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The Road to San Giovanni
A major testament by an essential 20th century writer composed of five strikingly elegant "memory exercises" about his life and work--now available in paperback. With visionary passion, the author traces pieces of his childhood and adolescence, his experiences during WWII, and more. "Storytelling at its best."--Chicago Tribune.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Italo Calvino
508 books7,971 followersItalo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).
His style is not easy to classify; much of his writing has an air reminiscent to that of fantastical fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called postmodern, reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply "modern". He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."
His style is not easy to classify; much of his writing has an air reminiscent to that of fantastical fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called postmodern, reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply "modern". He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."
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July 16, 2016
The Road to San Giovanni
'The Road to San Giovanni' is a collection of five autobiographical essays- though it would be appropriate to call them 'memory deliberations' instead- which presents an affecting self-portrait and offers indirect insights into how Calvino conjured up his imaginary worlds- worlds which are surreal, mystical but so enthralling that they look real- whose language combines exactitude, freedom and lightness to form different voice altogether.
Calvino starts with his relationship- which was not usual as his father was curious about the minute examination of flora, he had passion for studying and acclimatizing exotic plants, while Calvino used to weave his own world of fantasy-with father.
"The way my father saw things, it was from here up that the world began, while the other part of the world below the house was a mere appendix, necessary sometimes when there were things to be, but alien and insignificant, to be crossed in great strides, as though in flight, without looking to right or left."
Every other day Calvino walked to the farm with his father. Neither spoke, for the minds of both were elsewhere; the one already on the land, the other lost in the city. It was a struggle Calvino never really resolved:
"Every morning of my life is still the morning when it's my turn to go with Father to San Giovanni."
Second essay- A cinema goer's autobiography- is probably the best of all, Calvino meditates about his teens, surreptitiously attending movies. He often arrives late and leaves early.
Calvino talks about influence of cinema on his life- Calvino created a unique world of his own in cinema which provided him a realm of imagination, he conjured up a space of new dimensions where he could relate the world in consciousness to something tangible.
"A different world from the one around me, but my feeling was that only what I saw on the screen possessed the properties required of a world, the fullness, the necessity, the coherence, while away from the screen were only heterogeneous elements lumped together at random, the materials of a life, mine, which seemed to me utterly formless."
The narrative gaps and transpositions which result inspire the distinctive style of his own works.
Calvino- the soldier, fighting with the Italian partisans, has a comparable experience when he attempts to reconstruct a battle he had thought was a victory but which had in actuality been a defeat. To do so he uses signs to precisely invert the narrative. This third essay has a tragicomic tone, like the films of Calvino’s admired contemporary, Federico Fellini whose influence can be seen in the works of Calvino as most of the works of Calvino are surreal, mystical, like a lucid dream.
"The imagined memory is actually a real memory from that time because I am recovering things I first imagined back then. It wasn't the moment of Cardu'd death I saw, but afterwards, when our men had already left the village and one of the bersaglieri turns over a body on the ground and sees the reddish-brown moustache and the big chest torn open and says, 'Hey look who's dead.' and then everybody gathers round this dead man who instead of being the best of theirs had become the best of ours, Cardu who ever since he had left them had been in their thoughts, their conversation, their fears, their myths."
The fourth essay is characterized by humor about 'La Poubelle'- the dustbin, Calvino talks about existential purpose of agreement- 'La Poubelle Agree' which, according to him, asserts existence of a man.
"Thus daily representation of descent below ground, this domestic and municipal rubbish funeral, is meant first and foremost to put off my personal funeral, to postpone it if only for a little while, to confirm that for one more day I have been a producer of detritus and not detritus myself."
The final essay describes possibility of a reconciliation specifically through the writer’s relation to creative landscape. 'From the Opaque' in which the two extremes- opaque and the sunny- are deliberated. Calvino accepts that he is actually situated 'in the depths of the opaque' however he is attracted to 'sunny' and that, in writing, he is 'reconstructing the map of a sunniness that is only an unverifiable postulate for computation of the memory, the geometrical location of the ego.
Italo Calvino
June 20, 2019
When it comes to Calvino, I'd always chose his innovative and magical fiction than anything non-fiction, but this book caught my eye, and I do like him a lot, so I took the plunge. These five pieces, or 'memory exercises' as so called, do offer some indirect insights into how he conjured up his imaginary stories. These writings were collected by his wife, and tell of his difficult relationship with his father, who was a farmer and horticulturist, and had a passion for studying and acclimatizing exotic wildlife which filled the young Calvino with an investigative mind. He also recalls his love for cinema, before a graphic account of fighting fascists during the Second World War, that becomes a sort of meditation on the role played by imagination in the human memory. There was one piece where he analysis living in a house in a Parisian suburb, which was good. The book overall was OK, but nowhere as good as the best of his fiction.
June 24, 2019
Calvino’nun dördü anı-anlatı, biri deneme beş kısa yazısı kitapta yer alıyor. Dili öykü ve romanlarından çok farklı, mizahı, o keskin ironi silahını hiç kullanmamış. Biraz uzun, bazen bağlantı cümleleriyle takip etmesi zor düz yazı kullanmış. Calvino’nun edebi yönünü değil, kendisini tanımak isterseniz okuyun.
February 19, 2008
I spent the better half of last weekend on the beach reading this book, which was left behind in the house where I was staying. It consists of a series of provocative vignettes that approach memoir, or "memory exercises" as Calvino called them. I re-read many of the masterful sentences in this collection, impressed (obsessed, even) with the powerful ideas underlying it.
Calvino plays with the very idea of memoir, and of memory itself.
When he recalls a battle, he begins with an extended metaphor of memories as sediment buried under a riverbed. He acknowledges the problems inherent in unearthing them: To explain his memories of war would be to "bury them again under the sedimentary crust of hindsight, the kind of reflections that put things in order and explain everything according to the logic of past history."
(This seems the defining problem of collective memory, or history, as professors like to call it.)
Calvino also struggles to represent figures from his past. In the title exercise, he describes his father, who espoused vast botanical knowledge. Instead of the taxonomical names his father taught him, Calvino recalls fantastical names for the plants... and then reveals his dilemma about recounting details that he never paid attention to in the first place.
(The problem of personal memory: What do we tell ourselves that we remember? What do we tell ourselves to remember?)
Another piece recalls his boyhood days at the cinema and how they transformed under fascist rule. It is a beautiful, nostalgic essay. For me, it's foremost a reflection on how regimes that limit the individual’s experience with art can also oppress the imaginative space. It reminds us that cinema plays a political role, in helping us to transcend reality, to believe in what lies beyond the physical boundaries of a tangible world.
The artistry of his prose is apparent almost everywhere. [I am tempted to dwell on his awesome use of free modifiers, what Virginia Tufte would call branching sentences, but I don't want to be a grammar Nazi; Calvino was distinctly anti-Fascist.] How much of this is owed to the art of the translator, I can't be sure. Even Calvino's father used a different one of his many tongues depending on the topic of conversation. He required a certain language to express humor (français, mais oui) or banality (English, of course.) Is it the translator Tim Parks, for example, who uses the word callow multiple times in one book -- and what's the word for this in Italian?
On Fellini, Calvino writes this -- which I think should be on the great filmmaker's gravestone if it isn’t already: “That is why Fellini manages to disturb us to the core: because he forces us to admit that what we would most like to distance ourselves from is what is intrinsically close to us.”
My favorite piece, though, is his 30something page-long rumination on garbage bins. It overflows with absurd free association. For Calvino, the act of emptying dustbins shows that the personal is political; it embodies our participation in a system and our acceptance of authority for reasons of convenience. (A sort of social contract theory centered on garbage, if you will...)
