THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOON IN ITALO CALVINO 1 In this paper, I am going to discuss the significance of the moon in Italo Calvino (1923-1985), taking into consideration works such as Le Cosmicomiche, Palomar and Lezioni Americane. I will try to highlight how Calvino detaches himself from the illustrious tradition of precedent lunar voyage, by emphasising the originality of his position, and, at the same time, the closeness to his greatest model, Ludovico Ariosto. I will focus on how Calvino approached the moon from both a scientific and poetic perspective and how the satellite became in his work a meaningful allegory for a personal quest of knowledge of the world and at the same time of one’s inner self. While trying to do so, I will pay attention to the way he deploys the moon in his Le Cosmicomiche to show the inconsistency of an anthropocentric perception of reality, and to underline the strong bond between men and nature. The basis of my discussion relies on Calvino’s holistic perception of reality, according to which the cosmic and the human deeply affect and reflect one another, even transforming and changing each other. I will portray, thus, how Calvino’s moon becomes a revealing force that shows the inner and truest nature of earthly appearances, while at the same time keeping its poetic significance of lightness and floating enchantment. Calvino devoted much time and space to the moon and to its significance for men, notably writing four Cosmic tales (La Distanza dalla Luna, La Molle Luna, La Luna come Fungo, Le Figlie della Luna) about it, published respectively in Le Cosmicomiche (1965), Ti con Zero (1967) and La Memoria del Mondo (1968). He set forth a renaissance of the tradition of lunar and cosmic voyages, which had started with Lucian of Samosata and resumed in the second half of the seventeenth century by authors such as Cyrano de Bergerac, Francis Godwin and Edgar Allan Poe. Calvino starts from traditional premises that connect his tales to the sci-fi genre of lunar travels, but also goes beyond it, drawing inspiration from authors such as Giordano Bruno, Galielo Galilei, Immanuel Kant and Giacomo Leopardi. Calvino inserts himself in the science fiction genre of lunar voyages by plunging himself into a scientific-poetic search in Le Cosmicomiche, which, in both scientific and ironic terms, describes the origins and evolution of cosmic time and space. Science has, in fact, a crucial role in 2 Calvino’s work, as his familiar background and scientific education compelled him to think in scientific terms. His family was a family of science professors and he himself attended agricultural studies before switching to literature, thus science shaped almost his entire work. Each of Calvino’s cosmic stories, starts with a scientific fact that makes these myths about the origins of our world plausible and gives verisimilitude to the narration: Secondo Sir George Darwin, la Luna si sarebbe staccata dalla Terra per effetto d’una marea solare. L’attrazione del Sole agì sul rivestimento di roccia più leggera (granite) come su un fluido, sollevandone una parte e strappandola al nostro pianeta. Le acque che allora ricoprivano interamente la Terra vennero in larga parte inghiottite dalla voragine che la fuga della Luna aveva aperta (cioè l’Oceano Pacifico) lasciando allo scoperto il restante granite, che si frammentò e corrugò nei continenti. Senza la Luna, l’evoluzione della vita sulla Terra, se pur ci fosse stata, sarebbe stata ben diversa. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 288) Moreover, the narration offers very attentive descriptions and analyses of the cosmic world and its processes, combined with a meticulous objectivism and descriptivism that belong to natural sciences, and which also characterized the literary genre of cosmic travels. Generally speaking, in fact, imaginary lunar travels featured strangers and explorers who, occasionally as parody, described with excessive details the customs and traditions of newly discovered lands while employing a specific ethnographic and scientific language to make the travel quite plausible and reliable. The moon is often described through an encyclopedic use of details and an anthropomorphic language that contributes to create a very real and disgusting picture of it. In the short story The Distance from the Moon, for example, moon milk, that characters go to collect from the satellite, is described in quite disgusting and detailed terms: Era composta essenzialmente di: succhi vegetali, girini di rana, bitume, lenticchie, miele d’api, cristalli d’amido, uova di storione, muffe, pollini, sostanze gelatinose, vermi, resine, pepe, sali minerali, materiale di combustione. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 12) Moreover, like his illustrious predecessors, what most interests Calvino about the moon is its capacity of opening a dialogue with the universe and discarding the arrogant and anthropocentric human perspective. Indeed, following the Copernican revolutions in 1543 with the publication of 3 Copernicus’ De Revolutionisbus Orbium Coelestium (15439 and Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus Nuncius (1610), writers’ imagination got deeply affected by the discovery that Earth is a planet, one of many others and started thus speculating on the analogies of other planets and celestial bodies to Earth and the probability of them being populated by creatures, possibly humans. They started presenting, thus, those worlds, and the moon itself, as counter-worlds to our own and as such they are meant to pose a challenge to our understanding of ourselves as human beings (paper appena scaricato). However, in his four cosmic tales, Calvino does not do that by depicting an inhabited moon, the location of a different society or of a different kind of humanity through whose filter one can observe ours. On the contrary, he portrays the pointlessness of human arrogance and supposed superiority in front of the powerful natural and cosmic influence over men and our planet. Calvino’s Copernican revolution, in fact, consists in showing the strong and equal relationship between the moon and man, and how man is only one ring in a much larger cosmic chain. He creates a new image of man, a new relationship between man and nature that is translated in a new way of looking at the world: La lacerazione che c’è nel Visconte Dimezzato e forse in tutto ciò che ho scritto, e la coscienza della lacerazione porta il desiderio d’armonia. Ma ogni illusione d’armonia nelle cose contingenti è mistificatoria, perciò bisogna cercarla su altri piani. Così sono arrivato al cosmo. Ma il cosmo non esiste, nemmeno per la scienza, è solo l’orizzonte di una coscienza extra-individuale, dove superare tutti gli sciovinismi di un’idea particolarista dell’uomo, e raggiungere magari un’ottica non antropomorfa. In questa ascesa non ho mai avuto né compiacimento né contemplazione. Piuttosto senso di responsabilità verso l’universo. Siamo anello di una catena che parte a scala subatomica o pre-galattica: dare ai nostri gesti, ai nostri pensieri la continuità del prima di noi e dopo di noi, è una cosa in cui credo. E vorrei che questo si raccogliesse da quell’insieme di frammenti che è la mia opera. (Calvino in Bucciantini, 91) Calvino, rather than describing flights to the moon and representing the discovery of new worlds and utopian societies on the satellite, like his illustrious predecessors were doing, instead uses the moon to present a new outlook and reflection on our world and on men. This is most evident in the short story La Molle Luna, which presents a strong critique to anthropocentrism through the character of the rigid and cold astronomer Sybil who in the end is 4 punished for her disdain, cynicism and attitude of superiority toward the soft moon, so different and inferior to the strong and hard Earth: Certo fa schifo anche a me, ma se pensi che finalmente è stabilito che la Terra è diversa e superiore e che noi siamo da questa parte, credo che possiamo per un momento prenderci anche il gusto di sprofondarci dentro, perché tanto poi… (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 162) The story describes the astronomical process through which the moon, described as ‘qualcosa di inferiore e ripugnante’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 160) becomes a satellite of the earth, and is relegated, thus, to an inferior position: ‘la Terra è troppo più forte: finirà per spostare Luna dalla sua orbita e farla girare attorno a sé. Avremo un satellite’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 158). On the other hand, the earth is described as strong and superior enough to endure the threatening approach of the moon: ‘Vuoi mica metterla a confronto? Luna è molle molle, la Terra è dura, solida, la Terra tiene’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 159). However, the two mutually influence each other and exchange the materials they are made up of, since for Calvino, Earth and moon are deeply connected: Ma proprio nello stesso momento una vibrazione partì da Terra, un tintinnio: e attraverso il cielo, in direzione opposta alle falde di secrezione planetaria che calavano si levò un volo minutissimo di frammenti solidi, le scaglie della corazza terrestre che andavano in briciole: vetri infrangibili e lamiere d’acciaio e rivestimenti di materiale coibente, aspirati dall’attrazione della Luna come in un vortice di granelli di sabbia. