Home > Italo Calvino

Born in Santiago de Las Vegas , Cuba to botanists Mario Calvino and Evelina Mameli (a descendant of Goffredo Mameli) and brother of Floriano Calvino , a famous geologist, he soon moved to Italy, where his family originated and where he lived most of his life.

1 Timeline

He stayed in San Remo , in the Riviera, for some 20 years, and enrolled in the Avanguardisti (a fascist youth organisation to which membership was practically compulsory) with whom he took part in the occupation of the French Riviera. He suffered some religious troubles, his familiars being followers of the Waldensian Protestant Church. He met Eugenio Scalfari (later a politician and the founder of the major newspaper La Repubblica), of which he would remain a close friend.

In 1941 he moved to TurinTurin Location Region Piedmont Province Torino Area Total Water 130 km² (50 mi²)##. Population Total ( 2002) Density 857,433 6,596/km² Time zone CET: UTC+1 Latitude Longitude 45°04'N7°40'E(##. . External link: Turin ( Italian Torino is a major industrial, after a long hesitation in choosing between this town and MilanThis is about the Italian city of Milan. For other uses, see Milan (disambiguation). Milan Milano in the Italian language, and Milan in Milanese dialect, from Latin, Mediolanum with the meaning of 'in the middle of the plain') is the main city in northern. He often humorously described this choice, and used to define Turin as "a city that is serious but sad".

In 19431943 is the common year starting on Friday. Events January January 4 End of term for Culbert Olson, 29th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Earl Warren. January 11 The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China. January 1 he joined the Partisans in the Italian Resistance, in the GaribaldiGiuseppe Garibaldi ( July 4, 1807 June 2, 1882) was a brilliant guerrilla fighter and Italy's most famous soldier of the Risorgimento. He was called the "Hero of Two Worlds" in tribute to his military adventures in both South America and Europe. He was bo brigade, with the battlename of Santiago, with Scalfari he created the MUL (universitarian liberal movement) then he entered the (still clandestine) Italian Communist PartyThe Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) or Italian Communist Party emerged as Partito Comunista d'Italia or Communist Party of Italy from a secession by the Leninist comunisti puri tendency from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) during that body's congress o).

In 1947Events January January 1 British mines nationalized January 1 Nigeria gains limited autonomy January 1 The Canadian Citizenship Act went into effect January 3 Proceedings of the United States Congress are televised for the first time. January 10 United Na Calvino graduated from Turin's universityA university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. University is derived from the Latin universitas meaning corporation since the first medieval with a thesis on Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad ( December 3, 1857 August 3, 1924) was a Polish-born British novelist. Born Jozef Teodor Nalecz Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857 in Berdyczow, in what is now Ukraine, he was brought up in Russian-occupied Poland. His father, an impove and started working with the official Communist paper L'Unità; he also had a short relationship with the Einaudi publishing house, which put him in contact with Norberto Bobbio , Natalia Ginzburg , Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini . With Vittorini he wrote for the weekly Il Politecnico (a cultural magazine of the university). He then left Einaudi to work mainly with L'Unità and the newborn communist weekly political magazine Rinascita.

In 1950 he worked again for the Einaudi house, where he became responsible for the literary volumes. The following year, presumably in order to verify a possibility of advancement in the communist party, he visited the Soviet Union. The reports and correspondence he produced from this visit where later collected and granted him literary prizes.

In 1952 Calvino wrote with Giorgio Bassani for Botteghe Oscure , a magazine named after the popular name of the party's head-offices, and worked for Il Contemporaneo, a Marxist weekly.

It was in 1957 that Calvino unexpectedly left the Communist party, and his resigning letter of resignation (soon famous) was published on L'Unità.

He found new spaces for his periodic writings in the magazines Passato e Presente and Italia Domani. Together with Vittorini he became a co-editor of Il Menabò di letteratura, a position that he held for many years.

Despite the previously severe restrictions for foreigners holding communist views, he was allowed to visit the United States, where he stayed six months (four of which in New York), after an invitation by Ford Foundation. Calvino was particularly impressed by the "New World": "Naturally I visited the South and also California, but I always felt a New Yorker. My city is New York". In the States he also met Esther Judith Singer, whom he married a few years later in Havana (Cuba), during a trip in which he visited his birthplace and met Ernesto Che Guevara.

Back in Italy, and once again working for Einaudi, he started publishing some of his cosmicomics on Il Caffé, a literarian magazine.

Vittorini's death in 1966 had a heavy influence on Calvino and caused him what has been defined as an "intellectual depression", which the writer himself described as an important passage in his life: "...I ceased to be young. Perhaps it's a metabolic process, something that comes with age, I'd been young for a long time, perhaps too long, suddenly I felt that I had to begin my old age, yes, old age, perhaps with the hope of prolonging it by beginning it early".

He then started to frequent Paris (where he was nicknamed L'ironique amusé). Here he soon joined some important circles like the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) and met Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss, in the fermenting atmosphere that was going to evolve into the 1968's cultural revolution (the French May); in his French experience he also became fond of Raymond Queneau's works, which would have sensibly influenced his later production.

Calvino also had more intense contacts with the academic world, with notable experiences at the Sorbonne (with Barthes) and at Urbino's university. His interests included classical studies ( Honoré de Balzac, Ludovico Ariosto, Dante, Ignacio de Loyola, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Cyrano de Bergérac, Giacomo Leopardi) while at the same time, not without a certain surprise from the Italian intellectual circles, he wrote novels for Playboy's Italian edition ( 1973). He became a regular contributor to the important Italian newspaper ( Corriere della Sera).

In 1975 he was made Honorary Member of the American Academy , the following year he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He visited Japan and Mexico and gave lectures in several American towns.

In 1981 he was awarded the prestigious French Légion d'Honneur.

In 1985 he died in Siena at the ancient hospital of Santa Maria della Scala of a cerebral hemorrhage.