Trash is also existentially relevant ("we are what we don't throw away"). And for Calvino, no surprise, it's Marxist: What we do along the chain of trash distribution defines our social and economic roles, with the vividness of an orange peel or a scribbled-out page.
After reading that one, I fell asleep by the water, dreaming of a time when Calvino lived, so that we might spend an afternoon together not remembering. Like an abstract painting, the final vignette places you in a realm of possibility for time and space. It is, like most of his work, worth waking up for.
Calvino plays with the very idea of memoir, and of memory itself.
When he recalls a battle, he begins with an extended metaphor of memories as sediment buried under a riverbed. He acknowledges the problems inherent in unearthing them: To explain his memories of war would be to "bury them again under the sedimentary crust of hindsight, the kind of reflections that put things in order and explain everything according to the logic of past history."
(This seems the defining problem of collective memory, or history, as professors like to call it.)
Calvino also struggles to represent figures from his past. In the title exercise, he describes his father, who espoused vast botanical knowledge. Instead of the taxonomical names his father taught him, Calvino recalls fantastical names for the plants... and then reveals his dilemma about recounting details that he never paid attention to in the first place.
(The problem of personal memory: What do we tell ourselves that we remember? What do we tell ourselves to remember?)
Another piece recalls his boyhood days at the cinema and how they transformed under fascist rule. It is a beautiful, nostalgic essay. For me, it's foremost a reflection on how regimes that limit the individual’s experience with art can also oppress the imaginative space. It reminds us that cinema plays a political role, in helping us to transcend reality, to believe in what lies beyond the physical boundaries of a tangible world.
The artistry of his prose is apparent almost everywhere. [I am tempted to dwell on his awesome use of free modifiers, what Virginia Tufte would call branching sentences, but I don't want to be a grammar Nazi; Calvino was distinctly anti-Fascist.] How much of this is owed to the art of the translator, I can't be sure. Even Calvino's father used a different one of his many tongues depending on the topic of conversation. He required a certain language to express humor (français, mais oui) or banality (English, of course.) Is it the translator Tim Parks, for example, who uses the word callow multiple times in one book -- and what's the word for this in Italian?
On Fellini, Calvino writes this -- which I think should be on the great filmmaker's gravestone if it isn’t already: “That is why Fellini manages to disturb us to the core: because he forces us to admit that what we would most like to distance ourselves from is what is intrinsically close to us.”
My favorite piece, though, is his 30something page-long rumination on garbage bins. It overflows with absurd free association. For Calvino, the act of emptying dustbins shows that the personal is political; it embodies our participation in a system and our acceptance of authority for reasons of convenience. (A sort of social contract theory centered on garbage, if you will...)
Trash is also existentially relevant ("we are what we don't throw away"). And for Calvino, no surprise, it's Marxist: What we do along the chain of trash distribution defines our social and economic roles, with the vividness of an orange peel or a scribbled-out page.
After reading that one, I fell asleep by the water, dreaming of a time when Calvino lived, so that we might spend an afternoon together not remembering. Like an abstract painting, the final vignette places you in a realm of possibility for time and space. It is, like most of his work, worth waking up for.
February 7, 2019
Görüyorsunuz, nasıl ayrılıyordu yollarımız, babamınki ve benimki. Ama ben de çok farklı değildim: Aradığım yol, tıpkı onunki gibi, bir başka yabancılığın, insan üstdünyasının (ya da cehenneminin) derinlerinden kazıp açığa çıkardığım yol değilse neydi? Yarı karanlık avlu girişlerinde (bir kadın gölgesi, kimi zaman yok oluverirdi orada) gözlerimle aradığım şey, bütün söz ve şekillerin gerçeğe, somuta, bir yankının yankısının yankısı olmaktan çıkıp kendi deneyimime dönüştüğü bir dünyaya açılan aralık kapı, bakışımla kuşatacağım sinema perdesi, çevireceğim sayfa değilse neydi? Sf:18
San Giovanni'ye yaklaştıkça babam gene gerginleşirdi; bu, kendisinin hissettiği yegane yere bir an önce ulaşma arzusunun son bir dışavurumu değildi yalnızca, aynı zamanda sanki oradan onca saat uzakta olmanın pişmanlığı, o saatlerde bir şeylerin mutlaka yitirilmiş ya da bozulmuş olduğu kanısı, yaşamında San Giovanni olmayan her şeyi bir an önce silme isteğiydi; bir de, San Giovanni dünyanın tamamı değil, dünyanın yalnızca bir köşesi, kalan her şeyin kuşattığı bir köşesi olduğundan, bu yerin onun için her zaman bir umutsuzluk anlamına geleceği duygusu. Sf:27
Öyleyse o zamanlar sinema, bu bağlamda, ne anlama gelmişti benim için? Söyleyeyim: uzaklık. Bir uzaklık gereksinmesine, gerçekliğin sınırlarını yayma, çevremde ölçüye gelmez, geometrik kendilikler gibi soyut boyutların -ama aynı zamanda somut, kesinlikle yüzler, durumlar ve ortamlarda dolu, doğrudan deneyimin dünyasıyla kendi (soyut) ilişkiler ağını kuran boyutların- açıldığını görme gereksinmesine karşılık geliyordu. Sf:46
Şu kısa ömrümüzde, her şey orada, beyazperdede öylece durur, kaygı verici derecede varlığını duyurur; ilk sevgi imgeleri ve ölüm uyarıları her düşte bize ulaşır; dünyanın sonu bizimle başlamıştır ve sona erecek gibi değildir; yalnızca seyircisi olduğunu düşündüğümüz film, kendi yaşamımızın öyküsüdür. Sf:53
San Giovanni'ye yaklaştıkça babam gene gerginleşirdi; bu, kendisinin hissettiği yegane yere bir an önce ulaşma arzusunun son bir dışavurumu değildi yalnızca, aynı zamanda sanki oradan onca saat uzakta olmanın pişmanlığı, o saatlerde bir şeylerin mutlaka yitirilmiş ya da bozulmuş olduğu kanısı, yaşamında San Giovanni olmayan her şeyi bir an önce silme isteğiydi; bir de, San Giovanni dünyanın tamamı değil, dünyanın yalnızca bir köşesi, kalan her şeyin kuşattığı bir köşesi olduğundan, bu yerin onun için her zaman bir umutsuzluk anlamına geleceği duygusu. Sf:27
Öyleyse o zamanlar sinema, bu bağlamda, ne anlama gelmişti benim için? Söyleyeyim: uzaklık. Bir uzaklık gereksinmesine, gerçekliğin sınırlarını yayma, çevremde ölçüye gelmez, geometrik kendilikler gibi soyut boyutların -ama aynı zamanda somut, kesinlikle yüzler, durumlar ve ortamlarda dolu, doğrudan deneyimin dünyasıyla kendi (soyut) ilişkiler ağını kuran boyutların- açıldığını görme gereksinmesine karşılık geliyordu. Sf:46
Şu kısa ömrümüzde, her şey orada, beyazperdede öylece durur, kaygı verici derecede varlığını duyurur; ilk sevgi imgeleri ve ölüm uyarıları her düşte bize ulaşır; dünyanın sonu bizimle başlamıştır ve sona erecek gibi değildir; yalnızca seyircisi olduğunu düşündüğümüz film, kendi yaşamımızın öyküsüdür. Sf:53
December 29, 2019
These "memory exercises" could not be called significant in my opinion, though they were occasionally interesting when they weren't rambling. I do not see the difference between these and ordinary literary reminiscences. One might spend their time reviewing the marginalia of Coleridge, or reading the literary reviews of Poe as well. It is really just a matter of how obsessed a person is with Calvino's writing, and the determination to read every word he wrote will be the only impetus for anyone to finish this book. If you want to know more about Fellini, or rubbish bins, give this one a perusal.