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 161) The destiny of the one appears connected to the destiny of the other, and, to Sybil’s great surprise the moon is powerful enough to absorb the earth’s characteristics and make it softer than itself. Earth becomes as soft as the moon, while the latter receives the earth’s strength and materials, now become useless, to start its new life as a satellite. Moreover, Sybil too is sucked into the lunar influence and in the end, punished for her arrogance and blindness by becoming softer and more pathetic than she ever thought the moon could be: Sospetti come questi una volta mi sarei guardato bene dal manifestarli a Sybil. Ma adesso, - grassa, spettinata, pigra, golosa di pasticcini alla crema, - che cosa può ancora dirmi Sybil? (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 163) 5 The story, in fact, ends with the narrator’s bitter acknowledgement of the foolishness of human arrogance, as the experience has taught him that the supposed terrestrial superiority was just futile and useless, as the moon’s power proved, while it keeps shining in the sky to remind him just that: I veri materiali, quelli d’allora, dicono che ormai si trovino soltanto sulla Luna, inutilizzati e alla rinfusa, e che solo per questo metterebbe conto d’andarci: per recuperarli. Io non vorrei far la parte di chi viene sempre a dire cose spiacevoli, ma la Luna sappiamo tutti in che stato è, esposta alle tempeste cosmiche, bucherellata, corrosa, logora. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 163) However, while other cosmic lunar voyages parodied the Aristotelian arrogance that placed man at the centre of the universe, Calvino does so by showing how Earth and moon are equals and by portraying man as a part of a universal chain over which he has no control. Like his illustrious predecessors, in fact, Calvino’s moon offers a way of rethinking our world, a new perspective that is, however, never detached from the human dimension, but rather puts forward a possibility for a new definition of the relationship between men and the universe. Thus, the moon is able to project the human onto a universal scale while inspiring men to transcend the boundaries of their limited thought; it embodies an opportunity to get out of our deceptive perspective. Calvino’s intention is, in fact, to change his perspective, approach and view of the world. In his epistolary to the writer Anna Maria Ortese, reported in his article Il Rapporto con la Luna, he affirms that the moon has the power to reveal more, to open new visions to the man who asks her for more: Quel che mi interessa invece è tutto ciò che è appropriazione vera dello spazio degli oggetti celesti, cioè conoscenza: uscita dal nostro quadro limitato e certamente ingannevole, definizione d’un rapporto tra noi e l’universo extraumano. La luna, fin dall’antichità, ha significato per gli uomini questo desiderio, e la devozione lunare dei poeti così si spiega. Ma la luna dei poeti ha qualcosa a che vedere con le immagini lattiginose e bucherellate che i razzi trasmettono? Forse non ancora; ma il fatto che siamo obbligati a ripensare la luna in un modo nuovo ci porterà a ripensare in un modo nuovo tante cose. […] Chi ama la luna davvero non si contenta di contemplarla come un’immagine convenzionale, vuole entrare in un rapporto più stretto con lei, vuole vedere di più nella luna, vuole che la luna dica di più. (Una Pietra Sopra) To Calvino, thus, science is knowledge, while the moon offers an occasion for discovery, not only of the limited space of universe we inhabit, but also of ourselves, as the exploration of the extra-human 6 beyond our limited vision also allows us to better understand ourselves in our relationship with it. The moon calls us, reminds us of the ‘cosmic call’, and compels us to reflect upon the human dimension within the wholeness of the universe. Like his predecessors, in Calvino the moon offers a new perspective from which it is possible to observe the world detached from the limitations and blindness of human perception. What