Italo Calvino (ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno) was an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the
Our AncestorsOur Ancestors is the name of Italo Calvino's "heraldic trilogy" that comprises The Cloven Viscount , The Baron in the Trees , and The Nonexistent Knight ....
trilogy (1952–1959), the
CosmicomicsCosmicomics is a book of short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. Each story takes a scientific "fact" , and builds an imaginative story around it...
collection of short stories (1965), and the novels
Invisible CitiesInvisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.-Description:The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo...
(1972) and
If on a winter's night a travelerIf on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The narrative is about a reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Every odd-numbered chapter is in the second person, and tells the reader what he is doing in preparation for...
(1979).
Lionised in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Cuba
Italo Calvino was born in
Santiago de Las VegasSantiago de las Vegas is a city in Havana Province, Cuba, located south of Havana. As of the year 2000, the population was 22,000. The Cuban government maintains an agricultural experiment station, as well as a meteorology center in the city.-History:...
, a suburb of
HavanaHavana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba in 1923. His father, Mario, was a tropical
agronomistAn agronomist is a scientist who specializes in agronomy, which is the science of utilizing plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber. An agronomist is an expert in agricultural and allied sciences, with the exception veterinary sciences.Agronomists deal with interactions between plants, soils, and...
and botanist who also taught agriculture and
floricultureFloriculture, or flower farming, is a discipline of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of flowering and ornamental plants for gardens and for floristry, comprising the floral industry...
. Born 47 years earlier in
San RemoSanremo or San Remo is a city with about 57,000 inhabitants on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy. Founded in Roman times, the city is best known as a tourist destination on the Italian Riviera. It hosts numerous cultural events, such as the Sanremo Music Festival...
, Italy, Mario Calvino had emigrated to
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in 1909 where he took up an important position with the
Ministry of AgricultureAn agriculture ministry or department of agriculture is a ministry or other government agency charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister for agriculture....
. In an autobiographical essay, Italo Calvino explained that his father "had been in his youth an anarchist, a follower of
KropotkinPeter Kropotkin was a Russian prince and anarchist.Kropotkin may also refer to:*Pyotr Nikolayevich Kropotkin , Soviet/Russian geologist, tectonician, and geophysicist*Mount Kropotkin, a peak in Antarctica...
and then a Socialist Reformist". In 1917, Mario left for Cuba to conduct scientific experiments, after living through the
Mexican RevolutionThe Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
.
Calvino's mother, Eva Mameli, was a botanist and university professor. A native of
SassariSassari is an Italian city. It is the second-largest city of Sardinia in terms of population with about 130,000 inhabitants, or about 300,000 including the greater metropolitan area...
in
SardiniaSardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
and 11 years younger than her husband, she married while still a junior lecturer at Pavia University. Born into a secular family, Eva was a pacifist educated in the "religion of civic duty and science". Calvino described his parents as being "very different in personality from one another", suggesting perhaps deeper tensions behind a comfortable, albeit strict, middle-class upbringing devoid of conflict. As an adolescent, he found it hard relating to poverty and the working-class, and was "ill at ease" with his parents’ openness to the laborers who filed into his father's study on Saturdays to receive their weekly paycheck.
Early life and education
In 1925, less than two years after Calvino's birth, the family returned to Italy and settled permanently in
San RemoSanremo or San Remo is a city with about 57,000 inhabitants on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy. Founded in Roman times, the city is best known as a tourist destination on the Italian Riviera. It hosts numerous cultural events, such as the Sanremo Music Festival...
on the
LiguriaLiguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...
n coast. Calvino's brother Floriano, who became a distinguished geologist, was born in 1927.
The family divided their time between the Villa Meridiana, an experimental floriculture station which also served as their home, and Mario's ancestral land at San Giovanni Battista. On this small working farm set in the hills behind San Remo, Mario pioneered in the cultivation of then exotic fruits such as avocado and grapefruit, eventually obtaining an entry in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani for his achievements. The vast forests and luxuriant fauna omnipresent in Calvino's early fiction such as
The Baron in the TreesThe Baron in the Trees is a 1957 Italian novel by Italo Calvino. Described as a conte philosophique and a metaphor for independence, it tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom....
derives from this "legacy". In an interview, Calvino stated that "San Remo continues to pop out in my books, in the most diverse pieces of writing." He and Floriano would climb the tree-rich estate and perch for hours on the branches reading their favorite adventure stories. Less salubrious aspects of this "paternal legacy" are described in The Road to San Giovanni, Calvino's memoir of his father in which he exposes their inability to communicate: "Talking to each other was difficult. Both verbose by nature, possessed of an ocean of words, in each other's presence we became mute, would walk in silence side by side along the road to San Giovanni." A fan of
Rudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's
The Jungle BookThe Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...
as a child, Calvino felt that his early interest in stories made him the "black sheep" of a family that held literature in less esteem than the sciences. Fascinated by American movies and cartoons, he was equally attracted to drawing, poetry, and theatre. On a darker note, Calvino recalled that his earliest memory was of a socialist professor brutalized by Fascist lynch-squads. "I remember clearly that we were at dinner when the old professor came in with his face beaten up and bleeding, his bowtie all torn, asking for help."