The weaker parts of the collection detracted from the stronger parts, the latter of which were the descriptions of his father. It seems to me any halfway decent writer could have written the other sections, as they consisted of everyday knowledge - with a few personal details about Fellini and Italian countrysides and cinema thrown in, culminating in well-expressed sentiments of a mundane and uninspired nature.
For Calvino PhD students only.
The weaker parts of the collection detracted from the stronger parts, the latter of which were the descriptions of his father. It seems to me any halfway decent writer could have written the other sections, as they consisted of everyday knowledge - with a few personal details about Fellini and Italian countrysides and cinema thrown in, culminating in well-expressed sentiments of a mundane and uninspired nature.
For Calvino PhD students only.
January 20, 2024
3.5
Non avrei mai pensato di dire che il testo più bello di Calvino (letto fino ad adesso) sarebbe stato un racconto breve sulla pattumiera (la Poubelle Agreee).
Non avrei mai pensato di dire che il testo più bello di Calvino (letto fino ad adesso) sarebbe stato un racconto breve sulla pattumiera (la Poubelle Agreee).
April 6, 2015
CONTENTS:
La strada di San Giovanni, 1962
Autobiografia di uno spettatore, 1974
Ricordo di una battaglia, 1974
La pueblo agree, 1977
Dall'opaco, 1971
4* Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore
4* Il cavaliere inesistente
4* Il visconte dimezzato
3* The Road to San Giovanni
TR The Baron in the Trees
TR Why Read the Classics?
TR Invisible Cities
La strada di San Giovanni, 1962
Autobiografia di uno spettatore, 1974
Ricordo di una battaglia, 1974
La pueblo agree, 1977
Dall'opaco, 1971
4* Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore
4* Il cavaliere inesistente
4* Il visconte dimezzato
3* The Road to San Giovanni
TR The Baron in the Trees
TR Why Read the Classics?
TR Invisible Cities
September 10, 2020
Edebi olmayan, belki bir amaç da gütmeyen iç dökmek için yazılmış yazılardan derlemeler yapılmış. Özellikle hoşuma gitmeyen bir şey yok ama yazarı Calvino bile olsa ilgilenmediğim türdeki yazıları sevemiyorum.
November 23, 2015
“The Road to San Giovanni” consists of five “memory exercises”. I found each of these chapters were written in a very different manner and strangely arranged in a sequence from the most sentimental to the most analytic. In that, I mean that the first three exercises were descriptions of things that had happened in the author’s life, and the last two are more commentary based on reflection and analysis. The end-posts here are mostly written fragments. The first exercise, the title story, is long descriptions, often long sentences with thoughts running together, describing the author’s childhood taking trips up a mountainside to the family garden. There’s a lot of description here, but it is run together so as to make reading a chore. It’s as if the author wanted to save his thoughts as rapidly as possible but using the most poetic wording he could. The second exercise describes the author’s cinema experiences as a child and young man. Here the writing is more like a typical short story, and there’s more than just description – some analysis is done concerning things like the impact of poorly dubbing English pictures had on later Italian movies. The third exercise concerns remembering a battle in WWII, where the author seems to remember more about what happened after some reflection. The fourth piece is about garbage cans and the act of disposing household garbage. Calvino dives into this one with gusto, and compares the French and Italian methods of garbage disposal, and how society seems to like similar, “agreeable” garbage containers. A fun analysis, but in the end it seems to be just an exercise when it could have been more. The last bit, called From the Opaque, is more indescribable. It purports to be about seeing at different levels, but other analogies, like a theater and a landscape, are drawn into the writing. This is written as snippets of what I’d call pseudo-logic, unpunctuated paragraphs of writing that sounds like it was lifted from a philosophical essay. This was really overwhelming to deal with since there didn’t seem to be a purpose beyond making the snippets of text to look philosophical and academic. If that’s what he was going for, he got it.
Overall, I found this a mixed bag. In general I liked Calvino’s writing. I did not enjoy the first or last exercises, although at least I found the first to be quite poetic and revealing. The middle three bits were most interesting, and closest to publishable essays. I found myself agreeing with the reasoning of the essay on garbage, and finding it quite interesting. Although I have not read other Calvino books, I suspect this is not a good introduction.
Overall, I found this a mixed bag. In general I liked Calvino’s writing. I did not enjoy the first or last exercises, although at least I found the first to be quite poetic and revealing. The middle three bits were most interesting, and closest to publishable essays. I found myself agreeing with the reasoning of the essay on garbage, and finding it quite interesting. Although I have not read other Calvino books, I suspect this is not a good introduction.
Read
April 20, 2020I have missed Calvino.
July 26, 2018
Na dúvida entre 2 e 3, fico com a maior nota.
Confesso que terminei o livro com um certo dissabor. Não fosse a escrita excelente do Calvino e o poder de imergir o leitor até nas mais estranhas divagações (quantas vezes vemos uma problematização sobre o ato de levar o lixo pra fora?) meu descontentamento com o livro seria maior.
A proposta me parece interessante, uma coletânea de memórias e reflexões do autor perdidas ao longo do tempo e reagrupadas na obra. Tenho certo apreço por textos com o objetivo de apenas trazer um olhar reflexivo do nosso cotidiano, mas custo acreditar que um leitor não tão simpatizante acharia a leitura agradável. Ainda mais levando em conta o estilo do Calvino, com longas sentenças e passagens que não visam concluir um pensamento, mas apenas trazer o leitor para sua livre divagação.
Aliás, aqui preciso esclarecer que não o faço como uma crítica negativa ao autor em si, pelo contrário, as duas outras obras que tive a oportunidade de ler foram viagens maravilhosas, e incluo uma delas (Se Um Viajante Numa Noite de Inverno) como uma das melhores que já li.
Talvez parte da culpa no descontentamento seja minha pela expectativa que trouxe ao começar o livro, uma vez que meu contato anterior com as outras obras foi excelente, mas não consigo deixar de lado a sensação inócua que fiquei ao terminar de ler. Tirando algumas belas passagens, resta pouco de marcante ou para uma verdadeira reflexão.
A leitura (na minha mais humilde opinião) vale para o leitor que quer apenas apreciar a escrita do Calvino, mas não recomendo como primeiro contato, visto que a experiência pode ser um tanto maçante e afastar os leitores de um autor tão incrível.
Confesso que terminei o livro com um certo dissabor. Não fosse a escrita excelente do Calvino e o poder de imergir o leitor até nas mais estranhas divagações (quantas vezes vemos uma problematização sobre o ato de levar o lixo pra fora?) meu descontentamento com o livro seria maior.
A proposta me parece interessante, uma coletânea de memórias e reflexões do autor perdidas ao longo do tempo e reagrupadas na obra. Tenho certo apreço por textos com o objetivo de apenas trazer um olhar reflexivo do nosso cotidiano, mas custo acreditar que um leitor não tão simpatizante acharia a leitura agradável. Ainda mais levando em conta o estilo do Calvino, com longas sentenças e passagens que não visam concluir um pensamento, mas apenas trazer o leitor para sua livre divagação.
Aliás, aqui preciso esclarecer que não o faço como uma crítica negativa ao autor em si, pelo contrário, as duas outras obras que tive a oportunidade de ler foram viagens maravilhosas, e incluo uma delas (Se Um Viajante Numa Noite de Inverno) como uma das melhores que já li.
