Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings
Page 25
4 Mario Tobino (1910–91), prolific Tuscan novelist and also psychiatrist, whose early works, Il figlio del farmacista (The Chemist’s Son) (1942) and Il deserto della Libia (The Libyan Desert) (1950), were largely autobiographical.
5 Carlo Levi (1902–75), Turinese medical graduate, painter and writer. Imprisoned then exiled to Basilicata for anti-Fascist activities in 1935, he based his most famous book on that experience, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli) (1945).
6 Carlo Cassola (1917–87), novelist. His novels of sub-Flaubertian realism, set in provincial Tuscany, were successful in the 1950s but were increasingly the target of more experimental writers such as Calvino. His most famous work is Il taglio del bosco (The Cutting of the Woods) (1949).
7 Giorgio Bassani (1916–2000), famous novelist and poet whose works are nostalgically evocative of Jewish life in his home-town of Ferrara. Largely responsible for ensuring that Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo (The Leopard) (1958) was published after being turned down by several publishers, his own most famous novel is Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) (1962).
8 Domenico Rea (1921–94), important Southern neo-realist writer whose novels and short stories depict life in Naples both during and after the war.
9 Daniele Ponchiroli (1924–79), then chief editor at Einaudi.
10 Calvino and the other writers mentioned were all visiting the USA on a Ford Foundation Scholarship.
11 Alfred Charles Tomlinson (1927– ), poet and artist, the visual qualities of whose verse are evident in Relations and Contraries (1951) and Seeing is Believing (1958).
12 Claude Ollier (1920– ), novelist. He won the Prix Médicis for his novel La Mise en scène (1958), which turned out to be the first of a cycle of eight novels in the Nouveau Roman style.
13 Fernando Arrabal (1932– ), playwright and director. He was exiled from Franco’s Spain in 1955 and settled in France. His plays, such as Cimetière des voitures (1958), are often unconventional and evocative of ritual.
14 Hugo Claus (1929– ), major Belgian novelist, poet and playwright. His first novel, De Metsiers (Duck’s Game) (1950), which Calvino refers to, embodied both Flemish traditions and American influences.
15 Ugo Stille, New York correspondent of the Corriere della sera, and a personal friend of Calvino and the Einaudi publishing house.
16 Aharon Meged (1920– ), Israeli novelist and leading figure on the Israeli left. His The Living on the Dead was considered the best Israeli novel of the 1960s. The novel Calvino refers to was probably Fortunes of a Fool (English translation 1962).
17 Robert Pinget (1919–97), novelist. His parodic novel Le Fiston (1959) explores the possibilities and limits of language. The other novel referred to is Clope au dossier (1961).
18 Marketing manager at Einaudi.
19 Ottiero Ottieri (1924– ), intellectual and writer. He was particularly interested in the ways in which literature can reflect the industrial world.
20 Charles Van Doren, a Columbia professor, had in 1957 won over $100, 000 on a popular quiz show by having answers fed to him. He confessed to taking part in the fraud in November 1959.
21 Elizabeth is the wife of Ugo Stille (Mischa); Giulio is Giulio Einaudi the publisher.
22 Luciano Foà, in charge of the Rights Office, would shortly leave Einaudi to found the Adelphi publishing house.
23 Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
24 Antonio Fogazzaro (1842–1911), late Romantic novelist, whose most famous novels, Piccolo mondo antico (1895) and Piccolo mondo moderno (1901), mix Romantic and decadentist traits.
25 Ada Negri (1870–1945), poet and novelist whose works were popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
26 Giovanni Papini (1881–1956), iconoclastic intellectual and writer. He co-founded the important literary journals Il Leonardo (in 1904), and Lacerba in (1913), but later became a representative of Fascist Catholicism.
27 Egidio Ortona (1910–95). A major Italian diplomat at the UN, he went on to become Italian Ambassador to the USA (1967–75) and a major architect of Italian foreign policy. ¶ Gap in the typescript.
28 Giancarlo Menotti (1911– ), composer. He taught in Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, and later founded the Spoleto Arts Festival. His most famous opera at this time was The Consul (1950).
29 A satirical song written by Calvino in 1958, set to music by Fiorenzo Carpi.
30 Antonio Segni (1891–1972), major Christian Democrat politician. He was Prime Minister of Italy from 1955–57 and 1959–60, before becoming President from 1962–64.
