The Paris Overview – Plan for a Journal

Writing field, Auckland Museum, by way of Wikimedia Commons. Licensed underneath CC BY 4.0.

This journal will publish works of inventive literature (fiction, poetry, theater) and essays on explicit elements and issues and tendencies exemplified by the works revealed in the identical problem. It would comply with the discourse of Italian literature because it unfolds, by means of the work of writers who’re younger or not so younger, new or with one thing new to say.

The journal will make it clear that it’s a discourse—many discourses collectively, which might be articulated in a normal dialog—that runs from e book to e book, from manuscript to manuscript, and can discover the thread of this discourse even the place it appears to be merely a messy tangle.

It’s the suitable second to attempt to “get our bearings on” many issues, and perceive how we are able to transfer past. Many issues have modified on the earth in these years; Italy can also be altering, and it isn’t very expert at both renewing or preserving itself. (To carry on to the stuff you wish to maintain on to when all the remaining is transferring, all you are able to do is use the suitable option to transfer them.)

So the journal will assessment the brand new relationship right now between language and dialect; and the brand new relationship between the south and what’s not the south and even within the south, and what of the south has moved into the north; and the brand new relationship between issues which might be vital to say and the necessity to begin talking in verse at a selected second; and the issue of inserting into the construction of the story because it has been evolving to this point the rhythm of lifetime of those that work within the massive factories six days every week; and the way at a sure level it turned tough to speak in regards to the struggle; and the way at a sure level it turned tough to speak about love; and the way at a sure level it turns into tough to speak about folks with doubtlessly excessive vitality and morality slightly than about people who find themselves barely uninteresting and barely unhappy and barely mediocre.

These are all issues that may be profitably noticed by the author endowed with an impartial poetic power, in addition to by one endowed with merely an inherent ability for bearing witness. And they’re all very “Italian” issues, however exactly these which might compel us to interrupt out of the shell of slim native description through which Italian literature tends to ossify.

Not that issues are higher outdoors of Italy, nonetheless. At first look we would say that the full of life discourse about literature in Europe and America even shortly after the Second World Struggle, a discourse about man’s relationship with the world, a philosophical and ethical and historic and civic discourse, which literature against theoretical discourse as a manner of verification or antithesis, this discourse—completely interrogative and voluntary—appears caught there. On the one hand there are tendencies just like the French “new college” which might be too technical and appear to wish to make literature conform to the kind of issues—extra rigorous maybe however far more restricted—which have to this point belonged to the figurative arts; on the opposite are the younger self-important champions of unconditional revolution just like the People of the Beat technology. That is the way it appears at first look; however in actuality there hasn’t been a complete burning of bridges (and abandonment of all essentially the most fertile fields, for a brand new shore the place there’s little left to chew on). We imagine that deep down that dialogue continues, and that each one the brand new details—French, English, American, Polish, Spanish, together with the Italians who are usually not so separate from this image as they appear—want solely to be seen in perspective, not all flattened.

We reject the picture of a teeming, formless world of pure objectivity such because the overpopulated Earth would possibly seem to the primary Martian who arrives. We wish the literature we’d like to find or invent to reflect earthly humanity intent on a brand new relationship between the person, others, house, time, what exists, what doesn’t exist, for once we discover ourselves on the spaceship, on the interplanetary station, touchdown on Mars.

Themes

main features:

laughter
terror (false operate: crying)
journey—journey—initiation—disorientation
Eros
the obscene
aggression—violence—hatred
riddle
reintegration of justice—reparation for a fallacious—redemption—metamorphosis that establishes a brand new order

narrative technique:

starting
finish
suspense
time
“rhymes” in fiction
“stanzas” in fiction

symbolic locations:

the forest
the home
     home from outdoors
     home from inside
     acquainted home
     hostile home
     acquainted home that turns into hostile
the town
Eden
Hell
journey of initiation (elsewhere—purgatory)
the desert
the gang
actual locations (what they will imply as novelistic and symbolic locations): Chicago, Rome, Milan, Shanghai, sewers, the focus camps, college, the inventory trade, et cetera

establishments:

description
panorama
how issues are executed (technical handbooks)
dialogue
dialog
the definition of a personality (human sorts)
meditation
monologue
the dimension of reminiscence

the I:

Saint Augustine
Stendhal

the character as:

object of identification
     thrilling
     narcissistic
     ironic
object of want
object of loathing
     dramatic
     comedian
protecting determine
threatening determine

tips on how to learn:

a spell
a lullaby or nursery rhyme
a delusion
     primitive
     classical
a fable
a Buddhist legend
a chanson de geste
a historian
     of antiquity
     medieval
a tragedy
classical
     Elizabethan
     classicistic
nineteenth-century serial novel
romance novel
nonsense rhyme
information merchandise
police report
automobile accident with compensation declare to the insurance coverage company
memoirs of a normal
a “medical case”
how does the oral custom survive right now?
the obscene joke
the political joke

thus all kinds of tales not in a story type:

horoscopes
gravestones
bestiaries herbals lapidaries

tales condensed into photos:

emblems
genealogical bushes
rebus
fortune-telling
ex-votos
the plates illustrating arts and crafts within the Encyclopédie

main stylistic classes:

anthropomorphism
alienation
linguistic aggression
objectivity
transparency—depth

language:

frequent language—private language
Italian
     as a conference
     as native moods
the old style—the trendy

The assorted themes might be exemplified by:

(a) new Italian novel (serialized?) commissioned advert hoc
(b) current overseas novel (serialized?) chosen advert hoc
(c) little-known traditional or previous fashionable novel et cetera (anthologized and summarized?)
(d) traditional retold by a recent author (commissioned)
(e) anthologized examples with didactic framework
(f ) bibliographical evaluations

In each problem there might be:

(I) TEXTS
     (1) an episode of a
     (2) an episode of b
     (3) an episode of c
     (4) a d

     (b and c might be disregarded and might fill doable gaps in a. Anyway one thing new ought to start in each problem. After three or 4 episodes, if the novel isn’t completed, we are able to break it off and ship readers again to the e book.)

(II) STORY AND NEWS STORY
     (5) a information merchandise (loss of life of Pinelli; Casati Stampa; Gadolla): three or extra writers are requested to inform it
     (6) an space of Italian present affairs analyzed as a “narrative discipline”: characters, settings, roles, actions, vocabulary, et cetera (e.g., the judiciary; Reggio Calabria; immigrants), assigned to a number of journalists
     (7) an space of worldwide present affairs analyzed in mild of the meanings it has for us (e.g., Israelis-Arabs-Bedouins in mutual exchanges of oppressed-oppressor features): assigned to a semiologist, a geographer, a sociologist, a historian, et cetera

(III) THEMES AND PROBLEMS
Displays of themes or genres (see the listing of themes and “tips on how to learn”) with anthologies of examples and bibliographical surveys. These themes or genres ought to be sorted (in the identical problem or alternating) based on the topic they’re most related to:

     (8) theme related to literature
     (9) theme related to fashionable literature
     (10) theme related to anthropology
     (11) theme related to the present sociological-political context
     (12) presentation of an creator (with anthology and bibliography) (traditional or fashionable or up to date) related to one of many themes of the difficulty
     (13) an creator or a literary undeniable fact that has nothing to do with our themes in the remainder of the difficulty (for instance: Francis Ponge) to create a distinction, open a totally completely different horizon of studying, to reveal that we is also fallacious or that the vital issues are fully completely different

(IV) ILLUSTRATION
     (14) the nice illustrators (from the nineteenth century), overseas and Italian
     (15) a recent graphic artist (invited to take up some pages together with his choices)
     (16) up to date painters and the story: interview with a painter or sculptor (neo-Dada or Pop or neo-Expressionist, et cetera) to see the connection of the artist’s figurative world with writing, narrative, et cetera

(V) THE BIBLIOPHILE—THE COLLECTOR
The overall orientation of style is towards fashionable editions, not luxurious editions; we flip towards the collector of previous Sonzogno editions.
     (17) tips on how to acquire books of … (editions available on the market; overseas editions; antiquarian)
     (18) presentation of a primary version of a traditional that has a visible curiosity; or of a collection; or of serialized novels et cetera
     (19) presentation of a journal chosen from among the many most vital from the visible perspective (Minothaure) or thematically fascinating (La Ruota, A. G. Bragaglia’s pantheist journal)

 

Translated by Ann Goldstein.

To be revealed in a group of Calvino’s essays, The Written World and the Unwritten World, in a brand new translation from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, by Mariner Classics in January 2023.

The novels of Italo Calvino (1923–1985) embrace Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s evening a traveler, and The Baron within the Timber. He additionally revealed quite a few collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. 

Ann Goldstein has translated extensively from Italian, together with the works of Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi, Alessandro Baricco, and others.