Talvez parte da culpa no descontentamento seja minha pela expectativa que trouxe ao começar o livro, uma vez que meu contato anterior com as outras obras foi excelente, mas não consigo deixar de lado a sensação inócua que fiquei ao terminar de ler. Tirando algumas belas passagens, resta pouco de marcante ou para uma verdadeira reflexão.
A leitura (na minha mais humilde opinião) vale para o leitor que quer apenas apreciar a escrita do Calvino, mas não recomendo como primeiro contato, visto que a experiência pode ser um tanto maçante e afastar os leitores de um autor tão incrível.
January 8, 2022
Connections, emotional resonances and attention to detail come together in the essays contained in this book to create a beautiful flow - a literary river with wavelets sparkling in the sun, white water around rocks in midstream, sometimes gurgling or roaring, sometimes barely moving but always flowing from somewhere to somewhere else. The contexts are different in the different essays. There are two biographical essays, the first about childhood, the second about war, an essay about Mr. Calvino's personal experience with movies, and an essay about garbage. The tone changes a bit in the final essay, which presents an abstracted geometric view of the world drawn with light, angles, and shapes, plus orientation without defined location, so that it all seems to be constructed from Platonic forms that are perhaps more imagined than real, or maybe it's the real world that is imagined and the opaque world is real. In the end, my favorite is the title essay that tells the story of Mr. Calvino's childhood, his problematic relationship with his father, who is loving, but disconnected from the son, and the son's inability to live the life his father wants for him.
The book is a short, easy read, not the most brilliant of Mr. Calvino's work but still an enjoyable excursion into his mind and writing style.
The book is a short, easy read, not the most brilliant of Mr. Calvino's work but still an enjoyable excursion into his mind and writing style.
November 18, 2020
Great writer, interesting reading. Sort of autobio essays that he called "Memory Exercises" on five subjects that spread out because Calvino was a genius at memory and evocation. I like many "elderly" people either love to rummage in our memory or we hate it. I was glad to find so many ways and paths to take for a memory seeker like Calvino. Here's one quote from "Memories of a Battle" when he decides "to haul in memory's nets and see what's inside." That's sort of what it's like when you are partly asleep and partly awake "as if I were unable to unglue the sleep from my eyes, and perhaps it is precisely this imprecision that guarantees that the memory is precise... ." I have to write things down on a pad I keep by my bed. I'm always thinking of something, usually it starts with an eiditic image, which is how most of my memories are charged up. Calvino was sure he would write many more books, as Esther Calvino says in the very short Introduction. I'd like to imagine that I can imagine some of the ones he didn't get to write!
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
August 30, 2022
L'edizione raccoglie 5 racconti sull'infanzia dell'autore. Bellissimo, per chi è affascinato dalla nostalgia come me, quello che da il nome alla raccolta, ma anche quello su "La poubelle agréée", che consiste nella solita "calvinata", alla "Palomar", ove un elemento banale se non irrilevante della vita quotidiana (qui si parla dell'asporto della spazzatura), diventa simbolo e metafora di messaggi esistenziali. Sebbene preferisca sempre il Calvino dei grandi romanzi, dei Nidi di Ragno e degli Antenati, queste perle sono deliziose per assaporare un mondo che non c'è più, circonfusi da una malcelata malinconia.
February 13, 2018
Kitapta yazarın beş farklı konuda yazmış olduğu metinler derlenmiş. Kendisiyle yüzleşme notları olarak da adlandırabiliriz. Konu itibariyle beni çok etkilemediği için kitabın içine bir türlü giremedim. Bazı kitapları okumanın gerçekten zamanı olduğunu düşünüyorum.
‘Yalnızca seyircisi olduğunu düşündüğünüz film, kendi yaşamımızın öyküsüdür.’
‘Yalnızca seyircisi olduğunu düşündüğünüz film, kendi yaşamımızın öyküsüdür.’
March 27, 2018
The first two "memory exercises" were amazing. The first is a piece of his father walking to and from the fields. The second essay was about watching American films as a kid in Fascist Italy. Wonderful. The third piece, about not really rememberinga battle during WW2 was good. The last two were so dull I don't even remember them. Weigh it all out, and it is worth a good deal for the good parts
August 10, 2019
Hard to "rate" this, as it's a personal, intimate, introspective entry. Those who start reading and are interested in connecting to Calivino in this way--which certainly will not be everyone--will adore the entire thing as I did, and find their own existential narrative activating.
March 13, 2020
2.5-3* That last essay was just too opaque for me. ;)
August 14, 2022
Libro perfetto per entrare nella vita dell'autore.
November 3, 2021
One of my favorite Calvino books so far! The writing was gorgeous, it has Calvino's common mix of normal storytelling and poetry.
February 24, 2019
This is a miscellaneous collection, but the essays all touch on the impermanence of life and memory in a way that gives the book an atmosphere of its own, outside of the content of each individual piece. It results in an almost haunting feeling, haunting because of how beautifully Calvino expresses memories of a time and place that no longer exist. His writing has a particular feeling or spirit to it that is hard to describe but always beautiful and immersive.
Notes
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. To my father's mind, words must serve as confirmation of things, and as signs of possession; to mine they were foretastes of things barely glimpsed, not possessed, presumed. My father's vocabulary welled outward into the interminable catalog of the genuses, species and varieties of the vegetable world — every name was a distinction plucked from the dense compactness of the Forest in the belief that one had thus enlarged man's dominion — and into technical terminology, where the exactness of the word goes hand in hand with the studied exactness of the operation, the gesture. (pg. 10)
In short, all he wanted was a sign that civil cohabitation was possible in this world of his, a cohabitation prompted by a passion for improvement and informed by natural reason; but then he would immediately be oppressed again by reminders that all was precarious and beset by danger and once more the fury was upon him. And one of these reminders was myself, the fact that I belonged to that other, metropolitan and hostile part of the world, the painful awareness that he couldn't count on his children to consolidate this ideal San Giovanni civilization of his, which thus had no future. So that the last stretch of the path was covered in an unwarranted hurry, as though it were the edge of a blanket he could used to talk himself away inside San Giovanni… (pg. 25)
[T]hose baskets seemed insignificant then, as the basic materials of life always seemed banal to the young, yet now that I have but a smooth sheet of white paper in their place, I struggle to fill them with name upon name, to cram them with the words, and in remembering and arranging these names I spend more time than I spent gathering and arranging the things themselves, more passion… — no, not true: I imagined as I set out to describe the baskets that I would reach the crowning moment of my regret, and instead nothing, what came out was a cold, predictable list: and it's pointless my trying to kindle a halo of feeling behind it with these words of commentary: all remains as it was then, those baskets were already dead then and I knew it, ghosts of a concreteness that had already disappeared, and I was already what I am, a citizen of cities and of history — still without either city or history and suffering for it — a consumer — and victim — of industrial products —a candidate for consumerism, a freshly designated victim — and already the lots were cast, all the lots, our own and everybody else’s, yet what was this morning fury of my childhood, the fury that still persists in these not entirely sincere pages? Could everything perhaps have been different — not very different but just enough to make the difference — if those baskets hadn't even then been so alien to me, if the rift between myself and my father hadn't been so deep? Might everything that is happening now perhaps have taken a different slant, in the world. in the history of civilization — the losses not have been so absolute, the gains so uncertain?) (pg. 29-30)
[A]nd everything that once was is gone, everything that seemed to be there but was already only an illusion, an unaccountable stay of execution. (pg. 31)
So what had the cinema meant to me in this context? I suppose: distance. It satisfied a need for distance, for an expansion of the boundaries of the real, for seeing immeasurable dimensions open up all around me, abstract as geometric entities, yet concrete too, crammed full of faces and situations and settings, which established an (abstract) network of relationships with the world of direct experience. (pg. 60)
With the result that when I empty the small bin into the big one and lift it up by its two handles to carry it out of our front door, though still functioning as a humble cog in the domestic machine, I am nevertheless already taking on a social role; offering myself as the first link in the chain of operations crucial for collective cohabitation, I am confirming my dependence on the institutions without which I would die buried under my own rubbish in the snail shell of my individual existence, at once introverted and (in more than one sense) autistic. Is the departure point for proper clarification of the reasons that make my poubelle truly agréée: acceptable in the first place to me, even if not pleasant, as one has to accept the unpleasant without which none of what pleases us would have any sense. (pg. 98)
It was no doubt his obedience to Christian precepts which brought my friend to accept this role quite happily. And me? I would like to be able to say, with Nietzsche, “I love my destiny,” but I can't do that until I have explained for myself the reasons that have led me to love it. Carrying out the poubelle agréée is not something I do without thinking, but something that needs to be thought about and that awakens the special satisfaction I get from thinking. (pg. 101)
[A] rite of purification, the abandoning of the detritus of myself, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about the very detritus contained in the poubelle or whether that detritus refers us back to every other possible detritus of mine; what matters is that through this daily gesture I confirm the need to separate myself from a part of what was once mine, the slough or chrysalis or squeezed lemon of living, so that its substance might remain, so that tomorrow I can identify completely (without residues) with what I am and have. Only by throwing something away can I be sure that something of myself has not yet been thrown away and perhaps need not be thrown away now or in the future.