Other legacies include the parents’ masonic republicanism which occasionally developed into anarchic socialism. Austere, anti-Fascist freethinkers, Eva and Mario refused to give their sons any religious education. Italo attended the English nursery school St George's College, followed by a Protestant elementary private school run by
WaldensiansWaldensians, Waldenses or Vaudois are names for a Christian movement of the later Middle Ages, descendants of which still exist in various regions, primarily in North-Western Italy. There is considerable uncertainty about the earlier history of the Waldenses because of a lack of extant source...
. His secondary schooling was completed at the state-run Liceo Gian Domenico Cassini where, at his parents’ request, he was exempted from religious instruction but forced to justify his anticonformist stance. In his mature years, Calvino described the experience as a salutary one as it made him "tolerant of others’ opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority's beliefs”. During this time, he met a brilliant student from Rome,
Eugenio ScalfariEugenio Scalfari is an Italian journalist, editor of the news magazine L'espresso , former member of parliament in the Italian Chamber of Deputies , co-founder of the newspaper La Repubblica and its editor from 1976 to 1996.-Biography:A law graduate with a interest in journalism and politics,...
, who went on to found the weekly magazine
L'Espressol'Espresso is an Italian newsmagazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies, the other being Panorama. Since the latter has been acquired by right-wing tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi, l'Espresso enjoys the reputation of being the main politically independent newsmagazine...
and
La Repubblicala Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...
, a major Italian newspaper. The two teenagers formed a lasting friendship, Calvino attributing his political awakening to their university discussions. Seated together "on a huge flat stone in the middle of a stream near our land", he and Scalfari founded the MUL (University Liberal Movement).
Eva managed to delay her son's enrolment in the Fascist armed scouts, the Balilla Moschettieri, and then arranged that he be excused, as a non-Catholic, from performing devotional acts in church. But later on, as a compulsory member, he could not avoid the assemblies and parades of the Avanguardisti, and was forced to participate in the Italian occupation of the
French RivieraThe Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
in June 1940.
World War II
In 1941, Calvino dutifully enrolled at the
University of TurinThe University of Turin is a university in the city of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy...
, choosing the Agriculture Faculty where his father had previously taught courses in
agronomyAgronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, feed, fiber, and reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology,...
. Concealing his literary ambitions to please his family, he passed four exams in his first year while reading anti-Fascist works by
Elio VittoriniElio Vittorini was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S...
,
Eugenio MontaleEugenio Montale was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.- Early years :...
,
Cesare PaveseCesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.- Early life and education :...
,
Johan HuizingaJohan Huizinga , was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.-Life:Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his...
, and Pisacane, and works by
Max PlanckMax Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS, was a German physicist who actualized the quantum physics, initiating a revolution in natural science and philosophy. He is regarded as the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.-Life and career:Planck came...
,
Werner HeisenbergWerner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
, and
Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
on physics. Disdainful of Turin students, Calvino saw himself as enclosed in a "provincial shell" that offered the illusion of immunity from the Fascist nightmare: "We were ‘hard guys’ from the provinces, hunters, snooker-players, show-offs, proud of our lack of intellectual sophistication, contemptuous of any patriotic or military rhetoric, coarse in our speech, regulars in the brothels, dismissive of any romantic sentiment and desperately devoid of women."
Calvino transferred to the
University of FlorenceThe University of Florence is a higher study institute in Florence, central Italy. One of the largest and oldest universities in the country, it consists of 12 faculties...
in 1943 and reluctantly passed three more exams in agriculture. By the end of the year, the Germans had succeeded in occupying Liguria and setting up
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's puppet Republic of Salò in northern Italy. Now twenty years old, Calvino refused military service and went into hiding. Reading intensely in a wide array of subjects, he also reasoned politically that, of all the
partisanIn politics, a partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is widely understood to carry a negative connotation - referring to those who wholly support their party's policies and are perhaps even reluctant to acknowledge correctness on the part of their...
groupings, the
communistsThe Communist Party of Italy was a communist political party in Italy which existed from 1921 to 1926. That year it was outlawed by Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. In 1943, the name was changed to the Italian Communist Party.-Foundation:The forerunner of the party was the Communist Faction...
were the best organized with "the most convincing political line".
