Πρώτη επαφή με τον Calvino. Παρά το γεγονός ότι γενικότερα δεν τα πάω καλά με τα διηγήματα, ήθελα να δοκιμάσω άλλη μια φορά.
Δεν ξέρω αν μπορώ να εκφράσω μια συνολική άποψη για όλο το βιβλίο, καθώς υπήρξαν διηγήματα που ήταν απλώς ΟΚ για μένα, άλλα που με έκαναν να βαρεθώ και αν έπρεπε να ξεχωρίσω μονάχα ένα που μου άρεσε πραγματικά, θα ήταν εκείνο με το παντρεμένο ζευγάρι.
Η σύγχρονη ζωή και η απομάκρυνση που προκαλείται στους ανθρώπους λόγω των απαιτήσεων της καθημερινότητας είναι μεν η ουσία εδώ, ωστόσο θεωρώ ότι αποδίδεται με υπερβολικά αποστασιοποιημένο και μάλλον ξύλινο ύφος δε που δεν μου ταίριαξε ιδιαίτερα.

My Real Life

This is a collection of short stories that Italo Calvino wrote over about ten years, following World War II.

The four discrete sections were originally published in separate volumes. However, what stands out about the collection is the organic growth that occurs over the duration of the stories.

In effect, we see boys growing into men, and girls growing into women. And Calvino growing into an artist.

Even though Calvino had just experienced the war, it seemed to be important that he document childhood first, almost as if the war hadn't occurred. Childhood seemed to go on regardless of what was happening around it.

The consequences of war really only became apparent when the boys were old enough to play a role, even one as responsible as shooting the real enemy with guns that once would have been used to kill that evening's meal.

My Real Life Fabulised

The first part of this collection (the "Riviera Stories") was written shortly after WWII, but documents a period in the lives of teenaged boys when they are just starting to encounter girls and women outside their own families. There's a sense of innocence meeting experience.

The second part ("Wartime Stories"), also written after the war, but later than the "Riviera Stories" (as if Calvino had to impose order on his memories in the right order), updates the stories to the time of wartime resistance to the Fascists and Nazis. Boys and men grow up, and encounter life and death challenges, including the evil that men (more so than women) do to each other. These stories are equally subtle, but more moralistic. They come close to fables or fairy tales.

The "Postwar Stories" loosely embrace desire, except they do so via concrete detail about beds, mattresses, blankets, two-piece swim suits, bra straps, buttons and unbuttonings. Calvino's sense of humour emerges in these adolescent and post-adolescent fumblings.

The "Stories of Love and Loneliness" capture the atomisation of the individual within family and society. The characters yearn for love, but can't readily find it. When they find it, they don't recognise it immediately. It's almost as if they have idealised it so much, it's not obvious to them when it appears before them in a concrete form. These characters are almost inept in their romantic attachment to the love of [being in] love and almost neurotic in their detachment from the reality of reality. We seem to make love difficult for our selves and others.

My Fabulous Real Life

Taken together, the stories in this collection show us that words and fables can forge a bond with reality that is both entertaining and therapeutic.

They also capture the first steps of Calvino's journey towards the fabulous.


SOUNDTRACK:

Talking Heads - "Life During Wartime"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzORu...

"The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, I lived in the ghetto
I've lived all over this town

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain't got time for that now."

Talking Heads - "The Great Curve"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW1Iq...

"The world moves on a woman's hips
The world moves and it swivels and bops
The world moves on a woman's hips
The world moves and it bounces and hops."

The Difficult Loves collection is explendid! Beautiful writing, vivid descriptions, deep emotions, and unconventional situations as expected from Calvino. Most of the stories deal with love or lack thereof in many different forms. Enjoyable if you’re a fan.

Smog and A Plunge Into Real Estate felt lackluster and uninteresting. No idea if it’s the translation or they just weren’t his best pieces.

Πρώτη επαφή με Καλβίνο. Δεν μου ταίριαξε το ύφος και η γραφή του. Παρόλα αυτά 2-3 διηγήματα μου άρεσαν πολύ.

Certo il costo da pagare è alto ma dobbiamo accettarlo: non poterci distinguere dai tanti segnali che passano per questa via, ognuno con un suo significato che resta nascosto e indecifrabile perché fuori di qui non c'è più nessuno capace di riceverci e d'intenderci.

