#Italo Calvino

[davidhudson]

Italo Calvino, October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985.

[thebeautifulbook]

INVISIBLE CITIES by Italo Calvino. [San Diego: Harvest, 1972]

Art Binding by Dmitri Koutsipetsidis, He’s known for his great bindings on FRANKENSTEIN, THE WASTELAND, THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

source — about the design

source — read

[metaphrasis]

“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern? Every time I seek to relive the emotion of a previous reading, I experience different and unexpected impressions, and do not find again those of before. At certain moments it seems to me that between one reading and the next there is a progression: in the sense, for example, of penetrating further into the spirit of the text, or of increasing my critical detachment. At other moments, on the contrary, I seem to retain the memory of the readings of a single book one next to another, enthusiastic or cold or hostile, scattered in time without a perspective, without a thread that ties them together. The conclusion I have reached is that reading is an operation without object; or that its true object is itself. The book is an accessory aid, or even a pretext.”

— Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

[dandelionjack]

WHAT IS A DREAM CITY? what it says on the tin — an urban environment that you have involuntarily visited multiple, repeated times in dreams. to be a dream city, it must not be a real-life place, whether one you have physically travelled to/lived in or one that you have seen videos of.

doesn’t need to look “alien”. mine, though some of the architecture is quite distinctive, resembles a southern european city, with most of the structures seeming 19th century

the storylines that play out and characters which feature may vary, but the setting crucially must remain the same or at least very similar. certain recurring locations must be present (buildings, streets, landmarks, a river, a bar — for me at least, but once again these locations could be anything in your personal experience).

you will find that, despite logically never having “been” here in reality, you always know where to go, as if you’re a long-term resident or at least a well-prepared tourist.

the public transport is usually weird. for me it’s mostly a winding system of subway networks, complex and misleading like a labyrinth, naturally. what’s a dream city without a maze

so, that’s enough detail for you to know which button to vote for by now. no nuance. either you drop by the dream city on the regular or you don’t.

reblog for reach. and no i don’t have a clue on what i’m planning to do with the results, thanks for asking

[exhaled-spirals]

— Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

[fuoridalcloro]

Non credo a niente che sia facile, rapido, spontaneo, improvvisato, approssimativo. Credo alla forza di ciò che è lento, calmo, ostinato, senza fanatismi né entusiasmi. Non credo a nessuna liberazione, né individuale, né collettiva che si ottenga senza il costo d’un’autodisciplina, di un’autocostruzione, d’uno sforzo.

-Italo Calvino-

[kafkasapartment]

"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."

Italo Calvino, “Invisible Cities”

[undinesea]

What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

Italo Calvino, from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

[arvtisticfra]

[garadinervi]

Italo Calvino: Sechs Vorschläge für das nächste Jahrtausend. Harvard-Vorlesungen [Aus dem Italienischen von Burkhart Kroeber. München, Wien 1991], Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe

[infugacolbarone]

Amo soprattutto Stendhal perché solo in lui tensione morale individuale, tensione storica, slancio della vita sono una cosa sola, lineare tensione romanzesca.

Amo Hemingway perché è matter of fact, understatement, volontà di felicità, tristezza.

Amo Puskin perché è limpidezza, ironia e serietà.

Amo Stevenson perché pare che voli.

Amo Conrad perché naviga l’abisso e non ci affonda.

Amo Cechov perché non va più in là di dove va.

Amo Tolstoj perché alle volte mi pare d’essere lì lì per capire come fa e invece niente.

Amo Manzoni perché fino a poco fa l’odiavo.

Amo Flaubert perché dopo di lui non si può più pensare di fare come lui.

Amo Poe dello Scarabeo d’oro.

Amo Twain di Huckleberry Finn.

Amo Kipling dei Libri della Giungla.

Amo Nievo perché l’ho riletto tante volte divertendomi come la prima.

Amo Jane Austen perché non la leggo mai ma sono contento che ci sia.

Amo Gogol perché deforma con nettezza, cattiveria e misura.

Amo Dostoevskij perché deforma con coerenza, furore e senza misura.

Amo Balzac perché è visionario.

Amo Kafka perché è realista.

Amo Maupassant perché è superficiale.

Amo la Mansfield perché è intelligente.

Amo Fitzgerald perché è insoddisfatto.