In spring 1944, Eva encouraged her sons to enter the Italian Resistance in the name of "natural justice and family virtues". Using the battlename of "Santiago", Calvino joined the Garibaldi Brigades, a clandestine Communist group and, for twenty months, endured the fighting in the
Maritime AlpsThe Maritime Alps are a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps. They form the border between the French département Alpes-Maritimes and the Italian province of Cuneo. The Col de Tende separates them from the Ligurian Alps; the Maddalena Pass separates them from the Cottian Alps...
until 1945 and the
LiberationVictory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 , the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not...
. As a result of his refusal to be a conscript, his parents were held hostage by the Nazis for an extended period at the Villa Meridiana. Calvino wrote of his mother's ordeal that "she was an example of tenacity and courage… behaving with dignity and firmness before the SS and the Fascist militia, and in her long detention as a hostage, not least when the
blackshirtsThe Blackshirts were Fascist paramilitary groups in Italy during the period immediately following World War I and until the end of World War II...
three times pretended to shoot my father in front of her eyes. The historical events which mothers take part in acquire the greatness and invincibility of natural phenomena".
Turin and communism
Calvino settled in
TurinTurin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
in 1945, after a long hesitation over living there or in
MilanMilan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
. He often humorously belittled this choice, describing Turin as a "city that is serious but sad". Returning to university, he abandoned Agriculture for the Arts Faculty. A year later, he was initiated into the literary world by
Elio VittoriniElio Vittorini was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S...
, who published his short story "Andato al comando" (1945; "Gone to Headquarters") in Il Politecnico, a Turin-based weekly magazine associated with the university. The horror of the war had not only provided the raw material for his literary ambitions but deepened his commitment to the Communist cause. Viewing civilian life as a continuation of the partisan struggle, he confirmed his membership of the
Italian Communist PartyThe Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
. On reading
Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
's
State and RevolutionThe State and Revolution , by Vladimir Lenin, describes the role of the State in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.Citing Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Lenin...
, he plunged into post-war political life, associating himself chiefly with the worker's movement in Turin.
In 1947, he graduated with a Master's
thesisA dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
on
Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
, wrote short stories in his spare time, and landed a job in the publicity department at the
EinaudiEinaudi may refer to;*Giulio Einaudi , an Italian publisher**Giulio Einaudi editore, now an imprint of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore*Luigi Einaudi , an Italian politician*His son Mario Einaudi , an Italian political scientist...
publishing house run by
Giulio EinaudiGiulio Einaudi was one of the most important publishers in Italian history.-Biography:Giulio Einaudi was born in Dogliani in 1912, the son of Luigi Einaudi, future president of the Italian Republic, and his wife Ida.He attended the Massimo d'Azeglio liceo classico, and became a student of noted...
. Although brief, his stint put him in regular contact with
Cesare PaveseCesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.- Early life and education :...
,
Natalia GinzburgNatalia Ginzburg née Levi was an award-winning Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize...
,
Norberto BobbioNorberto Bobbio was an Italian philosopher of law and political sciences and a historian of political thought. He also wrote regularly for the Turin-based daily La Stampa....
, and many other left-wing intellectuals and writers. He then left Einaudi to work as a journalist for the official Communist daily,
L'Unitàl'Unità is an Italian left-wing newspaper, originally founded as official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party.-History:L'Unità was founded by Antonio Gramsci on 12 February 1924, as the newspaper of workers and peasants, the official newspaper of Italian Communist Party : it was printed in...
, and the newborn Communist political magazine, Rinascita. During this period, Pavese and poet
Alfonso GattoAlfonso Gatto was an Italian author. Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century and a major exponent of hermetic poetry.-Biography:...
were Calvino's closest friends and mentors.
His first novel, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (
The Path to the Nest of SpidersThe Path to the Spiders' Nests is a 1947 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The narrative is a coming-of-age story, set against the backdrop of World War II. It was Calvino's first novel.-Plot:...
