An Interview With Italo Calvino 3kw2j

The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

An Interview with Italo Calvino Author(s): Gregory L. Lucente and Italo Calvino Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 245-253 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208025 . Accessed: 28/09/2013 02:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/.jsp

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AN INTERVIEW WITH ITALO CALVINO

Conductedby GregoryL. Lucente

The followinginterview,whichconcernsthe developmentof Calvino's fiction in relationto his two most recentnarratives,If on a Winter's Night a Traveler(1979; Se una notte d'invernoun viaggiatore)and Palomar(1983),took placeat Calvino'sresidencein Rome on March 12, 1984. The discussion'spoint of departurewas literaryself-consciousness,or textualself-reflexivityand self-knowledge,in Calvino's writings.The translationis mine. Am I rightin sayingthat as a consciouselementof yourwork, Q. as a matterof authorialintention, literaryself-consciousnessbegins to be importantin the late 1950sand early 1960swith the trilogy of novels entitled Our Ancestors (I nostri antenati)? A. Yes, I would say so. The endingof TheBaron in the Trees(Il baronerampante),in whichwriting,the materialact of writing,comes to the fore, and the page writtenout by hand assumescenter stage, thus occupyingthe very same space as that in which the novel itself unfolds, indicatesthat I was alreadyawarethat the fact of writing, the very means of expression,was importantin itself. Also the use of the first-personnarratorin The Cloven Viscount (Il visconte dimezzato)- a narratorwhose voice is not the voice of a protagonist per se but ratherthat of a lateralor secondarycharacterwho has the role of narrator- was a way of embeddingthe entirenarrativewithin anotherdiscourse.This aspectof narrationthen acquiredevengreater importancein TheNonexistentKnight(Il cavaliereinesistente).Today I can no longer recall exactlywhich texts I was readingat the time, which readings accompanied this new awareness, but it goes without

sayingthat European,American,and, indirectly,Italiancriticismof 0010-7484/85/0003-0245 $1.50 Contemporary Literature XXVI, 3 ?1985 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

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Italo Calvino. Photo credit: Denis Gibier. Photo courtesy of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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the 1950s, and even more so as we approachedthe 1960s, became noticeablymore conscious of the instrumentsof expression. Was this all part of the beginningsof structuralism? Q. A. Yes, it was the start of structuralism,of which I began to be awarelater, in the 1960s, and which I immediatelyfelt to be something that respondedto my needs and to what I instinctivelyknew writingto be. Beforethat in Italytherehad been an interestin stylistic criticism,thanks primarilyto the figure of GianfrancoContini, who knew just about everythingthere was to know. But that's not to say that he would engage in overt propagandain favor of his interests.He would keep certainthingsto himselfand then let them appearindirectlyin his criticism.At any rate, he showed a definite interestin stylistics,in the primarylinguisticmaterial.And another criticwhose work along these lines had a greatinfluencein Italy was Leo Spitzer. Q. Accordingto certaincritics, not only in regardto your own work but also to that of other writerswho becameawareof literary self-consciousness,of this literaryversionof "narcissisticlove," this phenomenonconstituteda refusalto facethe everydayrealityof society -precisely in literary, a turningaway from social representation. The comparisonthat is often drawnin this regardis between contemporaryself-consciousnarrativeandthe far less abstractliteratureof Italianpostwarrealism.It is unclearto me if, or in whatway, one can saythatthis phenomenonwasin fact sucha refusal.Perhapsit was an indicationof an interestin other possibilitiesthat literature offers, that is, an interestin valuesthat are social ones but that are not directlytied to traditionalliteraryrepresentation. A. I believethatit wasa refusalto identifyliterature's socialaspect exclusivelyor even primarilywith the so-called"objective"representation of society,whichwe know all too well is not objectiveanyway. However,this versionof representationas an objectivefact has never been predominantin Italianliterature.Before, in the periodbetween thetwo wars,Italianliteraturewasdominatedby the lyric,by the lyrical self-expressionof the individualstate of mind; later on, towardthe endof the war-by reasonof certainhistoricalneeds,the needto know Italy-there was a revivalof realism,in severalcases in a markedly naturalisticvein. I wrote neorealistfiction becauseduringthe war I had experienced the everyday life of the people first hand. But my literary formation, insofar as one can speak of literary formation in