The satisfaction I get out of this, then, is analogous to that of defecation, the feeling of one's guts unburdening themselves, the sensation at least for a moment that my body contains nothing but myself, and that there is no possible confusion between what I am and what is unalterably alien. Alas the unhappy retentive (or the miser) who, fearing to lose something of his own, is unable to separate himself from anything, hoards his faeces and ends up identifying with his own detritus and losing himself in it. (pg. 103)
Here we arrive at the economic crux of what I have hitherto chosen to refer to judicially as a contract and symbolically as a right: my relationship with the poubelle is that of the man for whom throwing something away completes or confirms its appropriation, my contemplation of the heaps of peels, shells, packaging and plastic containers brings with it the satisfaction of having consumed their contents, while for the man who unloads the poubelle into the rotating crater of the dust cart it offers only an idea of the amount of goods which are denied to him, which reach him only as useless detritus.
But perhaps (and here my essay glimpses an optimistic conclusion intermediately succumbs to the temptation), perhaps this denial is only temporary: is having been taken on as a dustbin man is the first step opus social ladder that will eventually make today's pariah another member of the consumer society and like everybody else a producer of refuse, while others escaping from the deserts of the “developing countries” Will take his place loading and unloading the bins. (pg. 110)
All that's left me and belongs to me is a sheet of paper dotted with a few sparse notes, on which over the last few years under the title La Poubelle Agréée I have been jotting down the ideas that cropped up in my mind and that I planned to develop at length in writing, theme of purification of dross throwing away is complementary to appropriating the hell of a world where nothing is thrown away one is what one does not throw away identification of oneself rubbish as autobiography satisfaction of consumption defecation theme of materiality, of starting again, agricultural world cooking and writing autobiography as refuse transmission for preservation and still other notes whose thread and connective reasoning I can no longer make out, theme of memory expulsion of memory lost memory… (pg. 125)
Notes
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. To my father's mind, words must serve as confirmation of things, and as signs of possession; to mine they were foretastes of things barely glimpsed, not possessed, presumed. My father's vocabulary welled outward into the interminable catalog of the genuses, species and varieties of the vegetable world — every name was a distinction plucked from the dense compactness of the Forest in the belief that one had thus enlarged man's dominion — and into technical terminology, where the exactness of the word goes hand in hand with the studied exactness of the operation, the gesture. (pg. 10)
In short, all he wanted was a sign that civil cohabitation was possible in this world of his, a cohabitation prompted by a passion for improvement and informed by natural reason; but then he would immediately be oppressed again by reminders that all was precarious and beset by danger and once more the fury was upon him. And one of these reminders was myself, the fact that I belonged to that other, metropolitan and hostile part of the world, the painful awareness that he couldn't count on his children to consolidate this ideal San Giovanni civilization of his, which thus had no future. So that the last stretch of the path was covered in an unwarranted hurry, as though it were the edge of a blanket he could used to talk himself away inside San Giovanni… (pg. 25)
[T]hose baskets seemed insignificant then, as the basic materials of life always seemed banal to the young, yet now that I have but a smooth sheet of white paper in their place, I struggle to fill them with name upon name, to cram them with the words, and in remembering and arranging these names I spend more time than I spent gathering and arranging the things themselves, more passion… — no, not true: I imagined as I set out to describe the baskets that I would reach the crowning moment of my regret, and instead nothing, what came out was a cold, predictable list: and it's pointless my trying to kindle a halo of feeling behind it with these words of commentary: all remains as it was then, those baskets were already dead then and I knew it, ghosts of a concreteness that had already disappeared, and I was already what I am, a citizen of cities and of history — still without either city or history and suffering for it — a consumer — and victim — of industrial products —a candidate for consumerism, a freshly designated victim — and already the lots were cast, all the lots, our own and everybody else’s, yet what was this morning fury of my childhood, the fury that still persists in these not entirely sincere pages? Could everything perhaps have been different — not very different but just enough to make the difference — if those baskets hadn't even then been so alien to me, if the rift between myself and my father hadn't been so deep? Might everything that is happening now perhaps have taken a different slant, in the world. in the history of civilization — the losses not have been so absolute, the gains so uncertain?) (pg. 29-30)
[A]nd everything that once was is gone, everything that seemed to be there but was already only an illusion, an unaccountable stay of execution. (pg. 31)
So what had the cinema meant to me in this context? I suppose: distance. It satisfied a need for distance, for an expansion of the boundaries of the real, for seeing immeasurable dimensions open up all around me, abstract as geometric entities, yet concrete too, crammed full of faces and situations and settings, which established an (abstract) network of relationships with the world of direct experience. (pg. 60)
With the result that when I empty the small bin into the big one and lift it up by its two handles to carry it out of our front door, though still functioning as a humble cog in the domestic machine, I am nevertheless already taking on a social role; offering myself as the first link in the chain of operations crucial for collective cohabitation, I am confirming my dependence on the institutions without which I would die buried under my own rubbish in the snail shell of my individual existence, at once introverted and (in more than one sense) autistic. Is the departure point for proper clarification of the reasons that make my poubelle truly agréée: acceptable in the first place to me, even if not pleasant, as one has to accept the unpleasant without which none of what pleases us would have any sense. (pg. 98)
It was no doubt his obedience to Christian precepts which brought my friend to accept this role quite happily. And me? I would like to be able to say, with Nietzsche, “I love my destiny,” but I can't do that until I have explained for myself the reasons that have led me to love it. Carrying out the poubelle agréée is not something I do without thinking, but something that needs to be thought about and that awakens the special satisfaction I get from thinking. (pg. 101)
[A] rite of purification, the abandoning of the detritus of myself, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about the very detritus contained in the poubelle or whether that detritus refers us back to every other possible detritus of mine; what matters is that through this daily gesture I confirm the need to separate myself from a part of what was once mine, the slough or chrysalis or squeezed lemon of living, so that its substance might remain, so that tomorrow I can identify completely (without residues) with what I am and have. Only by throwing something away can I be sure that something of myself has not yet been thrown away and perhaps need not be thrown away now or in the future.