) written with valuable editorial advice from Pavese, won the Premio Riccione on publication in 1947. With sales topping 5000 copies, a surprise success in postwar Italy, the novel inaugurated Calvino's
neorealistIn art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman at the beginning of World War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life...
period. In a clairvoyant essay, Pavese praised the young writer as a "squirrel of the pen" who "climbed into the trees, more for fun than fear, to observe partisan life as a fable of the forest". In 1948, he interviewed one of his literary idols,
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, travelling with
Natalia GinzburgNatalia Ginzburg née Levi was an award-winning Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize...
to his home in
StresaStresa is a town and comune of about 5,000 inhabitants on the shores of the Lago Maggiore in the region of Piedmont, northern Italy; it is situated on the road and rail routes to the Simplon pass, about 90 km north-west of Milan. Since the early 20th century, the main source of income has been the...
.
Ultimo viene il corvo (
The Crow Comes LastThe Crow Comes Last is a short story collection by Italo Calvino published in 1949. It consists of thirty stories inspired by the novelist's own experiences fighting with the Communist Garibaldi Brigades in the Maritime Alps during the final phases of World War II. The stories also include sharp...
), a collection of stories based on his wartime experiences, was published to acclaim in 1949. Despite the triumph, Calvino grew increasingly worried by his inability to compose a worthy second novel. He returned to Einaudi in 1950, responsible this time for the literary volumes. He eventually became a consulting editor, a position that allowed him to hone his writing talent, discover new writers, and develop into "a reader of texts". In late 1951, presumably to advance in the Communist Party, he spent two months in the
Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
as correspondent for l'Unità. While in Moscow, he learned of his father's death on 25 October. The articles and correspondence he produced from this visit were published in 1952, winning the Saint-Vincent Prize for journalism.
Over a seven-year period, Calvino wrote three realist novels, The White Schooner (1947–1949), Youth in Turin (1950–1951), and The Queen's Necklace (1952–54), but all were deemed defective. During the eighteen months it took to complete I giovani del Po (Youth in Turin), he made an important self-discovery: "I began doing what came most naturally to me – that is, following the memory of the things I had loved best since boyhood. Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic." The result was Il visconte dimezzato (1952;
The Cloven ViscountThe Cloven Viscount is a fantasy novel written by Italo Calvino. It was first published by Einaudi in 1952 and in English in 1962 by William Collins, with a translation by Archibald Colquhoun.-Plot:...
) composed in 30 days between July and September 1951. The protagonist, a seventeenth century viscount sundered in two by a cannonball, incarnated Calvino's growing political doubts and the divisive turbulence of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Skillfully interweaving elements of the
fableA fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
and the
fantasyFantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
genres, the allegorical novel launched him as a modern "
fabulistA fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
". In 1954, Giulio Einaudi commissioned his Fiabe Italiane (1956;
Italian FolktalesItalian Folktales is a collection of 200 Italian folktales published in 1956 by Italo Calvino. Calvino began to undertake the project that will lead to the Italian Folktales in 1954, influenced by Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale; his intention was to emulate the Brothers Grimm in...
) on the basis of the question, "Is there an Italian equivalent of the
Brothers GrimmThe Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
?" For two years, Calvino collated tales found in 19th century collections across Italy then translated 200 of the finest from various dialects into Italian. Key works he read at this time were
Vladimir ProppVladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.- Biography :...
's Morphology of the Folktale and Historical Roots of Russian Fairy Tales, stimulating his own ideas on the origin, shape and function of the story.
In 1952 Calvino wrote with
Giorgio BassaniGiorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.-Biography:Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico , brother Paolo, and sister Jenny...
for
Botteghe OscureBotteghe Oscure was a literary journal, published and edited in Rome by Marguerite Caetani from 1948 until 1960.It was named after Botteghe Oscure Street, where the editorial office was located...
, a magazine named after the popular name of the party's head-offices. He also worked for Il Contemporaneo, a
MarxistMarxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
weekly.
From 1955 to 1958 Calvino had an affair with Italian actress Elsa De Giorgi, a married, older woman. Excerpts of the hundreds of love letters Calvino wrote to her were published in the
Corriere della SeraThe Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...
in 2004, causing some controversy.
After communism
In 1957, disillusioned by the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Calvino left the Italian Communist Party. In his letter of resignation published in
L'Unitàl'Unità is an Italian left-wing newspaper, originally founded as official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party.-History:L'Unità was founded by Antonio Gramsci on 12 February 1924, as the newspaper of workers and peasants, the official newspaper of Italian Communist Party : it was printed in...
on 7 August, he explained the reason of his dissent (the violent suppression of the Hungarian uprising and the revelation of
Joseph StalinJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's crimes) while confirming his "confidence in the democratic perspectives" of world Communism. He withdrew from taking an active role in politics and never joined another party. Ostracized by the ICP party leader
Palmiro TogliattiPalmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
and his supporters on publication of Becalmed in the Antilles (La gran bonaccia delle Antille), a satirical allegory of the party’s immobilism, Calvino began writing
The Baron in the TreesThe Baron in the Trees is a 1957 Italian novel by Italo Calvino. Described as a conte philosophique and a metaphor for independence, it tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom....