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regardto the years of my adolescencebefore the war, was tied very closely to Italianliteratureas such and did not, therefore,have very profoundroots in realism.Italianliteraturebetweenthe two warscannot be saidto havebeenparticularlyrealistic,andthereforeit was not as though the realist roots went very deep. But perhapsalso the Fascist censorship... Q. A. Yes, therewas censorship.But fortunatelyI beganpublishing afterwards,afterthe era of the liberation.Followingan initialperiod duringwhichI believedin a kindof objectiverealism,I quicklyunderstood that in orderto say something,includingsomethingthat had to do with Italian society, with the history of Italian society, it was necessaryeitherto look withinoneselfor to exposesocialmechanisms thatmightverywellnot be realisticin the tradithroughrepresentations tionalsense.Themethodof BertoltBrecht,for example,was extremely importantfor its demonstrationthat in orderto representthe moral fabricof social life, a determinedset of historicalprocesses,what is essentialis to representthe basic mechanism. What lies underneath,that is, at the deepest levels. Q. A. Yes, precisely,the diagramof the basic motivatingforces. It without goes sayingthat a well-constructedsocial documentarymay also have greatvalue;but to accomplishthis, the authormust really know the environment.Vasco Pratolini, who grew up in the poor quartersof Florence,demonstratedgreat sincerityand effectiveness in expressingthe life of that world, much morethan some bourgeois writerwould have who had approachedhis materialas, let's say, an explorerin a strange, unknown land. So Brecht drew your interest at a certain time. Of course, Q. Brecht'stheoriesconcernnot only literatureanddramain andof themselvesbut also the audience,those who cometo watchandparticipate. A. Brecht'sconceptionof the epictheateris one in whichthe drama mustnot makethe audiencebelievein the realityof its worldbutinstead must declareitself openlyas theater,in orderto arousethe audience's critical powers. Throughthe creation of distance ... Q. A. Yes,throughthe creationof distance.Thisnotionhasbeenquite importantfor me, whereasI have never found Lukics's theories of reflection very interesting.

CALVINO

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Becausethey are tied too closely to the facts of social life? Q. A. BecauseI did not like the image of the mirror.It is too ive. And besidesthat, I no longerthoughtof literatureas a mirror. My idea of literaturewas of somethingthat could and would intervene in reality.Or at least that'sthe way I thoughtof it then. Today these thingsare very far from me, I don'treallycare very much anymore about Brechtor Lukacs. But in that era, betweenBrechtand Lukacs, I chose Brecht. In yournovelof 1979,If on a Winter's Nighta Traveler,literary Q. self-consciousnessis importantnot only in regardto the text itself but as a charalso in regardto the text'sreaders,or audience,the "reader" acterin the story as well as the empiricalreader.It seemsto me that this is again an aspect of Palomar, even though a considerablyless obvious one. A. Yes,Palomaris a completelydifferentwork, though I cannot reallysay thatit is posteriorto If on a Winter'sNight. BecauseI began writingthe piecesthat makeup Palomarin 1975,as a practicalmatter I wrote the two books contemporaneously.However, Palomar respondsto anotherproblematic,above all the problematicof nonlinguistihenomena.That is, how can one read somethingthat is not written,for example[fromthe book'sopening],the wavesof the sea? After this will the self-consciouslypresentedthematicsof the Q. reader,andof the activityof reading,continueto figurein yourwork? I don'tknow. At the momentthey seemfinished.Perhapsthey A. will find some new and differentkind of expression,but I think that for the time being I have exhaustedthe theme of reading. That'swhy I asked.As an artifact,If on a Winter's Nightseems Q. at least to have posed all the possible questionsabout readingeven if not to have found all the answers. A. At a certainpointI stillhada greatmanyquestionsleft in regard to reading,to varioustypes of reading,so I massedthem all together in the chapterset in the library,in whichI madeup a kindof encyclopedia on the art of reading. I'd like to ask a very specific questionconcerningthe book, Q. perhapstoo specific. Near the beginningof If on a Winter'sNight, the novel within the novel appears to be Polish, but then later it seems

has carried to be Cimmerian.From Homer on down, "Cimmerian" 248

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the connotationof obscurity.I don't know if you intendedthe term to be understoodin that sense. How did you pick such an obscure nationality? A. BecauseI did not want to have precisenationalitiesat all. In fact, many of the criticstriedto suggestprecisereferences,claiming that one of the insertednovels would have been by this author and anothernovel wouldhavebeenby that author.No, they are examples of styles, generalsuggestionsratherthan specific authorsor literatures.The beginningof the book titled"Leaningfromthe SteepSlope" could be German,in of landscapeat any rate- I recallthe sea near Liibeck-but in of sensibility,it's nearerto the states of mind found in Austrianliterature. So this was a means of concealingor, at least on your part, Q. of confounding any critical attemptto ... A. Some of these beginningsof novels do have precisesettings. For example, there is a Latin Americannovel among them; that is quiteclearevenif it is not clearwhetherit is SouthAmericanor Central American.Then there is at least one book that is set along a street called Prospect Street("la Prospettiva"),and one thinks right away of Gogol, of the traditionof the Russiannovel. But such references remainvery general. In otherwords, as in your earliernovels, self-consciousinterQ. of a stable textualityhereis not a questionof allegoricalinterpretation, or fixed relation between literarysign and literaryreferent. I sought types of relationswith the world and with types of A. narrative.The novel about the mirrorsis constructeda little bit like certainof Poe's storiesthat begin with an eruditequotation,the type of storyin whichthe eruditionintroducesa storyof suspense,or even one of terror. Borges, too, often constructsstories in that way. So these are reallytypes of narrative,examplesof which can be found in one countryas well as in anotheror whichmay even bounce back and forth from one continentto another.The Japanesenovel could make one think of a novel by Kawabataor Tanizaki,but the erotic situationcould also be typicallyFrench.I am thinkingof Klossowski, for example. Whichis to say that these relationsare part of humannature Q. and arenot specificallytied to just one writeror another.Butperhaps all of this demonstratesthe humannecessityof interpretation, our need