"Los amores difíciles" de Ítalo Calvino, conjunto de trece relatos narrados, en su mayoría, en tercera persona, que abordan, con una marcada ironía, las fisuras comunicativas que se dan en las relaciones humanas entre personas que, por alguna inesperada circunstancia, podrían iniciar una relación amorosa, pero no alcanzan nunca a establecer ese mínimo vínculo afectivo inicial, y la vaga esperanza de prolongar las emociones en el tiempo.

hmmm the sexism and misogyny were too much

Calvino’s prose is among the best I’ve read. Effortless, fluid beauty. He infuses the most normal situations with a God-like grace and reminds us that we are to other humans is how we are as humans; how our interactions with others is a reflection of our quirks, prejudices, inadequacies, and passions.

The best thing about this collection of stories is how rewarding they are on repeated reads; initially dense prose gives way to light, colour and details of pretty awe-inspiring clarity. Although full of highlights, The adventure of the poet is a masterclass, where he expertly draws a contrast between the gritty, palpable details of ugliness, with the dreamlike, transitory and elusive expressions of beauty.

He makes us see why embracing the ugly side of nature is sometimes unavoidable, but also reminds us that human tenderness – although never permanent - is very much alive.

Che bella!

"The Enchanted Garden" is where it's at. Nothing really happens, but it's beautiful and significant anyway.

Calvino, you are rich with the goods.


From 'Adventures of a Reader':

"For some time Amedeo had tended to reduce his participation in active life to the minimum. Not that he didn't like action: on the contrary, love of action nourished his whole character, all his tastes; and yet, from one year to the next, the yearning to be someone who did things declined, declined, until he wondered if he had ever really harbored that yearning. His interest in action survived, however, in his pleasure in reading; his passion was always the narration of events, the stories, the tangle of human situations -- nineteenth-century novels especially, but also memoirs and biographies, and so on down to thrillers and science fiction, which he didn't disdain but which gave him less satisfaction because they were short. Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frédéric Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side: like the surface of the water that separates us from that blue-and-green world, rifts as far as the eye can see, expanses of fine, ribbed sand, creatures half animal and half vegetable."

Difficult Loves is eleven very short stories in which Calvino is like a biologist at a microscope: analysing the sensation of a few minutes or hours in minute detail, revealing the patterns, beauty, and secrets of the mundane. They reminded me a little of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, published 30 years later (see my review HERE). Realistic moments, rather than fantastical, and despite the titles, most are not really love stories, nor adventures.


Image: Woman looking in microscope (Source.)

Calvino wrote these in his mid 20s-30s, years before his more famous post-modern novels, including Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler (see my reviews HERE and HERE, respectively).

The Adventures of a Soldier, 1949

There is sexual tension for a young soldier sitting next to a 30-something wealthy widow in a train carriage. He’s unsure how much he can - or should - take the opportunity to enjoy accidental(?) contact as the train jolts them, “like two sharks grazing each other”. He struggles to read her signals: when she moves her jacket, is it “to offer him cover or to block his path?”

In the days of #MeToo, this takes on additional import, along with questions about how reliable the soldier’s thoughts are, or whether he’s wanting something to brag about in the barracks.

The Adventures of a Crook, 1949

A short bedroom farce featuring a married hooker, her husband, a client, and a cop. Weak.

The Adventures of a Bather, 1951

A comic dilemma transfigures into exploration of aging and body image. A woman swimming off a crowded beach realises she’s lost her swimsuit: “She stifled the anxiety rising inside her, and tried to think in a calm, orderly fashion.” There’s delicious detail of the sights and sounds of the beach, the intimacy of the water on her skin, and the type of people around, including a young woman judged “full of smugness and egotism” on her appearance.

As she ponders what to do, Signora Isotta Barbarino confronts the fact that “this body… had indeed been a glory of hers” but was now “a cause for shame” (even when clothed), but that life matters more than pride or shame in one’s body.

The Adventures of a Clerk, 1953

After a night with a woman, a clerk is struck by the air and colors and sounds all around, “as if he were walking to the sound of music”, liberated from his habitual routine, “as if on the crest of a wave”. He relishes reliving his memories, “to retain as far as possible the inheritance of that night”.

The exquisite paradox is the joy of such a secret makes him want to share it with someone, but that would change it.

The Adventures of a Photographer, 1955

“It is only when they have the photos before their eyes that they seem to take tangible possession of the day spent.”