. Completed in three months and published in 1957, the fantasy is based on the "problem of the intellectual’s political commitment at a time of shattered illusions". He found new outlets for his periodic writings in the journals Città aperta and Tempo presente, the magazine Passato e presente, and the weekly Italia Domani. With Vittorini in 1959, he became co-editor of Il Menabò, a cultural journal devoted to literature in the modern industrial age, a position he held until 1966.
Despite severe restrictions in the US against foreigners holding communist views, Calvino was allowed to visit the United States, where he stayed six months from 1959 to 1960 (four of which he spent in New York), after an invitation by the
Ford FoundationThe Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
. Calvino was particularly impressed by the "New World": "Naturally I visited the South and also California, but I always felt a New Yorker. My city is New York." The letters he wrote to Einaudi describing this visit to the United States were first published as "American Diary 1959–1960" in Hermit in Paris in 2003.
In 1962 Calvino met Argentinian translator Esther Judith Singer ("Chichita") and married her in 1964 in
HavanaHavana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, during a trip in which he visited his birthplace and was introduced to
Ernesto "Che" GuevaraErnesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
. On 15 October 1967, a few days after Guevara's death, Calvino wrote a tribute to him that was published in Cuba in 1968, and in Italy thirty years later. He and his wife settled in Rome in the via Monte Brianzo where their daughter, Giovanna, was born in 1965. Once again working for Einaudi, Calvino began publishing some of his "Cosmicomics" in Il Caffè, a literary magazine.
Later life and work
Vittorini's death in 1966 greatly affected Calvino. He went through what he called an "intellectual depression", which the writer himself described as an important passage in his life: "...I ceased to be young. Perhaps it's a metabolic process, something that comes with age, I'd been young for a long time, perhaps too long, suddenly I felt that I had to begin my old age, yes, old age, perhaps with the hope of prolonging it by beginning it early."
In the fermenting atmosphere that evolved into 1968's cultural revolution (the French May), he moved with his family to Paris in 1967, setting up home in a villa in the Square de Châtillon. Nicknamed L'ironique amusé, he was invited by
Raymond QueneauRaymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
in 1968 to join the
OulipoOulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...
(Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) group of experimental writers where he met
Roland BarthesRoland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
,
Georges PerecGeorges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
, and
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
, all of whom influenced his later production. That same year, he turned down the
Viareggio PrizeThe Viareggio Literary Prize is a prestigious Italian literary award, whose first edition was in 1930, and is named after the Tuscan city of Viareggio...
for Ti con zero (Time and the Hunter) on the grounds that it was an award given by "institutions emptied of meaning". He accepted, however, both the Asti Prize and the Feltrinelli Prize for his writing in 1970 and 1972, respectively. In two autobiographical essays published in 1962 and 1970, Calvino described himself as "atheist" and his outlook as "non-religious".
Calvino had more intense contacts with the academic world, with notable experiences at the
SorbonneThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
(with Barthes) and the University of
UrbinoUrbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482...
. His interests included classical studies:
Honoré de BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
,
Ludovico AriostoLudovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso . The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions...
,
DanteDurante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, Ignacio de Loyola,
CervantesMiguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
,
ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
,
Cyrano de BergeracHercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duelist. He is now best remembered for the works of fiction which have been woven, often very loosely, around his life story, most notably the 1897 play by Edmond Rostand...
, and
Giacomo LeopardiGiacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist...
. Between 1972–1973 Calvino published two short stories, "The Name, the Nose" and the
OulipoOulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...
-inspired "
The Burning of the Abominable HouseThe Burning of the Abominable House is a short story by the Italian novelist Italo Calvino...
" in the Italian edition of
PlayboyPlayboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
. He became a regular contributor to the important Italian newspaper
Corriere della SeraThe Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...
, spending his summer vacations in a house constructed in Roccamare near
Castiglione della PescaiaCastiglione della Pescaia is an ancient seaside town in the province of Grosseto , Italy. The modern city grew around a medieval fortress and a large fishery, from which it got its designation...
,
TuscanyTuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
.