CALVINO

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to interpret or atleastto attemptaninterpretation in orderto organize andprovidean orderfor a worldthatis too chaotic.There'sa beautiful exampleof this phenomenon in Palomar,which,sinceit deals withtheinterpretation of whatmightbetermeda setof signs,reflects backimplicitlyon thenarrative itself.Thescenethatstruckmeis the to Mexico to see the ruins at Tula,theancientTolteccapital,where trip theMexicanguideexplainsthattheruinsdo anddo nothavea meaning. Thatis, the artifactsexist,andthereis no doubtthattheyhave or at leasthad a meaning.Butthe guideinsiststhat no one knows anymorewhatthemeaningof thesignsis. Thensomeoneelsecomes Palomar,thetraveler,andassertspreciselythe along,accompanying with contrary,thatis, thatthe signsof the ruinscanbe interpreted certainty,eventhoughin an allegoricalfashion.Accordingto him, theirmeaningis the necessityof deathandthe continuityof life. A. Thisis anotherMexican,butonewhoexplains,whohasa ionto interpret andexplainthings.Thesearetwodifferentattitudes, andI recognize theforceof eachof them.Wecannotdo withoutinterpreting,withoutaskingourselveswhat somethingmeans,without on an explanation. At the sametime,however,we know embarking that for any explanation-ofone of Dante'ssonnets,or of an allegoricalpaintingfromthe MiddleAges,or, evenmore,of an ethnographicartifactfroma civilizationdistantfromourown- too many thingsaremissing,becausewelacktheentirecontext.Evenif wesucceedin establishing certainmeaningswithprecision,theseso-called meanings,in our context, are entirelydifferent. So even if we knew with certainty,even in that case, because Q. of the distancein time and culture... A. To know that a given symbol means "death"still does not explaineverything.After all, whatmeaningdoes "death"havein that culture? Or the other side of the coin, in the case of the ruinsat Tula, Q. is the continuityof life. A. At any rate, a purelydescriptivecriticismdoes have a function. For example,structuralism,by itself, does not pretendto interpret:it only attemptsto establishvariousoppositionsamonga determined set of signs. Thereis this sign and thereis that one, placedin opposition, for example, betweenhigh and low, above and below. Structuralismseeks to give a descriptionof the text, of the phenomenon, which is not the same as an interpretation. 250

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Thatis, a descriptionof a systemof differencesthat may lead, Q. naturally,to interpretationbut that in and of itself, as a description, stops short of interpretation. In that brief storyof mine I do not take sidesbut insteadlimit A. myselfto representingthesetwo positions,one againstthe other, and to emphasizingthe force of this little Mexicaninstructorwho continues to say that no one knows what the meaningof the ruins is. His convictionis especiallyengaging,in part no doubt due to Q. its presentationin the book in Spanish-there's an effect of local authenticityin his languagethat has an influenceon the reactionsof the reader.Anyway, at the end of the book there is somethingelse that struckme, this time in relationto the plotting of the narrative. AlthoughPalomar is a book in which any notion of plot seems secondaryat best, at the end, when "il signorPalomar"sets himselfthe task of describingevery instant of his life, moment by moment, he suddenlydies. At that moment,the plot becomesimportant- but the book is alreadyfinished. A. That, at least, is a crucialmomentof everynarrative-that is, death. Then that made me think - even if only in this sense - of the Q. ending of Carlo Emilio Gadda's Acquainted with Grief(La cognizione

del dolore),giventhat there,too, the book doesn'tseemto havemuch of a plot until the end, at which point the plot explodes. In Gadda'snovel, however,therewas a plot, therehad to be. A. Therehad to be the death of the mother,therehad to be the murder. Gadda had a plot in mind. So in Palomar, an importantending, one that is striking,still Q. does not meanthatjust becauseof it a readerhasto go backandreconstruct everythingin the narrativealong the lines of a plot? A. But perhapsin the endthis writingmomentby momentis itself the book that I wrote, that I published. Justto enlargethe discussiona bit, I havetwo questionsregardQ. ing contemporaryliteraturein Americaand in Italy. Overthe years you have said quite a few times that you were interestedin certain Americanand other English-speakingauthors.Is this interesta continuing one?