Far and away the best of a good collection: it’s spot on for the Instagram generation, and enjoyably philosophical for thoughtful people of any age, even though it entails the delayed gratification of expensively developing film, rather than limitless free and instant digital pics.


Image: BizzaroComics “If a tree falls in a forest and no one puts it on Facebook, does it make a sound?” (Source.)

Antonino doesn’t see the attraction of photography. Instead of rejoicing in the spontaneity of the moment, people live in anticipation of nostalgia:
“In order to really live you must either live in the most photographic way possible, or else consider photographable every moment in your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second, to madness.”
But as the only single man in his group of friends, is often asked to take photos of them and their families.

The logical conclusion is to photograph “everything in the world that restsist photography” - photographs themselves. At this point, JL Borges sprang happily to mind: see my review HERE.

“You cannot suffer the past or future because they do not exist. What you are suffering is your memory and your imagination.” - Sadhguru

The Adventures of a Traveler, 1958

“The train devoured its invisible road.”

A man gets the sleeper from northern Italy to Rome, where his girlfriend lives, as he regularly does. He relishes “the pleasure in confronting and overcoming” the various difficulties, aided by his honed tactics for tickets, seats, and privacy, balanced by scruples and etiquette. Commuters of all kinds will relate. The unanswered question is whether he enjoys the journey, including the train’s “amorous, caressing motion”, more than the destination.

The Adventures of a Reader, 1958

“Nothing equalled the savor of life found in books.”

A gently humorous look at the competing passions for books and sex. A man of wide literary tastes enjoys holiday reading in a quiet cove, interspersed with an occasional swim: one for the mind, the other for sensual, physical stimulation. When he sees a woman on the rocks below, “he evaluated the amount of lazy sensuality and of chronic frustration that was in her” and dismisses the possibility of a quick fling, in favour of reading. Nevertheless, he sits so her legs align with the edge of his book…

The Adventures of a Near-Sighted Man, 1958

This is about focus, in a broader sense than the title implies. As a child, I wanted to wear glasses, but didn’t dare pretend I couldn’t read the chart, as I assumed the optician would know. In my mid teens, I finally needed them, and I’ve never wanted contact lenses, nor do I take my glasses off when I relax. Clear vision, from behind a protective layer, is oddly important to me. Yet I can relate to Amilcare, perhaps because what he initially was is what I’ve strived to avoid. Life was losing savour, and he was bored of it - until he realised he was short-sighted, and got glasses. Suddenly, he sees the world in enriched detail. But it’s also distracting. He has to learn “what was pointless to look at and what was necessary” because “this indiscriminate covetousness of sensations was often punished”.

Another factor is that “he wears glasses” suddenly becomes the main descriptor of him. Is he the man he once was, and does that matter? Should he have ones that are barely visible and merge with his physiognomy, or bold black ones that are almost a mask?

The Adventures of a Wife, 1958

“I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” - Matthew 5:28 (KJV)

This is about a young woman, married for two years, pondering whether she has committed adultery. In a technical sense, it’s ambiguous, but there’s a buzz as she justifies to herself a night out with a young man, and then discovers the enjoyable frisson of flirty chat with men.

The Adventures of the Married Couple, 1958

Sweet but dull. The husband works a night shift, and his wife works daytime hours, yet they find snippets of intimacy, waiting for and helping each other.

The Adventures of a Poet, 1958

“Islands have a silence you can hear.”
But Calvino dissects that to a “network of minuscule sounds that enfold it”. This is a bit like The Adventure of a Reader: the conflicting pull of words and lust/love.

The poet has never written a poem about love, but paddling a canoe into a cave, with his girlfriend, “His mind used to translating sensations into words, was now helpless”. Then, from too few words, to too many:

“Into Usnelli’s mind came words and words, thick, woven one into the other, with no space between the lines, until little by little they could no longer be distinguished… and only the black remained, the most total black, impenetrable, desperate as a scream.”

What price love?

Other Quotes

•t“Waiting, with sweet anxiety, to see the developed pictures (anxiety to which some add the subtle pleasure of alchemic manipulations in the dark-room).”

•t“Her recognizing as acts of love these photographic rapes.” Strong words.

•t“At this hour… people who are awake fall into two categories: the still and the already.”

•t“The sun’s rays, reflected underwater, grazed her, making a kind of garment for her, or stripping her all over again.”

•t“The gasping fish glinted in their pungent dress of scales.”

•t“The nails of his shoes marking the friable crust of sand.”