In 1975 Calvino was made Honorary Member of the
American AcademyAmerican Academy can refer to:*American Academy in Berlin*Dubai American Academy*American Academy of Larnaca*American Academy in Rome*Üsküdar American Academy...
. Awarded the
Austrian State Prize for European LiteratureThe Austrian State Prize for European Literature , also known as the European Literary Award , is a literary prize in Austria awarded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Art to European writers...
in 1976, he visited Mexico, Japan, and the United States where he gave a series of lectures in several American towns. After his mother died in 1978 at the age of 92, Calvino sold Villa Meridiana, the family home in San Remo. Two years later, he moved to Rome in Piazza Campo Marzio near the
PantheonThe Pantheon ,Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's Natural History in describing this edifice: Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis templi eius Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.from ,...
and began editing the work of
Tommaso LandolfiTommaso Landolfi was an Italian author and translator.Born in Pico, province of Frosinone, he wrote numerous grotesque tales and novels, sometimes on the border of speculative fiction, science fiction and realism...
for Rizzoli. Awarded the French
Légion d'honneurThe Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
in 1981, he also accepted to be jury president of the 29th
Venice Film FestivalThe Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
.
During the summer of 1985, Calvino prepared a series of lectures to be delivered at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in the fall. On 6 September, he was admitted to the ancient hospital of
Santa Maria della ScalaSanta Maria della Scala is a former hospital, now turned into a museum complex, in Siena, Tuscany, Italy. Located next to the city's cathedral, it is one of the most ancient European hospitals....
in Siena, where he died during the night between 18 and 19 September of a cerebral hemorrhage. His lecture notes were published posthumously in Italian in 1988 and in English as
Six Memos for the Next MillenniumSix Memos for the Next Millennium is a book based on a series of lectures written by Italo Calvino for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, but never delivered as Calvino died before leaving Italy. The lectures were originally written in Italian and translated by Patrick Creagh. The...
in 1993.
Authors he helped publish
- Mario Rigoni Stern
Mario Rigoni Stern was an Italian author and World War II veteran.His first novel Il sergente nella neve, published in 1953 , draws on his own experience as a Sergeant Major in the Alpini corp during the disastrous retreat from Russia in World War II...
- Gianni Celati
Gianni Celati is an Italian writer, translator and literary critic.- Biography :Gianni Celati was born in Sondrio, but spent his infancy and adolescence in the province of Ferrara...
- Andrea De Carlo
Andrea De Carlo is a popular Italian writer.-Biography:Andrea De Carlo grew up in Milan. His "love-hatred" relationship with the capital of Lombardy would come to be detailed in his novels...
- Daniele Del Giudice
Daniele Del Giudice is an Italian author and lecturer. He lives in Venice, where he teaches Theatrical Literature at the University Iuav of Venice.-Prizes:*Viareggio Prize *Bergamo Prize...
- Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia was an Italian writer, novelist, essayist, playwright and politician. Some of his works have been made into films, including Open Doors and Il giorno della civetta .- Biography :Sciascia was born in Racalmuto, Sicily...
Selected bibliography
A selected bibliography of Calvino's writings, listing the works that have been translated into and published in English, and a few major untranslated works. More exhaustive bibliographies can be found in
Martin McLaughlinMartin L. McLaughlin is Professor of Italian and Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford where he is a Fellow of Magdalen College...
's Italo Calvino, and Beno Weiss's Understanding Italo Calvino.
Fiction
| Title | Original
publication | English
translation | |
Fiction collections
| Title | Original
publication | English
translation | |
Essays and other writings
| Title | Original
publication | English
translation | |
Autobiographical works
| Title | Original
publication | English
translation | |
Libretti
Translations
Original Title
Translated title | Original Author | Original
publication | | publication
Selected filmography
- Boccaccio '70
Boccaccio '70 is a 1962 Italian portmanteau film directed by Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio de Sica, from an idea by Cesare Zavattini...
, 1962 (co-wrote screenplay of Renzo e Luciano segment directed by Mario MonicelliMario Monicelli was an Italian director and screenwriter and one of the masters of the Commedia all'Italiana , three times nominated for Oscar.-Biography:...
)
- L'Amore difficile, 1963 (wrote L'avventura di un soldato segment directed by Nino Manfredi)
- Tiko and the Shark, 1964 (co-wrote screenplay directed by Folco Quilici)
Film and television adaptations
- The Nonexistent Knight by Pino Zac, 1969 (Italian animated film based on the novel)
- Amores dificiles by Ana Luisa Ligouri, 1983 (13' Mexican short)
- L'Aventure d'une baigneuse by Philippe Donzelot, 1991 (14' French short based on The Adventure of a Bather in Difficult Loves )
- Fantaghirò by Lamberto Bava, 1991 (TV adaptation based on Fanta-Ghirò the Beautiful in Italian Folktales
Italian Folktales is a collection of 200 Italian folktales published in 1956 by Italo Calvino. Calvino began to undertake the project that will lead to the Italian Folktales in 1954, influenced by Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale; his intention was to emulate the Brothers Grimm in...