The satisfaction I get out of this, then, is analogous to that of defecation, the feeling of one's guts unburdening themselves, the sensation at least for a moment that my body contains nothing but myself, and that there is no possible confusion between what I am and what is unalterably alien. Alas the unhappy retentive (or the miser) who, fearing to lose something of his own, is unable to separate himself from anything, hoards his faeces and ends up identifying with his own detritus and losing himself in it. (pg. 103)
Here we arrive at the economic crux of what I have hitherto chosen to refer to judicially as a contract and symbolically as a right: my relationship with the poubelle is that of the man for whom throwing something away completes or confirms its appropriation, my contemplation of the heaps of peels, shells, packaging and plastic containers brings with it the satisfaction of having consumed their contents, while for the man who unloads the poubelle into the rotating crater of the dust cart it offers only an idea of the amount of goods which are denied to him, which reach him only as useless detritus.
But perhaps (and here my essay glimpses an optimistic conclusion intermediately succumbs to the temptation), perhaps this denial is only temporary: is having been taken on as a dustbin man is the first step opus social ladder that will eventually make today's pariah another member of the consumer society and like everybody else a producer of refuse, while others escaping from the deserts of the “developing countries” Will take his place loading and unloading the bins. (pg. 110)
All that's left me and belongs to me is a sheet of paper dotted with a few sparse notes, on which over the last few years under the title La Poubelle Agréée I have been jotting down the ideas that cropped up in my mind and that I planned to develop at length in writing, theme of purification of dross throwing away is complementary to appropriating the hell of a world where nothing is thrown away one is what one does not throw away identification of oneself rubbish as autobiography satisfaction of consumption defecation theme of materiality, of starting again, agricultural world cooking and writing autobiography as refuse transmission for preservation and still other notes whose thread and connective reasoning I can no longer make out, theme of memory expulsion of memory lost memory… (pg. 125)
August 28, 2014
Io non riconoscevo ne' una pianta ne' un uccello. Per me le cose erano mute. Le parole fluivano fluivano nella mia testa non ancorate a oggetti, ma ad emozioni fantasie presagi. E bastava un brandello di giornale calpestato che mi finiva tra i piedi ed ero assorto a bere la scrittura che ne sortiva mozza e inconfessabile - nomi di teatri, attrici, vanita' – e gia' la mia mente aveva preso il galoppo, la catena delle immagini non si sarebbe fermata per ore e ore mentre continuavo a seguire in silenzio mio padre, che additava certe foglie di la' da un muro e diceva: “Ypotoglaxia … (18-9)
Ma cio' che muoveva mio padre ogni mattina su per la strada di San Giovanni – e me giu' per la mia via – piu' che dovere di proprietario operoso, disinteresse d'innovatore di metodi agricoli, - e per me, piu' che le definizioni di doveri che via via mi sarei imposto -, era passione feroce, dolore a esistere – cosa se non questo poteva spingere lui a arrampicarsi per i gerbidi e i boschi e me a addentrarmi in un labirinto di muri e carta scritta? - confronto disperato con cio' che resta fuori di noi, spreco di se' opposto allo spreco generale del mondo. (22)
Cos'era stato dunque allora il cinema, in questo contesto, per me? Direi: la distanza. Rispondeva a un bisogno di distanza, di dilazione dei confini del reale, di veder aprirsi intorno delle dimensioni incommensurabili, astratte come entita' geometriche, ma anche concrete, assolutamente piene di facce e situazioni e ambienti, che col mondo dell'esperienza diretta stabilivano una loro rete (astratta) di rapporti. (52)
Continuo a scrutare nel fondovalle della memoria. E la mia paura di adesso e' che appena si profila un ricordo, subito prenda una luce sbagliata, di maniera, sentimentale come sempre la guerra e la giovinezza, diventi un pezzo di racconto con lo stile di allora, che non puo' dirci come erano davvero le cose ma solo come credevamo di vederle e di dirle. (70-1)
… dal fondo dell'opaco io scrivo, ricostruendo la mappa d'un aprico (a solatio) che e' solo un inverificabile assioma per i calcoli della memoria, il luogo geometrico dell'io, di un me stesso di cui il me stesso ha bisogno per sapersi me stesso, l'io che serve solo perche' il mondo riceva continuamente notizie dell'esistenza del mondo, un congegno di cui il mondo dispone per sapere se c'e'. (116)
February 7, 2021
«Capite come le nostre strade divergevano, quella di mio padre e la mia. Ma anch’io, cos’era la strada che cercavo se non la stessa di mio padre scavata nel folto d’un’altra estraneità, nel sopramondo (o inferno) umano, cosa cercavo con lo sguardo negli androni male illuminati nella notte (l’ombra d’una donna, a volte, vi spariva) se non la porta socchiusa, lo schermo del cinematografo da attraversare, la pagina da voltare che immette in un mondo dove tutte le parole e le figure diventassero vere, presenti, esperienza mia, non più l’eco di un’eco di un’eco.» (I. Calvino, La strada di San Giovanni)
La strada di San Giovanni di Italo Calvino è una raccolta di racconti autobiografici composti – come precisa Esther Calvino nella prefazione alla stessa – tra il 1962 e il 1977. Passaggi obbligati era stato pensato come titolo originario, ma se “la molteplicità dei passaggi mancanti” ne ha comportato un mutamento – appunto a livello del titolo – per ciò che concerne la narrazione, il fil rouge che collega tutti i racconti è il tema della memoria, intrecciata a sua volta con la topografia paesaggistica e familiare. Prima di addentrarci nell’esplorazione di questo volume, mi preme tuttavia precisare che talune citazioni, di una certa lunghezza, mi sono parse non solo appropriate, bensì anche necessarie, per evitare di impoverirne l’intensità e il sentimento che la penna calviniana trasmette con esse.
Sin dal primo racconto (La strada di San Giovanni), Calvino ricorda la regione detta “punta di Francia”, «a mezza costa sotto la collina di San Pietro, come a frontiera tra due continenti», una città «spiraglio di tutte le città possibili». Poco più in là, la campagna di San Giovanni è il locus in cui si consuma un primo, irrimediabile dissidio. La detta campagna è il “regno” del padre di Calvino, un uomo dedito alle piante, con la passione – che trasforma in dovere – della coltivazione, per Italo è invece il luogo in cui vi si reca per dargli aiuto, molte volte su richiesta della madre, diventando per questo un “dovere quotidiano necessario”.
Se per l’uno è indispensabile stabilire un rapporto stretto con la natura, in modo da sentirla “viva e intera”, l’altro assegna alla letteratura il compito di restituire il significato delle cose del mondo:
«E io? Io credevo di pensare ad altro. Cos’era la natura? Erbe, piante, luoghi verdi, animali. Ci vivevo in mezzo e volevo essere altrove. Di fronte alla natura restavo indifferente, riservato, a tratti ostile. E non sapevo che stavo anch’io cercando un rapporto, forse più fortunato di quello di mio padre, un rapporto che sarebbe stata la letteratura a darmi, restituendo significato a tutto, e d’un tratto ogni cosa sarebbe divenuta vera e tangibile e possedibile e perfetta, ogni cosa di quel mondo ormai perduto.»
Qui, il discrimine acuto tra il padre e il figlio viene evidenziato facendo appello alla nomenclatura babelica e idiomatica, al significato che i due attribuiscono alle parole, così tante da restare muti, da essere inabili nell’ars oratoria, scivolando fatalmente nell’asetticità dell’incomunicabilità:
«Parlarci era difficile. Entrambi d’indole verbosa, posseduti da un mare di parole, insieme restavamo muti, camminavamo in silenzio fianco a fianco per la strada di San Giovanni. Per mio padre le parole dovevano servire da conferma alle cose e da segno di possesso; per me erano previsioni di cose intraviste appena, non possedute, presunte. […] fluivano nella mia testa non ancorate a oggetti, ma ad emozioni fantasie presagi.»
