By: hatto fischer

hatto fischer — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:11:32 +0000

If there is ever a night when streets are without lights, and you hear sad footsteps in Turin, then you wonder why desorientation became an urge to describe all other cities. Indeed, Calvino stands for that remarkable book called “INVISIBLE CITIES”. They exist but are not seen due to another kind of darkness. Call it lack of the imagination but in such world you always enter the university, go up the stairs, along some endless corridors from where you look down into the inner squares in order to end up finally in a room with no one there. But on the black board there is written: In the garden below you will find the philosopher – he will give you orientation. So you run down the stairs as fast as you can and find the philosopher sitting in the shade and reading a book. A bit startled he looks up with annoyance at you for having disturbed him and emphatically before you can ask him for direction, he lets you know in no uncertain terms, that ‘he has nothing to say’. Orienation and desorientation come together in Calvino’s writing like a single match up of day and night in Italian cities transformed into imaginary havens for would be writers and poets, but also gardners and flower pickers, never mind dogs and squirrels and students preferring to drink bitter wine.

Comments on: italo calvino | if on a winter’s night a traveler

By: hatto fischer