Calvino really wanted with his cosmic tales was to escape an over-codified dimension, to fly above the heaviness of our human existence, to explore new imaginative horizons. Calvino, in fact, strongly believed that the conquest of space had the great merit of opening a new possiiblity of reflection on man and the world. In Dialogo sul Satellite, a fictional dialogue written in 1959 after the Lunik III, a soviet spacecraft, was sent to the moon, he affirms: La sua prima funzione è quella di dare all’uomo la dimensione dello spazio. Voglio che faccia operare sulla terra e pensare all’universo. Voglio che dia più spazio ai pensieri umani. Da quando è la che gira, ho ripreso a pensare a cose a cui non riflettevo da quando avevo 18 anni. (Calvino in Bucciantini, 31) Not only do Calvino’s characters ascend to the moon, but he himself needs the moon to acquire a new and suspended perspective and detach himself from the heaviness of their life on Earth. According to Calvino, moreover, the moon has always embodied for men, poets and writers an ideal of suspension, silence and quiet enchantment, a way out from the dullness and heaviness of life, a form of lightness. Calvino associates the moon to the lightness he has been looking for his entire life, necessary to his literature and to a new mode of living. In Lezioni Americane (1988), he devotes an entire chapter to lightness, but he also adds he could just as well have devoted it to the moon as the two amount to the same thing. Moon and lightness are, in fact, at the core of Calvino’s work. As he states in the first chapter of Lezioni Americane, the one devoted to lightness: Nei momenti in cui il regno dell’umano mi sembra condannato alla pesantezza, penso che dovrei volare come Perseo in un altro spazio. Non sto parlando di fughe nel sogno o nell’irrazionale. Voglio dire che devo cambiare il mio approccio, devo guardare il mondo con un’altra ottica, un’altra logica, altri metodi di conoscenza e di verifica. Le immagini di leggerezza che io cerco non devono lasciarsi dissolvere come sogni dalla realtà del presente e del futuro. (Lezioni Americane, 12) 7 In Calvino, the lightness embodied by the moon seems to coincide with a necessary change of point of view/ perspective, a literary topos that characterizes other illustrious lunar voyages. In his cosmic tales, characters do not literally fly to the moon, they are actually abducted by it, by a lunar force that tears them apart, like in La Distanza dalla Luna, where the characters have difficulty resisting it: ‘Sì, la Luna aveva una forza che ti strappava’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 11). Ascending to the moon does not mean running away from reality; it offers the opportunity to rethink, to acquire a new perspective: Visto dalla Terra apparivi come appeso a testa in giù, ma per te era la solita posizione di sempre, e l’unica cosa strana era, alzando gli occhi, vederti addosso la cappa del mare luccicante con la barca e i compagni capovolti che dondolavano come un grappolo dal tralcio. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 11) Calvino’s characters, thus, are enabled to do what shamans used to: Alla precarietà dell’esistenza della tribù, - siccità, malattie, influssi maligni – lo sciamano rispondeva annullando il peso del suo corpo, trasportandosi in volo in un altro mondo, in un altro livello di percezione, dove poteva trovare le forze per modificare la realtà. (Lezioni Americane, 33) Thus, Calvino remarks the anthropologic necessity for lightness that frees men from the unbearable weight of living, and gives them the chance to glide over the precariousness of human life. Lightness is, in fact, an occasion of metamorphosis, it is a lightness that transfigures people and things, that erases what is unnecessary and amorphic and reveals what is behind the appearance of things. The moon is an occasion for freedom, an occasion of development and rebirth, a possibility to fulfil one’s own destiny. In Calvino’s cosmic tales, the characters are transformed by the influence of the moon and by their ascension to it, they are freed from the unnecessary bonds that kept them meaningless and frustrated on Earth. In La Distanza dalla Luna, the character of the deaf cousin, quite passive, uninterested and detached from earthly things, is awakened by the rising moon and becomes its lively, light and passionate lover: ‘Ogni mese, appena il satellite era passato in là, il sordo rientrava nel suo isolato distacco per le cose del mondo; solo l’approssimarsi