Posted: November 30th, 2021

Italo Calvino

Saad Ahmed Prof. Frank Meola EN-2013W Assignment 3 Italo Calvino’s deceptively easy style of writing gives captivates the interest of the readers. He makes one simple tale interesting and well anchored. His writings are very well-constructed; it’s like the soft cotton inside the seed: Even if the topic is hard to think about, the writer makes it warm and soft and makes his point very clear to the reader. Italo Calvino not only writes short well-crafted tails but also focuses on real life and relates them to scientific aspects.
An example of this can be Cosmicomics; one of his very popular books where the appearance of the characters were very simple. The writer synthesized the characters with his great scientific vision and humanized writing; also he was able to show how scientists might reflect their ability to work and handle science in order to have a great impact on human life. “It narrates the war adventures of a young street urchin, a boy of about twelve of thirteen, mischievously wicked and at the same time native.
Their mother is dead and their father has long abandoned them. Pin, who has no friends of his own age, fends for himself, working as a cobbler’s apprentice, stealing and getting free drinks from the men at the local taven…” (pp 10-11). Siegel, Kristi explained the humanizing characteristics of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics in the above way. She pointed out how in Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino not only has focused on well-constructed science and its importance but also how it affects daily lives and how the affects can be improved and be made useful for human. Calvino modulates the novel on two distinct tones” (pp 14). “With this story Calvino dramatizes the ills of our society where all our values can be booth and sold and everything is valued in terms of production and consumption” (pp 35); The writer shows the great sight Calvino’s way of humanizing stories integrated by not only science but also by economics. Martin L. McLaughlin also described Calvino’s way of attaching science with human life. Alongside these scientific thematic, this early dialogue also evinces Calvino’s admiration for the two Italian writers for whom the moon and space had a special resonance, and who would become key literary models for the new Cosmicomics genre, Galileo and Leopardi. ” (pp 82: Chapter 6). From the writers opinion on Italo Calvino, it can be recognized that he (I. C) was passionate about science and its huge domain of covering up the whole universe, but again he focused more on how these kind of scientific ideas are actually helping human and improving their abilities.

In his book, “The Castle of Crossed Destinies”, Italo Calvino has attached fiction with great art and his aim was to improvise thinking skills. According to Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works, “In The Castle, the tarots that make up each story are arranged in a double file, horizontal or vertical, and are crossed by three further double files of tarots (horizontal or vertical) which make up other stories.
The result is a general pattern in which you can “read” three stories horizontally and three stories vertically, and in addition, each of these sequences of cards can also be read: in reverse, as another tale. Thus we have a total of twelve stories. ” In his book t-zero, Italo Calvino showed how to humanize science again. He described his characters out of a mathematical formula and simple cellular structures. “Orbit? Oh, elliptical, of course” for a while it would huddle against us and then it would take flight for a while.
The tides, when the Moon swung closer, rose so high nobody could hold them back. There were nights when the Moon was full and very, very low, and the tide was so high that the Moon missed a ducking in the sea by a hair’s-breadth; well, let’s say a few yards anyway. Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did. All you had to do was row our to it in a boat and, when you were underneath, prop a ladder against her and scramble up. ” This couple of lines shows his great sense of organizing thoughts regarding fiction including human life.
Robert M. Philmus has talked about Italo Calvino’s writing style and his ability to connect two separate items in one point. In his (Robert) book “Visions and re-visions: re-constructing science fiction, he mentioned, “Calvino’s habitual solemnity in addressing the public in propria persona as a critic confirms his comic vocation a fiction writer not just because these two Calvinos appear to be at odds with one another, but more because they together fit the usual psychological profile of the comedian. ”
In “Mapping complexity: literature and science in the works of Italo Calvino”, the writer Kerstin Pils showed another great example of Italo Calvinos way of conjugating science and humanity together in his (I. C) book “Qfwfq”. In writer’s (K. P) own voice, “Qfwfq’s fear of disorder is mirrored by the Khan’s melancholic reflection that the feeling of pride that accompanies the conquest of vast territories is only a short-lived emotion that is quickly superseded by, What distresses him in the insight that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has pushed the universe and empire down a path of dissipation and disintegration.
It is a destructive force that escapes the scepter of conquest and reason. ” Italo Calvino has used science as a very common part of his stories. The way one character goes along, the writer has also improved science, economics and fiction the same way. His aim was to identify one bullet point in his stories and explain it to the readers in the simplest tale possible; also by adding his humorous approach and fiction based intense words. His support was towards the good deeds; but throughout his writings, he has left the final decision upon every mind after raising the question.
Works Cited Siegel, Kristi. Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics: Qfwfg’s Postmodern Autobiography. Robert M. Philmus. Visions and re-visions: (re)constructing science fiction. 10: ‘Elsewhere Elsewhen Otherwise’: Italo Calvino’s ‘Cosmicomics’ Tales, pp 190-223. Martin L. McLaughlin. Italo Calvino. Chapter 6: Experimental Space; The Cosmicomics Stories, pp 82-98. Kerstin Pilz. Mapping complexity: literature and science in the works of Italo Calvino, pp 80-120, pp 150-176. Beno Weiss. Italo CALVINO. University of South Carolina Press, 1933, pp 123-168.

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