Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, October 15, 1923 - Siena, Italy, September 18, 1985) is a contemporary Italian writer. He was author of numerous essays, tales and novels, and his style evolved from early neorealistic tales and novels about the Italian resistance movement to tales as those of Palomar, or Le città invisibili (i.e., "The invisible cities"), where the main theme is the exploration of language and the phylosophical discussion of literature and reality. His literary production was, however, extremely wide and encompasses, among other works, a renowned collection of Italian folk tales accompained by an essay on popular literature, several tales inspired by statements or concepts of science (the Cosmicomiche, or Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore), and essays on literature (e.g., Lezioni americane).
Life
Though he was born in Cuba, Italo Calvino must be considered an Italian writer. His family was living in Cuba at the time of his birth, but went back to Italy (precisely, Sanremo, in the Liguria region).
Literary works
Italo Calvino published tens of novels and tale collections during his career. His style evolved dramatically from the first neorealistic pieces to the last book, Palomar, which is substantially a collection of tales about the phylosophy of knowledge.
Neorealistic period
Italo Calvino begun to write after World War II and, as for virtually all Italian writers of that period, his work was strongly influenced by the fresh memory of the resistance movement. Thus, Calvino's early works are tales, and a novel, about the resistance. The author later commented largely and esplicitly on how and why his career started this way. In his essay Tre correnti del romanzo italiano d'oggi ("Three currents of contemporary Italian novels", 1959), now collected in Una pietra sopra, Calvino recognizes himself as a former neorealistic writer of the resistance which later developed as a writer of the fantastic. In his own view, the generation that came out of that experience "believed that that literature could be epic, full of an energy which was vital and rational at one time, and social and individualistic, and collective and autobiographic".
"Our ancestors"
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Books by Italo Calvino influenced by folk literature
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The interest on Italian folktales left a strong mark in the literary production of Calvino, which was perfected with the publication of the collection Fiabe italiane ("Italian folktales") in year 1956. Three novels appear to be deeply influenced by the predisposition of Calvino for the folk literature, which were collected together in the volume I nostri antenati ("Our ancestors").