31 Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882–1982), writer and critic. Founder, in the early twentieth century, along with Giovanni Papini, of influential cultural journals such as Leonardo, and editor of La Voce (1908–14), he later moved to the USA. A conservative critic of Italian culture, he also wrote about his life in America.
32 Cesare Cases (1920– ), literary critic, expert on German as well as Italian literature, and the first to introduce into Italy the work of the Marxist critic György Lukács.
33 Carlo Fruttero was at the time one of the editors at Einaudi.
34 Georges Rouault (1871–1958), French painter, subjects include biblical characters.
35 Raniero Panzieri (1921–64), editor at Einaudi, dealt in particular with books on politics and sociology.
36 Paul M. Sweezy (1910– ), Marxist economist, author of The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) and (with Leo Hubermann) Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution (1960).
37 Set This House on Fire, which Einaudi would publish in 1964 as E questa casa diede alle fiamme.
38 Adlai Stevenson (1900–65), Democrat politician, ran for President in the 1952 and 1956 primaries.
39 Max Ascoli (1898–1978), liberal philosopher and sociologist. He left Fascist Italy in 1931 and settled in the USA, where he founded the journal the Reporter, a forum for liberal views.
40 Phrase in English in the original.
41 Thomas Watson Jr, president of IBM.
42 Adriano Olivetti (1901–60), industrialist and publisher, with socialist leanings. He introduced Taylorism and scientific management into the family firm, but was also active culturally, establishing the Fondazione Olivetti. His Movimento di Comunità, unattached to the main political parties, was popular at the time.
43 Palmiro Togliatti (1893–1964), leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1926 until his death. He was highly regarded by the Kremlin, and despite advocating pluralism he sided with Moscow over the Hungarian question in 1956, to the dismay of many left-wing intellectuals, including Calvino, who then left the party.
44 Calvino is here alluding to the covers of the Einaudi series ‘I coralli’, which were illustrated with masterpieces of contemporary painting.
45 United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
46 Calvino is confused here. This is not Nancy but her sister Jessica Mitford, who eloped with Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill.
47 Again Calvino’s information is incorrect: Greene was not living in California at the time, but was visiting San Francisco on a round-the-world tour with Michael Meyer.
48 Guido Piovene (1907–74), novelist and journalist. He wrote Catholic novels in the Bernanos tradition as well as a travelogue, De America (1953).
49 Giovanni Malagodi (1904–91), politician. He was Secretary of the Italian Liberal Party 1954–72 and then its President, before becoming President of the Senate in 1987.
50 In 1925 the Fascist Education Minister, Giovanni Gentile, issued a pro-Fascist manifesto signed by 250 intellectuals, including Pirandello; the Idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce responded with an anti-Fascist manifesto, signed among others by the poet Montale.
51 Giovanni Ansaldo (1895–1969), journalist. Originally a Fascist, he went on to become the editor of the main Naples daily, Il Mattino.
52 Eugenio Scalfari (1924– ), journalist and writer, founder of the popular weekly magazine L’Espresso and the major dail
y paper La Repubblica.
53 Carlo Salinari (1919–78), Marxist literary critic, expert on Manzoni and Boccaccio, and champion of realist literature.
54 Antonello Trombadori (1917–93), Marxist art critic, journalist and politician. He co-edited with Salinari the left-wing journal Il Contemporaneo in the 1950s and 60s.
55 Antonio Giolitti (1915– ), Communist MP in the 1950s, he was in the reformist wing of the party during and after the events of Hungary in 1956, after which he joined the Socialist party. Giolitti’s expulsion from the PCI was one of the reasons that led Calvino to resign as well.
56 Alberto Arbasino (1930– ), journalist and avant-garde writer. He was a member of the Gruppo 63, and his most famous novel, Fratelli d’Italia (1963), articulated his critique of his own country and his delight in linguistic play and parody.
57 Franco Venturi (1914–94), historian and key figure in the Einaudi publishing house. Brought up in exile in France, he later took part in the Resistance, lived in the USSR (1947–49) and became a famous historian of the Enlightenment as well as of Russian populism.