del plenilunio lo risvegliava’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 17). In Le Figlie della Luna, on the other hand, the metamorphic power of the moon is more evident. In the short story the moon is described as bare, grey and pierced, 8 markedly different from the earth, represented by a New York made of nylon and skyscrapers, a triumph of consumerism. The moon is, thus, a ‘residuo d’un modo d’essere ormai incongruo’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 298), a memento of the evanescent vanity of that kind of society, and works as a natural propulsion that calls humanity back to a wild and original condition. The moon shows things for what they really are and works on people gifted with a special kind of sensitivity. In queste notti di luna bassa le persone di temperamento più instabile si davano a far stranezze. Non mancava mai il sonnambulo che camminava sui cornicioni d’un grattacielo con le braccia protese verso la Luna, o il licantropo che si metteva a ululare in mezzo a Times Square, o il piromane che appiccava incendi ai depositi dei docks. Erano fenomeni ormai usuali, questi, e non radunavano più nemmeno il solito capannello di curiosi. Ma quando vidi una ragazza completamente nuda seduta su una panchina di Central Park non potei fare a meno di fermarmi. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 299) Its influence does not invest only the individual characters, in this case young girls, who, summoned by the moon, leave all their earthly ornaments and undress to become one with the moon and help it in its rebirth from the ocean, but it also transforms the entire city of New York. The forgotten and abandoned moon does not accept to be thrown away as a used appliance, and on her way back to the sky, after having been pulled off by a crane, it drags along with itself all the junk the consumeristic society had produced: Appena la Luna si mosse, dalle valli di rottami si levò come un’onda: le vecchie carrozzerie schiacciate come fisarmoniche si mettevano in marcia, si disponevano cigolando in corteo, e una corrente di barattoli sfondati rotolavano con rumore di tuono, non si capisce se trascinati o trascinando tutto il resto. Seguendo quella Luna salvata dall’esser buttata via, tutte le cose e tutti gli uomini ormai rassegnati a esser buttati in un canto riprendevano il cammino, e sciamavano verso i quartieri della città più opulenti. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 306) The moon’s process, on its way to regeneration, transforms everything it meets on its way, showing its real appearance, its inner natural decadence: E dietro al corteo le vetrine si ricoprivano di ragnatele e di muffa, gli ascensori dei grattacieli si mettevano a cigolare e a gemere, i cartelloni pubblicitari ingiallivano, I portauova dei frigoriferi si riempivano di pulcini come incubatrici, i televisori trasmettevano il turbinare di tempeste atmosferiche. La città aveva consumato se stessa di colpo: era una città da buttar via che seguiva la Luna nel suo ultimo viaggio. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 307) 9 Thus, in its process of regeneration, the moon goes back to a natural primordial and idyllic condition, and takes the earth with itself. All of a sudden, the fashionable consumeristic New York is replaced by savannahs and forests where men run widely and free, now transformed into young mammoths: Una furia ci prese: ci mettemmo a galoppare per il continente, per le savane e le foreste che avevano ricoperto la Terra e seppellito città e strade, e cancellato ogni segno di ciò che era stato. E barrivamo, sollevando al cielo le nostre proboscidi, le nostre zanne lunghe e sottili, scuotendo il lungo pelo delle nostre groppe con l’angoscia violenta anche prende tutti noi giovani mammuth, quando comprendiamo che la vita è adesso che comincia, eppure è chiaro che quello che desideriamo non lo avremo. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 309) Only by going out of their human nature, can men embrace new perspectives and acquire knowledge, according to Calvino. To realize oneself, to fulfil one’s destiny, apparently, in Calvino one must connect oneself with the bigger plan of natural evolution and accept it; only in this way will one be able to find peace. In La Distanza dalla Luna, the character of the deaf cousin, in fact the only character who is apparently in real contact with the moon and with its natural desires and in possession of a deeper wisdom, accepts the cosmic will that will take the moon away from him, not with sorrow or delusion, but with a peaceful acceptance aware that his own happiness relies on being in accordance with the whole universe: E anche questo era da lui: da lui che non sapeva concepire desideri in contrasto con la natura della Luna e il suo corso e il suo destino, e se la Luna ora tendeva ad allontanarsi da lui, ebbene egli godeva di questo allontanamento come aveva fino allora goduto della sua vicinanza. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 23) In Calvino, men can discover themselves only through the discovery of the other through which they establish a dialectic relationship. In fact, he perceived knowledge as a complex and refined system of mirrors through which the human soul reflects itself into a multiplicity, to become one single synthesis of the entirety of the many different aspects of the universe’s soul: Di specchio in specchio – ecco come m’avviene di sognare –la totalità delle cose, l’universo intero, la sapienza divina potrebbero concentrare i loro raggi luminosi in un unico specchio. O forse la conoscenza per tutto è seppellita nell’anima e un sistema di specchi che moltiplicasse la mia immagine all’infinito ne restituirebbe l’essenza in un’unica immagine, mi rivelerebbe l’anima di tutto che si nasconde nella mia. (Calvino in L’Occhio di Calvino, 286) 10 In Palomar, a 1983 novel that portrays a contemplative man and his search for knowledge, Calvino devotes an entire chapter, called L’Universo Come Specchio, to this topic, affirming that the only way Palomar can be in harmony with the universe is through the knowledge of himself: ‘La conoscenza del prossimo ha questo di speciale: passa necessariamente attraverso la conoscenza di se stesso’ (Palomar). Palomar, in fact, realises just like Calvino did himself, that the universe is only a mirror that reflects our own image, so that to know the former we need to know ourselves first: ‘non possiamo conoscere nulla d’esterno a noi scavalcando noi stessi […] l’universo è lo specchio in cui possiamo contemplare solo ciò che abbiamo imparato a conoscere in noi’ (Palomar). The image of the mirror, moreover, returns once more in Palomar in La Luna di Pomeriggio, this time attributed to the moon itself, as the moon is described as ‘un grande specchio abbagliante che vola’ (Palomar). The Calvinian moon is a ‘symbolic image of our relationship to the cosmos and to ourselves’ (Ball, 255). As Ball states, ‘Calvino’s oeuvre as a whole is one of the most vivid examples of how rethinking the moon can make us rethink our relationship to the world and to ourselves’ (197). Calvino’s idea of science, in fact, is very much inspired to Gianbattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova, as in his works science becomes ‘the establishing or making of connections between self and other, between the earth and the rest of the universe, with its forces divine and mysterious’ (Ball, 208). Indeed, the narrator and protagonist of the cosmic tales, Qfwfq, represents human consciousness and universal memory, which has lived from the beginning of time to the present, engaged in an open dialogue with changing universal forces that have shaped human destiny and evolution, while the moon is portrayed in a strong relation to Earth as the two were co-dependant. In Calvino, the moon is a kind of mirror of our planet, and, as its satellite, it is engaged in co-dependant relation with Earth. At the beginning of each of the four stories devoted to the moon, in fact, there is always an origin that highlights the close relationship between the moon and the earth, in La Luna come Fungo the moon is generated from the earth, in La Distanza dalla Luna the moon distances itself from the earth, in La Molle Luna the moon becomes a satellite by exchanging her physical components with the earth, 11 while Le figlie della Luna portrays the moon’s renaissance from the sea. Between the moon and Earth there is, thus, a constant approaching and detaching, while things that are lost on the earth are found again on the moon, whereas sometimes the moon leaves her trace on Earth, like in La Distanza dalla Luna: C’era sempre un volo di bestioline minute – piccolo granchi, calamari, e anche alghe leggere e diafane e piantine di corallo – che si staccavano dal mare e finivano nella Luna, a penzolare giù da quel soffitto calcinoso, oppure restavano lì a mezz’aria, in uno sciame fosforescente, che scacciavano agitando delle foglie di banana. