The New Yorker published excerpts from “Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985″ translated by Martin McLaughlin. They also added an introduction by Michael Wood.
Some random quotes from the letters to whet your appetite:
“I’ve read your poem. I too, if you remember, wrote a Hermetic poem in my early youth. I know that gives enormous satisfaction to the person who writes it. But whether the person who reads it shares this enthusiasm is another matter. It’s too subjective, Hermeticism, do you see? And I see art as communication. The poet turns in on himself, tries to pin down what he has seen and felt, then pulls it out so that others can understand it. But I can’t understand these things: these discourses about the ego and the non-ego I leave to you.”
“What is all this nonsense you’re giving me about pure and impure art? As though we didn’t know each other well enough and had never discussed the subject. As though you didn’t know who Italo-calvino is, what he wants, what he has to say. Forget any remorse: my art has been and always will be social while trying to remain art as far as possible, just as in Ungaretti’s poetry there is always an immanent ethic even when at his most lyrical: “tonda quel tanto che mi dà tormento” (just round enough to torment me). The funny thing is that just about a year ago you were writing me passionate letters on the necessity of a social nature in art and I was replying with even more heated letters on God knows what. We really have to burn this correspondence.”
“I was hoping to put together a small book of short stories, all nice and neat and taut, but Pavese said no, that short stories don’t sell, that I have to do a novel. At present I don’t feel that great necessity to write a novel: I could write short stories for the rest of my life. Stories that are nice and spare, that you can finish off as soon as you start them, you write them and read them without drawing breath, rounded and perfect like so many eggs, stories that if you add or remove a single word the whole thing goes to pieces.”
“For over a month now I have been carrying your cry-of-alarm around with me and mentally formulating the main strands of my reply, but for letter-writing—as you quite rightly say—one needs the holidays, not only that but holidays with rain and—if one is at the seaside—heavy seas to keep me locked up at home.”
» The Letters of Italo Calvino «
» The Letters of Italo Calvino, Day II «
» The Letters of Italo Calvino, Day III «
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