back to Genoa. Paralleling the actual physical journey is a spiritual and mystical voyage undertaken by Campana in search of The Longest Day of Genoa (il più lungo giorno di Genova)- his concept of an eternal moment (l'eterno presente) outside of normal space-time in which everything and everywhere exists simultaneously. This concept is not explicitly defined in the text, which is less expository or didactic than incantatory in nature. Indeed, it has been left to his critics to extrapolate much of the underlying theory in Campana's work. An erratic autodidact, Campana taught himself functional French, German and English- enough to read the Symbolists and Whitman in the original languages. The text is subtitled, in German, The Tragedy of the Last German in Italy and is dedicated to Kaiser William II. Campana ended his book with a faultily remembered quotation in English from Leaves of Grass: “They were all torn and cover'd with the boy's blood”. The original manuscript was found amongst Soffici's belongings in 1971. This find demonstrated that not only had Campana rewritten the original text almost perfectly but had also nearly doubled it in size. This has led some to suggest that Campana had another copy of the manuscript from which he “reconstructed” the work. Later years In 1915, Campana again went travelling, without a fixed goal: passing through Turin, Domodossola, and then Florence. At the outbreak of the First World War, Campana the pacifist and neutralist, was exempt from military service, ostensibly because of physical health problems, but in reality he was known to be seriously mentally ill. In 1916 the poet looked for employment in vain. He wrote to Emilio Cecchi and began a short correspondence with the author. At Livorno he met with the journalist Athos Gastone Banti, who wrote him a disparaging article in the journal "Il Telegrafo": this nearly ended in a duel. In the same year Campana met Sibilla Aleramo, the author of the novel Una donna, and began an intense and tumultuous relationship with her, that she ended at the start of 1917 after a brief encounter at Christmas 1916 in Marradi. Their letters and correspondence, published by Feltrinelli in 2000, are testimony of the relationship between Campana and Aleramo. This correspondence begins with a letter from Aleramo dated June 10, 1916, where author expresses her admiration for "Canti Orfici", declaring the poems have 'enchanted and bedazzled' her. The letter was