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 10) Earth and moon, thus, are two poles of a complementary relationship, two influxes that balance each other out: ‘Così conteso era l’interstizio tra Terra e Luna dai due influssi che si bilanciavano’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 15). The moon is always linked to the earth as one cannot exist without the other, and men cannot exist without the moon: ‘Senza la Luna, l’evoluzione della vita sulla Terra, se pur ci fosse stata, sarebbe stata ben diversa’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 288). The evolution of one, indeed, makes possible the evolution of the other, they complete each other as two scales. In La Luna Come Fungo, the birth and subsequent detachment of the moon from the earth allows the growth of our planet. While the moon stays deserted and empty our planet develops new continents, mountains, rivers, valleys, and forests: Alle volte alzo lo sguardo alla Luna e penso a tutto il deserto, il freddo, il vuoto che pesano sull’altro piatto della bilancia, e sostengono questo nostro povero sfarzo. Se sono saltato in tempo da questa parte è stato un caso. (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 296) Indeed, the moon of Calvino’s cosmic tales is a symbol of everything that was once an intimate part of our world, everything that can be possessed and preserved now only through conscious acts of memory and imagination, as Qfwk states at the very end of La Molle Luna: ‘So che sono debitore alla Luna di quanto ho sulla Terra, a quello che non c’è di quello che c’è’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 296). Calvino’s moon is, indeed, described as a ‘pezzo di mondo volante’ (Tutte le Cosmicomiche, 295) (piece of flying world) since, in his works it gets its life, force, and power from Earth and from 12 men, from the kind of influence and attraction it exercises on men, while making them wiser and lighter. Thus, the moon in Calvino works as a metaphor of human ambitions, a mirror to our existences, of the permanencies and absences that characterize them. It works as a flying mirror that reveals the true nature of appearances. In this way, Calvino’s moon is very close to Ludovico Ariosto’s, author of another famous cosmic travel and Calvino’s most conspicuous intertext. Ariosto in his Orlando Furioso (1516), in fact, portrays the lunar voyage of the knight Astolfo to get back from the satellite the lost wits of Orlando himself. Ariosto’s moon again works as a platform from which to study Earth from a different perspective, but at the same time, in Ariosto like in Calvino, the two planets look both equal and opposite like an object and its image. They are, in fact, linked by a system of correspondences, as what happens on one directly influences what happens on the other, exactly like in Calvino: Tu déi saper che non si muove fronda là giù, che segno qui non se ne faccia. Ogni effetto convien che corrisponda in terra e in ciel, ma con diversa faccia. (Ariosto, XXXV. 18) Thus, both in Calvino and Ariosto the moon and the earth are two sides of the same coin, and the moon works like a looking-glass of the earth revealing the true nature of Earth’s hopes and ambitions, that in Ariosto’s moon are just piled in junk-heaps: Non pur di regni o di ricchezze parlo, in che la ruota instabile lavora; ma di quel ch’in poter di tor, di darlo non ha Fortuna, intender voglio ancora. Molta fama è là su, che, come tarlo, il tempo al lungo andar qua giù divora: 13 là su infiniti prieghi e voti stanno, che da noi peccatori a Dio si fanno. Le lacrime e i sospiri degli amanti, l’inutil tempo che si perde a giuoco, e l’ozio lungo d’uomini ignoranti, vani disegni che non han mai loco, i vani desideri sono tanti, che la più parte ingombran di quel loco: ciò che in somma qua giù perdesti mai, là su salendo ritrovar potrai. (Ariosto, XXXIV. 73-74) Moreover, Ariosto’s moon offers more than a mirror image of reality, it reflects an altered version of earthly things that reveals the outward and essential qualities of the vain ambitions or desires of men. Like in Calvino, thus, Ariosto’s moon transforms and reveals the truth. Ariosto’s moon is not just a mirror for the earth’s vain objects, but also acts upon them transforming them into their real essence, into a version of themselves that simply has a ‘diversa faccia’. On Ariosto’s moon, thus, like in Le Figlie della Luna, objects undergo a metamorphosis that reveal their essence; they are turned into metaphorical parodies of themselves: Vide un mondo di tumide vesciche, che dentro parea aver tumulti e grida; e seppe ch’eran le corone antiche e degli Assirii e de la terra lida, e de’ Persi e de’ Greci, che già furo incliti, et or n’è quasi il nome oscuro. Ami d’oro e d’argento appresso vede in una massa, ch’erano quei doni che si fan con speranza di mercede 14 ai re, agli avari principi, ai patroni. Vede in ghirlande ascosi lacci, e chiede, et ode che sono tutte adulazioni. Di cicale scoppiate imagine hanno Versi ch’in laude dei signor si fanno. (Ariosto, XXXIV. 