The unforgivable and other writings
(Book)

"Cristina Campo published only two short collections of essays in her lifetime: Fairy tale and mystery (1962) and The flute and the carpet (1971). The unforgivable and other writings brings together both volumes, along with a selection of essays an literature and an autobiographical short story..." -- Back cover.

Includes bibliographical references.

In the biographical note accompanying one of her books, Cristina Campo said of herself: "She has written little and would like to have written less". That little is almost all collected in this book and will impose an observation on every perceptive reader: these pages belong to the most beautiful Italian prose has been shown in the last fifty years. Cristina Campo was unforgivable, in the sense that the word has in the essay that gives the title to this book: like Marianne Moore, like Hofmannsthal, like Benn, like Weil, she had the "passion for perfection". She could not otherwise have written the pages that are read here on Chopin or on the fairy tale, on the Arabian Nights or about language. "I salute a wisdom among the strangest today" Ceronetti once wrote from Campo. Perhaps the time has come for readers to realise that in Italy, among so many promoters of their own mediocrity, this "trappist of perfection" also lived.

In English, translated from Italian.