)
- Solidarity by Nancy Kiang, 2006 (10' American short)
- Conscience by Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen, 2009 (10' Australian short)
Films on Calvino
- Damian Pettigrew
Damian Pettigrew is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, author, and multimedia artist, best known for his cinematic portraits of Balthus and Federico Fellini...
, Inside Italo (Lo specchio di Calvino). Co-produced by ARTE FranceArte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, Italy's Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, and the National Film Board of CanadaThe National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
, the recently completed feature-length docufictionDocufiction is a neologism which refers to the cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction. More precisely, it is a documentary contaminated with fictional elements, in real time, filmed when the events take place, and in which someone - the character - plays his own role in real life...
stars Neri Marcorè as the Italian writer. Slated for a 2012 international release, the film also uses in-depth conversations videotaped at Calvino's Rome penthouse a year before his death in 1985 and rare footage from RAIRAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...
, INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuelThe Institut national de l'audiovisuel , is a repository of all French radio and television audiovisual archives. Additionally it provides customers with a free and immediate access to archives of countries such as Afghanistan and Cambodia...
), and BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television archives.
Awards
- 1946 – L'Unità
l'Unità is an Italian left-wing newspaper, originally founded as official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party.-History:L'Unità was founded by Antonio Gramsci on 12 February 1924, as the newspaper of workers and peasants, the official newspaper of Italian Communist Party : it was printed in...
Prize (shared with Marcello Venturi) for the short story, Minefield (Campo di mine)
- 1947 – Riccione Prize for The Path to the Nest of Spiders
The Path to the Spiders' Nests is a 1947 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The narrative is a coming-of-age story, set against the backdrop of World War II. It was Calvino's first novel.-Plot:...
- 1952 – Saint-Vincent Prize
- 1957 – Viareggio Prize
The Viareggio Literary Prize is a prestigious Italian literary award, whose first edition was in 1930, and is named after the Tuscan city of Viareggio...
for The Baron in the TreesThe Baron in the Trees is a 1957 Italian novel by Italo Calvino. Described as a conte philosophique and a metaphor for independence, it tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom....
- 1959 – Bagutta Prize
The Bagutta Prize is an Italian literary prize.It originated in Milan's Bagutta Ristorante. The writer Riccardo Bacchelli discovered the restaurant and soon he had numerous friends who would dine together and discuss books. On 11 November 1927 they decided to create a literary prize and named it...
- 1960 – Salento Prize for Our Ancestors
Our Ancestors is the name of Italo Calvino's "heraldic trilogy" that comprises The Cloven Viscount , The Baron in the Trees , and The Nonexistent Knight ....
- 1963 – International Charles Veillon Prize for The Watcher
- 1970 – Asti Prize
- 1972 – Feltrinelli Prize
The Feltrinelli Prize is a prestigious award for achievement in the arts, music, literature, history, philosophy, medicine, and physical and mathematical sciences...
for Invisible CitiesInvisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.-Description:The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo...
- 1976 – Austrian State Prize for European Literature
The Austrian State Prize for European Literature , also known as the European Literary Award , is a literary prize in Austria awarded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Art to European writers...
- 1981 – Legion of Honour
- 1982 – World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
- Life Achievement
Print
Primary sources
- Calvino, Italo. Adam, One Afternoon (trans. Archibald Colquhoun, Peggy Wright). London: Minerva, 1992.
- —. The Castle of Crossed Destinies (trans. William Weaver
William Fense Weaver is an English language translator of modern Italian literature.-Biography:William Weaver is perhaps best known for his translations of the work of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, and has translated many other Italian authors over the course of a career spanning more than fifty...
). London: Secker & Warburg, 1977
- —. Cosmicomics (trans. William Weaver). London: Picador, 1993.
- —. The Crow Comes Last (Ultimo viene il corvo). Turin: Einaudi, 1949.
- —. Difficult Loves. Smog. A Plunge into Real Estate (trans. William Weaver, Donald Selwyn Carne-Ross). London: Picador, 1985.
- —. Hermit in Paris (trans. Martin McLaughlin). London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.