77) Like in Ariosto, moreover, in Calvino the moon becomes an allegory of the literary text. Literature, like the moon, produces images that correspond closely to the real world and reveal the real nature of human lives, images that are somewhat different from the original but probably more authentic. It offers, like Ariosto’s moon, ‘altri fiumi, altri laghi, altre campagne’ (Ariosto, XXXIV. 72). In Ariosto, where St. John the Evangelist explains to Astolfo the allegorical system of the moon, he also draws attention to the role of the poets as mediators between the two. Ariosto underlines that poets create an alternative world that is a mirror of our reality and corresponds in a meaningful way to the original. Calvino, at the same time, uses literary words to build an image of the universe, and conceives the literary work as a map of the universe and of a path to knowledge. His entire literary work is moved by a longing for knowing, as he states: ‘la letteratura è per me una serie di tentativi di conoscenza e di classificazione delle informazioni sul mondo’ (Calvino in Bucciantini, 101). However, Calvino’s aim was to shape a literature that could give information on men, on humanity. In his work, the knowledge of the cosmos is strictly connected to the knowledge of one’s inner self. The desire for knowledge characterizes Calvinian literature, and is translated into a desire to know the universal through the human and the human through the universal: Io credo che il mondo esiste indipendentemente dall’uomo, il mondo esisteva prima dell’uomo ed esisterà dopo, e l’uomo è solo un’occasione che il mondo ha per organizzare alcune informazioni su se stesso. (Calvino in Bucciantini, 101) However, Calvino once again goes beyond the tradition, as in his work both the literary approach and the scientific one appear united in the same kind of research, project, discovery and creation. New scientific discoveries and real lunar explorations compel men to change their image of 15 the world, and to look for new images, for a new language. In Calvino, in fact, as we saw in Le Cosmicomiche, science and literature share the same purpose and human dimension, and are translated into the highly symbolic image of the moon. In his literary work, Calvino represents in almost scientific terms a cosmic quest of universal harmony, where the moon becomes the allegory for it. Thus, Calvino’s moon rather than being a mere opportunity for lunar travel, becomes a meaningful allegory for knowledge, of the world and of oneself, while it embodies a new way of watching and perceiving reality. As a symbol of lightness, it represents an attitude toward living, that consists in flying above the meaningless heaviness of life, as well as the possibility of turning upside down our perception and acquiring knowledge by establishing a relationship with the cosmos beyond the limits of human arrogance. Calvino was, in fact, fascinated by the moon both as a scientist and as a poet. As a scientist he saw in it a brand new range of possibilities, an inspiration for man to think beyond the limitations of his human nature and perception; as a poet, he perceived it as a metaphorical force that, like literature, transforms the nature of the objects it comes in contact with in their real essence, showing the vanity and blindness of men’s beliefs and longings. More importantly, the moon works as a mirror of men’s interiority: in their relationship to it and to the cosmos, they are finally able to find their position as part of a cosmic chain. 16 Bibliography: Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Milano: Simplicissimo Book Farm, 2011. Kindle Edition. Ball, Christina. Moonscapes: The Art of Lunar Memory in the Italian Tradition. Dissertation, Yale University, 1998. UMI, 1998. Baranelli, Luca, and Ernesto Ferrero. Album Calvino. Milano: Palomar and Arnoldo Mondadori, 1995. Print. Baranelli, Luca, editor. Italo Calvino: Sono Nato in America…Milano: Mondadori, 2002. 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