CALVINO

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A.

Yes it is. In If on a Winter'sNight, Nabokov's influence makes

itself felt quiteclearly,for example.My literaryformationtook place duringthe era of the cult (in Italy) for what was then called"thelost generation":Hemingway,Faulkner,Fitzgerald.At thattimeit seemed possibleto me to follow Americanliteratureas a whole, with a common history.Lateron I becameinterestedin variousauthorsas individuals. For example, a writerwho representeda real discoveryfor me in of the pleasuresof writingwas JohnUpdike.OtherAmerican writers,like John Barth,have interestedme particularlyin of the criticalimagination,for theirinventionsof new forms.Donald Barthelme,too, appealsto me in that regard.One of the most recent Americannovels that I enjoyedfor the pleasureof readingit as well as for its formal innovationwas Duluth by Gore Vidal. In an essayof 1959,if I'mnot mistaken,you dividedcontemQ. poraryItalianliteratureinto threecurrents.First, an epic-elegiacone (including,for example,CarloCassola,GiorgioBassani,andGiuseppe Tomasidi Lampedusa); second,one thatwascharacterized by linguistic tension and by a mixtureof standardItalianand Italiandialects(includingPier Paolo Pasolini and Gadda);and, third (includingyour own work), one that was characterizedby the transfiguringpowers of the fantastic.This thirdcurrent,accordingto your view, was not an evasion of social life but ratheranotheravenue of approachto humanand socialvicesandvirtues.I wonderif this thirdline stillcontinues today, let's say as an interestin a kind of representationthat is not traditionalas such but insteada type of indirectinvestigation, an indirectand perhapsself-consciousway of posingthose samequestions withinliterature.I have in mind not only your own fiction but also othercurrentbooks, suchas recentnovelsby FerdinandoCamon and CarmeloSamona. A. I'm not surethat one can speakof a line today becausethese are things that can only be talked about after the fact, when three or four similarbooks can be put together.Today,perhaps,one cannot reallysay what line Italianliteratureis taking. Thereis no principal trend. Perhapswe are discoveringtoday that Italianliterature is madeup of eccentricfigures,marginalfigures,ratherthan central ones. A writerlikeAlbertoSavinio,for example,who wasalwaysconsideredto be an eccentric- now we can see that he was insteadan exwriter.Fromthatsameperspective,todaywriters tremelyrepresentative like TommasoLandolfior Antonio Delfini arebecomingmuchmore importantthan many others. 252

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So the fact that no line can easily be traced does not necesQ. sarilymean,in andof itself,thatliteraturein Italyis in totalconfusion? A. Perhapstoday there is a revivalof individualwork, which is becomingmoreimportantthan collectivework,giventhattherearen't reallyany literaryjournals,that there aren'tany establishedcenters, that therearen'tany real movements.The last movementwas constituted by the "Gruppo63," and even that, if you look closely, was actuallya galaxy of individuals.One of the most interestingwriters workingtoday- also fromthe perspectiveof yourinterestin self-consciousness-is Giorgio Manganelli,who is also a typicallyeccentric writer. I'd like to ask one last question, one that has to do with the Q. craft of writing.I shouldprefaceit by sayingthat not only to me but also to the studentsthat I have had in the classroomyour prose has alwaysseemedlucidyet at the sametime verycomplex.That is, there is usuallya complicatedset of problemsthatareput forth- not negated or simplifiedbut expressed- withextraordinary clarity.Thiscombination of clarityand complexityin your work, this style, is this a gift of God or is it somethingthat you've had to work at consciously? A. Let'ssay that it's a workingprogram,a task to be laboredat. What I'm interestedin doing is to seek out - if it's the case to clarify, at any rate to represent- complexity.What is complexinterestsme, what is knottedup and difficult to describe,and I try to depictit in a style as limpid as possible. My line is certainlydifferentfrom that of writerswho wantto createa mimesisof complexitythroughlanguage that is like a boiling cauldron,througha representationthat is complex in itself and that calls attentionto itself- writers,for example, such as Gadda or Edoardo Sanguineti. And Faulknercouldbe consideredin that way equallyas well. Q. A. It's also the line of Faulkner,of the later Joyce. I have great respectand irationfor these writersof formidablelinguisticdensity. My procedureis differentbecause I try to deepenthe contrast betweensentencesthat are apparentlylinear, classical, and a reality that is undeniablycomplex.In the end, I believethat all writersshare this fundamentalurge even when they representthe most chaotic of realities. Just as the fact of writingimplies an order.

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