Smog, 1958

At 50 pages, it’s longer than the previous stories, and sometimes published separately, so I’ve reviewed it on its own, HERE.


A Plunge into Real Estate, 1957 novella, 1*

“The Riviera was gripped by a fever of cement… All he could see these days was a geometrical arrangement of parallelepipeds and polyhedrons ranked one above the other.”

A twenty-something son persuades his mother and younger brother to sell the bottom of the garden for apartments, because they owe money after the father’s death. They go into partnership with a developer who everyone says is dodgy, and he duly strings them along very effectively. But very boringly.


Image: Unfinished concrete apartments (Source.)

This is nearly 100 pages, compared with fewer than 10 for most of the Difficult Loves stories, reviewed above. The characters and writing style are similar - except this covers many months (though it felt like years). A hugely disappointing end to this volume, but I’ll keep it listed at 4* overall.

Από όλα τα ανούσια βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει τελευταία, σίγουρα αυτό είναι ένα από τα κορυφαία σε ανουσιότητα. Κι επειδή ο χρόνος είναι λίγος και ο Καλβίνο δεν έκανε τα μαγικά του μέχρι τα μισά (δεν ξέρω καν αν θα μπορούσε να έχει κάνει κάποιο μαγικό, δεν έχω διαβάσει άλλο δικό του βιβλίο), το σταματώ εδώ, λίγο πριν τη μέση και δηλώνω ότι δεν κάνει για εμένα. Βαρετό, οι ιστορίες των διηγημάτων απλοϊκές και ανέμπνευστες, μερικές μου θύμισαν κάτι διηγήματα που έγραφα στο λύκειο. Και αυτό είναι πολύ κακό! Μου ήταν τόσο αδιάφορο που ακόμα και ο χρόνος που αφιερώνω για να γράψω αυτή την κριτική μου φαίνεται χαμένος. Δε βαριέσαι, πάμε γι' άλλα.

Πρόκειται περί διηγημάτων και όπως συνηθίζεται θα έπρεπε να τα βαθμολογήσω ένα-ένα ξεχωριστά και έπειτα να διαιρέσω για να βγάλω τον μέσο όρο του βιβλίου όπως κάθε goodread-ας που σέβεται τον εαυτό του. Ε όχι λοιπόν! Δεν πρόκειται να βάλω κάτω από πέντε όσο κι αν με ζόρισαν μερικές από τις ιστορίες που έμοιαζε να έχουν τον ατελείωτο πχ ο στρατιώτης που πάλευε επί δύο χρόνια (τόσο φάνηκε να κρατάει μέσα στο μυαλό μου) να αγγίξει το γοφό μίας συνταξιδιώτισσας του στο τρένο ενώ σε κάθε αράδα ούρλιαζε μέσα στ' αφτιά μου η φωνή του Παπαγιαννόπουλου ΧΟΥΦΤΩΣΤΗΝ,ΧΟΥΦΤΩΣΤΗΝ.
Και που στηρίζεται η βαθμολογία σου, θα ρωτήσεις λογικά κι εγώ θα σου απαντήσω στην ιστορία του Αρτούρο και της Έλιντε που ήταν αρκετή κατ' εμένα να σηκώσει όλο το βάρος του βιβλίου στους ώμους της, όπως σήκωναν το βάρος της σχέσης τους τον ελάχιστο χρόνο που είχαν για να περάσουν μαζί ως ζευγάρι και όσο το σώμα του ενός έψαχνε την ζεστασιά του κορμιού του άλλου μέσα στα σεντόνια όταν ο ένας απ' τους δύο είχε φύγει για τη βάρδια του. Εδώ πέφτει Λίνα Νικολακοπούλου:
Μην πας μια μέρα στη δουλειά σου μη πας
Δεν ζούμε, να δούμε αν αγαπιόμαστε μην πας
Το σπίτι αυτό αν το πρωί θα τ' ανεχτούμε
να συγυρίζω, να γελάω, να μου μιλάς
Μην πας να δούμε αν αγαπιόμαστε να δούμε
Μην πας μια μέρα στη δουλειά μην πας

Αστεράκια πέντε λοιπόν σε ένα κατά τα άλλα μέτριο βιβλίο γιατί 4 σελίδες μέσα από αυτό μίλησαν στην καρδιά μου. Γιατί να μην δώσουμε κάτι παραπάνω; Μαζί μας θα τα πάρουμε;