58 György Lukács (1885–1971), Hungarian literary critic and philosopher. His Marxist aesthetics, particularly as expounded in The Historical Novel (1955), were very influential in Italy.
59 Togliatti gave a positive interview in spring 1956 regarding Khrushchev’s moves towards de-Stalinization. However, he later toed the Moscow line over the uprisings in Poland and Hungary that year, thus causing many Italian intellectuals to leave the party.
60 Paolo Spriano (1925–88), historian. Friend of Calvino before and after the latter’s departure from the Communist party, he went on to write the definitive history of the party (1967–75).
61 Luigi Longo (1900–80), politician. After fighting in the Resistance, he was a key figure in the PCI, eventually succeeding Togliatti as leader of the party (1964–72). § Giancarlo Pajetta (1911–90), politician. Leader of the Communist Youth, he was imprisoned under Fascism (1933–43). He went on to become editor of the Communist daily l’Unità several times, and was on the reformist wing of the party.
62 Antonio Roasio (1902– ), politician. Inter-regional head of the Communist Youth under Fascism, he lived in exile in France, the USSR and Spain (during the Civil War). After the war he became a Communist MP, head of the Turin Federation of Communists, and later a member of the Senate. His autobiography, Figlio della classe operaia (Working-class Boy), was published in 1977.
63 Giorgio Amendola (1907–80), politician and historian. Imprisoned under Fascism, he went on to become a key figure in the reformist wing of the PCI.
64 Pietro Secchia (1903–73), politician and historian. Also imprisoned for leading Communist Youth activities under Fascism, he was later more hard-line than Amendola. Wrote histories of the Resistance and of the Italian Communist Party.
65 In 1944 Togliatti urged his party at the Salerno conference to put aside its hostility to the monarchy and to join the royal government in opposing the Nazis and Fascists: national liberation was to take priority over constitutional questions.
66 Achille Starace (1889–1945). Hard-line secretary of the Fascist party 1931–39, he was obsessed with external trappings such as Fascist uniforms, the Roman salute and the use of ‘Voi’ instead of ‘Lei’. He was shot by partisans and his body was hung up alongside Mussolini’s in Piazzale Loreto in Milan in April 1945.
67 Giaime Pintòr (1918–43), writer and Resistance leader. He took a heroic part in the defence of Rome against the Germans in September 1943; his Sangue d’Europa (The Blood of Europe) was published posthumously (1950).
68 Giorgio Caproni (1912–88), Ligurian poet, novelist and translator. Like Calvino, he fought in the Resistance, as this extract shows.
ITALO CALVINO
HERMIT IN PARIS
Italo Calvino (1923–1985) was born in Cuba and grew up in San Remo, Italy. He was a member of the partisan movement during the German occupation of northern Italy in World War II. The novel that resulted from that experience, published in English as The Path to the Nest of Spiders, won widespread acclaim. His other works of fiction include The Baron in the Trees, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Cosmicomics, Difficult Loves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Invisible Cities, Marcovaldo, Mr. Palomar, The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount, t zero, Under the Jaguar Sun, The Watcher and Other Stories, and Numbers in the Dark. His works of nonfiction include The Road to San Giovanni and Six Memos for the Next Millennium.
ALSO BY ITALO CALVINO
The Baron in the Trees
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
Cosmicomics
Difficult Loves
Fantastic Tales
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Invisible Cities
Italian Folktales
Marcovaldo
Mr. Palomar
The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount
Numbers in the Dark
The Path to the Nest of Spiders
The Road to San Giovanni
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
t zero
Under the Jaguar Sun
The Uses of Literature
The Watcher and Other Stories
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, AUGUST 2004
Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Italo Calvino
Translation copyright © 2003 by Jonathan Cape
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
[Eremita a Parigi. English]
Hermit in Paris: autobiographical writings / Italo Calvino; translated from the
Italian by Martin McLaughlin.
p. cm.
1. Calvino, Italo. 2. Calvino, Italo—Homes and haunts—Paris, France.
3. Italy—Intellectual life—20th century. 4. Paris (France)—Intellectual life—
20th century. 5. Authors, Italian—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PQ4809. A45 Z465 2003
853’914—dc21
2002075965
www.vintagebooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42622-2
v3.0