Ma se la letteratura implica una relazione con tutto ciò che è stato, in Autobiografia di uno spettatore, il cinema pone lo spettatore a contatto con il mondo che è al tempo presente, non soltanto offrendone evasione, senso di spaesamento e una particolare mistificazione:
«[…] il cinema era il modo più facile e a portata di mano, ma anche quello che istantaneamente mi portava più lontano.»
ma delineando anche il passaggio che va “dalla caricatura al visionario”, “dal dentro al fuori”, “dalla luce al buio”, “dai luoghi della mia esperienza ai luoghi dell’altrove”, racchiudendo ed enucleando in siffatto modo il cosiddetto “effetto del realismo”. E negli anni del dopoguerra, quando si avverte che le cose sono cambiate e la tristezza – invisibile alle cose – è una fiamma che arde nell’interiorità, all’universo cinematografico spetta un ruolo non irrilevante, nonostante anch’esso sia stato attraversato da cambiamenti notevoli.
Il cinema, ora più che mai, risponde a un disperato bisogno di prendere le distanze dalla realtà, affinché fosse – per una manciata di ore – qualcosa di astratto, se non addirittura di inesistente. Nella presentazione, infatti, Calvino confessa che all’epoca la settima arte non solo è “il luogo di incontro con i compagni, ma più della letteratura e dei libri, esso è un tema di dialogo e di discussione”. Pertanto, se da un lato lo schermo non riduce la distanza, in quanto è «una lente d’ingrandimento posata sul fuori quotidiano», dall’altro ciò che per i registi diventa di importanza fondamentale è la trasposizione esplorativo-documentaria o introspettiva, che porta alla formulazione di una serie di interrogativi sul mondo esterno e che coinvolgono ineluttabilmente il “nostro esistere quotidiano e il rapporto con noi stessi”.
L’esserci, il Dasein heideggeriano, è un concetto che Calvino traspone nel racconto intitolato Poubelle aigrée, letteralmente “la pattumiera gradita”, e così lo formula:
«se il buttar via è la prima condizione indispensabile per essere, perché si è ciò che nn si butta via, il primo atto fisiologico e mentale è il separare la parte di me che resta e la parte che devo lasciare che discenda in un al di là senza ritorno»
Dunque, l’autore “psicanalizza” l’atto del gettare via (entwurfen). Nella prospettiva calviniana è un “rito catartico”, nello stesso modo in cui la scrittura è “dispossessarsi di una pila di fogli appallottolati”, che giustifica “la mia presenza nel mondo” e in cui
«il contenuto della poubelle rappresenta la parte del nostro essere e avere che deve quotidianamente sprofondare nel buio perché un’altra parte del nostro essere e avere resti a godere la luce del sole […] senza chiederci quanta parte di noi temiamo o desideriamo vada in cenere.»
La strada di San Giovanni è, insomma, un “esercizio della memoria” caratterizzato da intimità, contornato da un temperamento nostalgico e parimenti da un sentimento di estraneità nei luoghi più familiari:
«Questo senso di ritrovarmi in luoghi più raccolti e familiari prendeva me pure, ma sentivo insieme anche il disagio di non potrermi più credere il passante anonimo della carrozzabile; di qui in poi ero «u fiu du prefessù» sottoposto al giudizio di tutti gli occhi altrui.»
© Antonietta Florio
La strada di San Giovanni di Italo Calvino è una raccolta di racconti autobiografici composti – come precisa Esther Calvino nella prefazione alla stessa – tra il 1962 e il 1977. Passaggi obbligati era stato pensato come titolo originario, ma se “la molteplicità dei passaggi mancanti” ne ha comportato un mutamento – appunto a livello del titolo – per ciò che concerne la narrazione, il fil rouge che collega tutti i racconti è il tema della memoria, intrecciata a sua volta con la topografia paesaggistica e familiare. Prima di addentrarci nell’esplorazione di questo volume, mi preme tuttavia precisare che talune citazioni, di una certa lunghezza, mi sono parse non solo appropriate, bensì anche necessarie, per evitare di impoverirne l’intensità e il sentimento che la penna calviniana trasmette con esse.
Sin dal primo racconto (La strada di San Giovanni), Calvino ricorda la regione detta “punta di Francia”, «a mezza costa sotto la collina di San Pietro, come a frontiera tra due continenti», una città «spiraglio di tutte le città possibili». Poco più in là, la campagna di San Giovanni è il locus in cui si consuma un primo, irrimediabile dissidio. La detta campagna è il “regno” del padre di Calvino, un uomo dedito alle piante, con la passione – che trasforma in dovere – della coltivazione, per Italo è invece il luogo in cui vi si reca per dargli aiuto, molte volte su richiesta della madre, diventando per questo un “dovere quotidiano necessario”.
Se per l’uno è indispensabile stabilire un rapporto stretto con la natura, in modo da sentirla “viva e intera”, l’altro assegna alla letteratura il compito di restituire il significato delle cose del mondo:
«E io? Io credevo di pensare ad altro. Cos’era la natura? Erbe, piante, luoghi verdi, animali. Ci vivevo in mezzo e volevo essere altrove. Di fronte alla natura restavo indifferente, riservato, a tratti ostile. E non sapevo che stavo anch’io cercando un rapporto, forse più fortunato di quello di mio padre, un rapporto che sarebbe stata la letteratura a darmi, restituendo significato a tutto, e d’un tratto ogni cosa sarebbe divenuta vera e tangibile e possedibile e perfetta, ogni cosa di quel mondo ormai perduto.»
Qui, il discrimine acuto tra il padre e il figlio viene evidenziato facendo appello alla nomenclatura babelica e idiomatica, al significato che i due attribuiscono alle parole, così tante da restare muti, da essere inabili nell’ars oratoria, scivolando fatalmente nell’asetticità dell’incomunicabilità:
«Parlarci era difficile. Entrambi d’indole verbosa, posseduti da un mare di parole, insieme restavamo muti, camminavamo in silenzio fianco a fianco per la strada di San Giovanni. Per mio padre le parole dovevano servire da conferma alle cose e da segno di possesso; per me erano previsioni di cose intraviste appena, non possedute, presunte. […] fluivano nella mia testa non ancorate a oggetti, ma ad emozioni fantasie presagi.»
Ma se la letteratura implica una relazione con tutto ciò che è stato, in Autobiografia di uno spettatore, il cinema pone lo spettatore a contatto con il mondo che è al tempo presente, non soltanto offrendone evasione, senso di spaesamento e una particolare mistificazione:
«[…] il cinema era il modo più facile e a portata di mano, ma anche quello che istantaneamente mi portava più lontano.»
ma delineando anche il passaggio che va “dalla caricatura al visionario”, “dal dentro al fuori”, “dalla luce al buio”, “dai luoghi della mia esperienza ai luoghi dell’altrove”, racchiudendo ed enucleando in siffatto modo il cosiddetto “effetto del realismo”. E negli anni del dopoguerra, quando si avverte che le cose sono cambiate e la tristezza – invisibile alle cose – è una fiamma che arde nell’interiorità, all’universo cinematografico spetta un ruolo non irrilevante, nonostante anch’esso sia stato attraversato da cambiamenti notevoli.
