Campana's "Dualism"

            Campana explores the relationship between dream and reality in the form of a letter titled "Dualism."  Specifically, the poem is broken into fragments of two types: fragments in which the speaker confirms the actual presence of the letter's recipient, Manuelita, and fragments in which he describes an other-worldly female presence.  The concluding lines of the letter confirms the speaker's love for Manuelita--"And yet I swear to you Manuelita I loved you I love you and I will always love you more than any other woman...in the two worlds"--but one cannot ignore the effect the dream-state has on the speaker (63).  The other female presence is described as  "the great rival" of Manuelita's, yet we are made to believe that this woman does not exist in other other form than dream (61).  Furthermore, this dream woman is only present in the speaker's mind when Manuelita is not physically present: the speaker reassures Manuelita by telling her "I was not thinking, I was not thinking of you: I have never thought of you" (59).  This seems an odd reassurance--one confessing the speaker's neglect of Manuelita as opposed to  his love for her--unless the word "thought" is carefully considered.  By claiming he has never "thought" of her, the speaker is confirming two things: one, that and two, that yet he has not committed Manueltia to his dream (59).  He goes on to say that he "could not...think of" Manuelita, affirming also his refusal to commit her to his dream (61).  His final confession allows the reader to assume that the speaker prefers the physical, real existence of Manuelita over the dream woman.  This is to say that his letter is not one of an apologetic nature, but one one of justification.  When he says "it was she who made me forget your fitful little body pressed into the the pillow, your perilous little body wholly adorable for its slenderness and strength," he is confirming the dream woman's inferiority to Manuelita (63).  It is possible that the dream woman and Manuelita are one in the same, but by refusing to identify them as the same woman, the speaker is affirming his love for the real over his love for the dream.