Cristina Campo was the pen name of Vittoria Maria Angelica Marcella Cristina Guerrini (

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

, April 29, 1923 –

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

, January 10, 1977), Italian writer, poet, and translator. She published under the pseudonyms Puccio Quaratesi, Bernardo Trevisano, Giusto Cabianca and Benedetto P. d'Angelo. The daughter of musician and composer

Guido Guerrini Guido Guerrini (born 12 January 1976 in Arezzo, Italy) is an Italian Rallying, rally driver and co-driver with Russia, Russian citizenship. In 2016 and 2017, he won the FIA Alternative Energies Cup in the co-drivers' category. He also collected ...

and Emilia Putti, she was born in

and grew up in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

. Due to a congenital cardiac malformation, which always made her health fragile, Cristina grew up isolated from her peers and could not follow regular school studies. She translated into Italian works by authors such as

Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the Literary modernism, modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world and have been ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

Eduard Mörike Eduard Friedrich Mörike (; 8 September 18044 June 1875) was a German Lutheran pastor who was also a Romantic poet and writer of novellas and novels. Many of his poems were set to music and became established folk songs, while others were used b ...

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...

John Donne John Donne ( ; 1571 or 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under Royal Patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's, D ...

, with a particular dedication to her translations of

Hugo von Hofmannsthal Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, libretto, librettist, Poetry, poet, Playwdramatist, narrator, and essayist. Early life Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, th ...

and

Simone Weil Simone Adolphine Weil ( ; ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic and political activist. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality, and politics have remained widely influential in cont ...

, whose work she introduced to the Italian public. She began to attend the

salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment that provides Cosmetics, cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, ...

Anna Banti Anna Banti (born Lucia Lopresti; 27 June 1895 – 2 September 1985) was an Italian writer, art historian, critic, and translator. Life and works Banti was born in Florence. In her youth she spent time in Rome, attending the Sapienza Univers ...

in Florence. She contributed to various publications including ''Paragone'', ' and ', and also started the column "Posta letteraria" in ''Corriere dell'Adda'' with . In 1955, she moved to

which marked a major change in her life. In 1956, she published a poetry collection ''Passo d'addio''. From 1956 to 1961, she wrote a number of scripts for the Italian national radio system

RAI (), commercially styled as since 2000 and known until 1954 as (RAI), is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels a ...

. In Rome, she met

Elémire Zolla Elémire Zolla (9 July 1926 – 29 May 2002) was an Italian essayist, philosopher and historian of religion. He was a connoisseur of esoteric doctrines and a scholar of Eastern and Western mysticism. Biography Zolla was born in Turin to a cosmo ...

. Cristina Campo was one of the founders of

Una Voce The ''Fœderatio Internationalis Una Voce'' or simply ''Una Voce'' (Latin for ‘ithOne Voice’; from the preface to the Roman Canon) is an international federation of Catholic lay organizations attached to the Tridentine Mass. History The ''F ...

, which was opposed to liturgical changes introduced in the Catholic church by the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for session ...

, she was also behind the Short Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Missae or also called ''the Ottaviani Intervention''. she also contributed to Elemire Zolla's anthology ''I mistici dell'Occidente'' ed. 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 A pension (; ) is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be either a " defined benefit plan", wh ...

and then, in 1968, to an apartment near the benedictine Abbey of Sant'Anselmo in Rome. She died in Rome of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...

at the age of 53. Her poetry and translations were later collected in ''La tigre assenza'', first published in 1991. In 2020, the Nexus Institute published "The Unforgivables", an English translation of Campo's essay "Gli imperdonabili" by Will Schutt. In 2021, an annotated translation of "Gli imperdonabili" by Nicola Masciandaro and Andrea di Serego Alighieri was published in ''Glossator 11, Practice and Theory of the Commentary'', a bilingual volume wholly dedicated to the work of the poet. In 2024, her essay collections ''Fairy Tale and Mystery'' (1962) and ''The Flute and the Carpet'' (1971) were brought together in a single volume in English translation published by

New York Review Books New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Campo, Cristina 1923 births 1977 deaths Italian women poets 20th-century Italian translators 20th-century Italian women writers 20th-century Italian poets 20th-century pseudonymous writers Pseudonymous women writers Writers from Bologna