Il cinema, ora più che mai, risponde a un disperato bisogno di prendere le distanze dalla realtà, affinché fosse – per una manciata di ore – qualcosa di astratto, se non addirittura di inesistente. Nella presentazione, infatti, Calvino confessa che all’epoca la settima arte non solo è “il luogo di incontro con i compagni, ma più della letteratura e dei libri, esso è un tema di dialogo e di discussione”. Pertanto, se da un lato lo schermo non riduce la distanza, in quanto è «una lente d’ingrandimento posata sul fuori quotidiano», dall’altro ciò che per i registi diventa di importanza fondamentale è la trasposizione esplorativo-documentaria o introspettiva, che porta alla formulazione di una serie di interrogativi sul mondo esterno e che coinvolgono ineluttabilmente il “nostro esistere quotidiano e il rapporto con noi stessi”.
L’esserci, il Dasein heideggeriano, è un concetto che Calvino traspone nel racconto intitolato Poubelle aigrée, letteralmente “la pattumiera gradita”, e così lo formula:
«se il buttar via è la prima condizione indispensabile per essere, perché si è ciò che nn si butta via, il primo atto fisiologico e mentale è il separare la parte di me che resta e la parte che devo lasciare che discenda in un al di là senza ritorno»
Dunque, l’autore “psicanalizza” l’atto del gettare via (entwurfen). Nella prospettiva calviniana è un “rito catartico”, nello stesso modo in cui la scrittura è “dispossessarsi di una pila di fogli appallottolati”, che giustifica “la mia presenza nel mondo” e in cui
«il contenuto della poubelle rappresenta la parte del nostro essere e avere che deve quotidianamente sprofondare nel buio perché un’altra parte del nostro essere e avere resti a godere la luce del sole […] senza chiederci quanta parte di noi temiamo o desideriamo vada in cenere.»
La strada di San Giovanni è, insomma, un “esercizio della memoria” caratterizzato da intimità, contornato da un temperamento nostalgico e parimenti da un sentimento di estraneità nei luoghi più familiari:
«Questo senso di ritrovarmi in luoghi più raccolti e familiari prendeva me pure, ma sentivo insieme anche il disagio di non potrermi più credere il passante anonimo della carrozzabile; di qui in poi ero «u fiu du prefessù» sottoposto al giudizio di tutti gli occhi altrui.»
© Antonietta Florio
August 28, 2020
*all around Italo Calvino Aug 2020
This is my 10th Calvino book and 8th review. I am at the point when it’s dreading to read through another lumpy collection of short essays that almost made no sense why the publisher and Esther Calvino decided to put together.
The title piece “The Road to San Giovanni” was very strong and I loved reading about his father and Calivno’s Italian countryside childhood excursion. The storytelling and scenery portraying was poetic and mythical, just like in most of other strong Calvino pieces. Parts of the story “From the Opaque" are also decent. Both of these pieces do an admirable job of attempting to recreate not just memories but direct sensory nostalgic experience from a younger age with a philosophical tone attached to them.
The other three essay were just tiresome. The story on cinema had some interesting insights, but it was overall very stale. I completely skipped the war story and the Parisen garbage story was also dragging. Overall, the weaker parts of the collection detracted from the stronger parts. I LOVE Calvino for his whimsical intellectual comment combined with imaginative tales, which I didn’t get much from this collection of essays.
This is my 10th Calvino book and 8th review. I am at the point when it’s dreading to read through another lumpy collection of short essays that almost made no sense why the publisher and Esther Calvino decided to put together.
The title piece “The Road to San Giovanni” was very strong and I loved reading about his father and Calivno’s Italian countryside childhood excursion. The storytelling and scenery portraying was poetic and mythical, just like in most of other strong Calvino pieces. Parts of the story “From the Opaque" are also decent. Both of these pieces do an admirable job of attempting to recreate not just memories but direct sensory nostalgic experience from a younger age with a philosophical tone attached to them.
The other three essay were just tiresome. The story on cinema had some interesting insights, but it was overall very stale. I completely skipped the war story and the Parisen garbage story was also dragging. Overall, the weaker parts of the collection detracted from the stronger parts. I LOVE Calvino for his whimsical intellectual comment combined with imaginative tales, which I didn’t get much from this collection of essays.
July 21, 2015
According to the foreword written by Calvino’s widow, in the spring of 1985 which was to be the year of his death, Calvino was optimistically planning to write another 12-15 books. One of these was to be called Passaggi Obbligati and was to be comprised of a series of memory exercises. Those that had already been completed at the time of his death are here presented under the title of the first, “The Road to San Giovanni,” which also happens to be one of the most personal and accessible of the pieces. The subject matter of these essays ranges from memories of childhood, reminiscences of youthful exploits with the partisans during WWII, a tribute to the American films of the 1930s, and even a humorous contemplation of the social contract symbolized by the lowly trashcan, and how unburdening oneself of garbage may even be an apt metaphor for the act of writing. Only one of these essays left me cold, “From the Opaque,” which was so opaque that I really have no idea what the author was attempting to communicate.
April 24, 2019
Relatos que llevan al recuerdo más tierno, al recuerdo más íntimo. Canastas, colores y olores de frutas y verduras; el camino al bosque, al campo; el camino hacia el recuerdo del padre, hacia los días de abastecimiento.
El cine como evasión de la vida, donde se habitaba paralelamente otros tiempos, otros espacios. La biografía de un espectador como Calvino la llama, donde deposita sus reflexiones y sentimientos, sus recuerdos de actores y actrices norteamericanos. El cine italiano, la imagen de Fellini.
La basura como memoria, la basura como el acto de poseer y no poseer. Ausencia y abundancia desde lo que se tiene y de lo que se carece.
Decantar la cabeza, los recuerdos, la memoria.
El cine como evasión de la vida, donde se habitaba paralelamente otros tiempos, otros espacios. La biografía de un espectador como Calvino la llama, donde deposita sus reflexiones y sentimientos, sus recuerdos de actores y actrices norteamericanos. El cine italiano, la imagen de Fellini.
La basura como memoria, la basura como el acto de poseer y no poseer. Ausencia y abundancia desde lo que se tiene y de lo que se carece.
Decantar la cabeza, los recuerdos, la memoria.
February 9, 2017
A set of five autobiographical essays - the prose is elegant and mesmerising, and has been skilfully translated by Tim Parks so that its distinctive style remains.
My favourite was the essay about Calvino's experience fighting with the partisans against the Fascists - as well as painting a vivid if blurred picture of a particular episode, Calvino makes some acute and thought provoking observations on the nature of memory.
Only the final essay lost me a little, it was intellectually strong in its ideas, but lacking the 'real world' grounding that made the other essays so engaging.
My favourite was the essay about Calvino's experience fighting with the partisans against the Fascists - as well as painting a vivid if blurred picture of a particular episode, Calvino makes some acute and thought provoking observations on the nature of memory.
Only the final essay lost me a little, it was intellectually strong in its ideas, but lacking the 'real world' grounding that made the other essays so engaging.
June 2, 2013
For aspiring writers, this collection of essays might reveal how Calvino begins to process his experience and translates it into stunningly intricate narrative. The essay 'La Poubelle Agréée' manifests as an incredible dive into the political, societal, and existential undercurrents that are traceable through the simple act of taking out the trash. While not the most gripping of Calvino's works, the essays are composed with elegant vocabulary & a winding depth of thought.
August 20, 2009
With customary sensuality, his assured prose attentive to the attendant aromas, the tastes and textures of events, Calvino excavates the darkened corners of his personal history: the pre-dawn journeys into the landscapes of his childhood accompanying his father to their family smallholding, afternoons spent in gloomy cinemas, night-shrouded raids with his fellow partisans during wartime.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 105 reviews