- —. If on a winter's night a traveller (trans. William Weaver). London: Vintage, 1998. ISBN 0-919630-23-5
- —. Invisible Cities (trans. William Weaver). London: Secker & Warburg, 1974.
- —. Italian Fables (trans. Louis Brigante). New York: Collier, 1961. (50 tales)
- —. Italian Folk Tales (trans. Sylvia Mulcahy). London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1975. (24 tales)
- —. Italian Folktales (trans. George Martin). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980. (complete 200 tales)
- —. Marcovaldo or the Seasons in the City (trans. William Weaver). London: Minerva, 1993.
- —. Mr. Palomar (trans. William Weaver). London: Vintage, 1999.
- —. Our Ancestors (trans. A. Colquhoun). London: Vintage, 1998.
- —. The Path to the Nest of Spiders (trans. Archibald Colquhoun). Boston: Beacon, 1957.
- —. The Path to the Spiders' Nests (trans. A. Colquhoun, revised by Martin McLaughlin). London: Jonathan Cape, 1993.
- —. t zero (trans. William Weaver). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969.
- —. The Road to San Giovanni (trans. Tim Parks). New York: Vintage International, 1993.
- —. Six Memos for the Next Millennium (trans. Patrick Creagh). New York: Vintage International, 1993.
- —. The Watcher and Other Stories (trans. William Weaver). New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1971.
Secondary sources
- Barenghi, Mario, and Bruno Falcetto. Romanzi e racconti di Italo Calvino. Milano: Mondadori, 1991.
- Bernardini Napoletano, Francesca. I segni nuovi di Italo Calvino. Rome: Bulzoni, 1977.
- Bonura, Giuseppe. Invito alla lettura di Calvino. Milan: U. Mursia, 1972.
- Calvino, Italo. Uno scrittore pomeridiano: Intervista sull'arte della narrativa a cura di William Weaver
William Fense Weaver is an English language translator of modern Italian literature.-Biography:William Weaver is perhaps best known for his translations of the work of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, and has translated many other Italian authors over the course of a career spanning more than fifty...
e Damian PettigrewDamian Pettigrew is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, author, and multimedia artist, best known for his cinematic portraits of Balthus and Federico Fellini...
con un ricordo di Pietro CitatiPietro Citati is a famous Italian writer and literary critic.He has written critical biographies of Goethe, Alexander the Great, Kafka and Marcel Proust as well as a short but unforgettable memoir on his thirty-year friendship with Italo Calvino.In Kafka, Pietro Citati has the great writer...
. Rome: minimum fax, 2003. ISBN 978-88-87765-86-1.
- Corti, Maria. 'Intervista: Italo Calvino' in Autografo 2 (October 1985): 47–53.
- Di Carlo, Franco. Come leggere I nostri antenati. Milan: U. Mursia, 1958. (1998 ISBN 978-88-425-2215-7).
- McLaughlin, Martin. Italo Calvino. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-7486-0735-8 (pb. ISBN 978-0-7486-0917-8).
- Weiss, Beno. Understanding Italo Calvino. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-87249-858-7.
Online
Further reading
General
- Benussi, Cristina (1989). Introduzione a Calvino. Rome: Laterza.
- Bartoloni, Paolo (2003). Interstitial Writing: Calvino, Caproni, Sereni and Svevo. Leicester: Troubador.
- Bloom, Harold (ed.)(2002). Bloom's Major Short Story Writers: Italo Calvino. Broomall, Pennsylvania: Chelsea House.
- Cannon, JoAnn (1981). Italo Calvino: Writer and Critic. Ravenna: Longo Press.
- Carter III, Albert Howard (1987). Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press.
- Chubb, Stephen (1997). I, Writer, I, Reader: the Concept of the Self in the Fiction of Italo Calvino. Leicester: Troubador.
- Gabriele, Tomassina (1994). Italo Calvino: Eros and Language. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
- Jeannet, Angela M. (2000) Under the Radiant Sun and the Crescent Moon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Markey, Constance (1999). Italo Calvino. A Journey Toward Postmodernism. Gainsville: Florida University Press.
- —. Interview. "Italo Calvino: The Contemporary Fabulist" in Italian Quarterly, 23 (spring 1982): 77–85.
- Pilz, Kerstin (2005). Mapping Complexity: Literature and Science in the Works of Italo Calvino. Leicester: Troubador.
- Ricci, Franco (1990). Difficult Games: A Reading of 'I racconti' by Italo Calvino. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
- – (2001). Painting with Words, Writing with Pictures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-3507-8
External links
Excerpts, essays, artwork