you Glimmer of the heartless fragments of Italy Believe me, we shall be proud of you Like fresh virgins
Like a tower of steel in the burnt heart of twilight my spirit revives for an infinite kiss
I even believe there is nothing more to this poem than what is sung here.
Because his poetry exists, I love Italy—an otherwise beautiful and wonderful country, the country with the eternal city of Rome—three times as much.
I now wish that the six TV companies crammed into the small area of Tokyo would immediately disperse to Hokkaido, Tohoku, Chubu, Kinki, Chugoku, Kyushu, and Shikoku, and continue to find, project, and depict the fragments of the hearts and souls of Japan's long-oppressed laborers in those mountain ranges, forests, and seas.
Your movement would immediately bring prosperity to these regions.
Is there anything else that you, who are supposedly intellectuals, not so-called laborers, should do?
Originally, intellectuals exist for the happiness of laborers, or rather, because laborers exist.
If laborers are suffering in poverty, there can be no happiness for intellectuals.