Amo Radiguet perché la giovinezza non torna più.

Amo Svevo perché bisognerà pur invecchiare.

Amo…"

- Italo Calvino, dalla prefazione a "Perché leggere i classici"

[davidhudson]

Pier Paolo Pasolini and Italo Calvino.

[onenakedfarmer]

ITALO CALVINO If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

[calliop-e]

Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities

[italian-lit-tournament]

The participating authors for the Italian Lit(erature) Tournament: the general list + a google form to add other proposals

Podesti Francesco - Torquato Tasso reading Jerusalem Delivered to the Estensi court

The start of the Italian Lit(erature) Tournament (first edition) is getting closer, but first I want to post the general list of the authors partecipants.

The principal issue is that every literary canon is constantly changing, with more critical studies over the years. I've thought about it, read and searched, and the solution I found has two parts:

I will take the principal authors from this list, which in turn is based from the studies of Gianfranco Contini and Asor Rosa. The list is too long and many names are only chronicles and essayists, so I'll chose the principal ones, trying to balance between north/south Italy and male/female authors (taking into account that many authors that we study are men). As you will see below under the cut, the list is already pretty long, doing some math the challenge will be 2/3 months long.

Still, I recognise that this isn't 100% unbiased and fair, so I opened a free and quick google form when you can add a maximum of two authors that you don't see in the list. This considerable limit is to avoid having too many names - if in some answers I see more than 2 names, I'll take into account only the first 2 listed.

IMPORTANT! 👇

After much thoughts, I also chose to don't include living authors or authors death only recently (before January 2023). The reason is simply to avoid potential issues in the community, like bashing between fandom or admirers of some specific author, or going too far like offending some people near the author still alive or recently deceased. Maybe if this tournament will end well, a second edition could be made next year and maybe with the addition of living authors! (I'm already thinking to do an italian or european cinema tournament in the future but this is still in the draft).

Under the cut, you will find the list of the authors already part of the challenge, name-surname with the surname in alphabetical order. If you don't see a name that you want to see, use the form to add it!

edit: I added the ones from the surbey so far, all in italics. There are names that have been sent but already on the list.

Dante Alighieri

Sibilla Aleramo

Vittorio Alfieri

Cecco Angiolieri

Pietro Aretino

Ludovico Ariosto

Matteo Bandello

Anna Banti

Giambattista Basile

Giorgio Bassani

Cesare Beccaria

Maria Bellonci

Pietro Bembo

Matteo Maria Boiardo

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giordano Bruno

Dino Buzzati

Italo Calvino

Andrea Camilleri

Giosuè Carducci

Guido Cavalcanti

Carlo Collodi

Vittoria Colonna

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Giacomo da Lentini

Caterina da Siena

Alba de Céspedes

Cielo (Ciullo) d'Alcamo

Edoardo De Filippo

Federico de Roberto

Grazia Deledda

Umberto Eco

Beppe Fenoglio

Marsilio Ficino

Dario Fo

Ugo Foscolo

Veronica Franco

Carlo Emilio Gadda

Natalia Ginzburg

Carlo Goldoni

Antonio Gramsci

Francesco Guicciardini

Tommaso Landolfi

Giacomo Leopardi

Carlo Levi

Primo Levi

Carla Lonzi

Niccolò Machiavelli

Alessandro Manzoni

Giovanbattista Marino

Giovanni Meli

Pietro Metastasio

Eugenio Montale

Elsa Morante

Alberto Moravia

Anna Maria Ortese

Giuseppe Parini

Goffredo Parise

Giovanni Pascoli

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cesare Pavese

Francesco Petrarca

Luigi Pirandello

Angelo Poliziano

Luigi Pulci

Salvator Quasimodo

Gianni Rodari

Lalla Romano

Amelia Rosselli

Umberto Saba

Emilio Salgari

Jacopo Sannazaro

Goliarda Sapienza

Leonardo Sciascia

Matilde Serao

Gaspara Stampa

Mario Rigoni Stern

Italo Svevo

Antonio Tabucchi

Torquato Tasso

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Pier Vittorio Tondelli

Giovanni Verga

Giambattista Vico

Renata Viganò

Elio Vittorini

Giuseppe Ungaretti

[nobeerreviews]

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

-- Italo Calvino

(Chania, Greece)