Calvino's daughter reminisces about her father: "His characters are like my own ancestors"

Calvino is on King Umberto Street, in front of the Aeginaoudi publishing house

"Over the years, I've lived for ideals that I can't explain, but I've done one good thing: living on a tree. ”

2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italo Calvino, Italy's most influential contemporary writer. Regarding the trilogy "Our Ancestors", he concluded: "The Knight of Non-Existence is a struggle for existence, The Viscount in Two halves is a yearning for a complete existence, and The Baron in the Tree proposes a non-individualistic approach to self-realization, that is, loyalty to the self-determination of the individual." ”

Engaged in literary creation for nearly 40 years, Calvino has used various techniques to express the life and soul of contemporary people, and he has defined the literary landscape after the new millennium with "lightness, speed, precision, imagery, and complexity". The American writer John Updike once compared Calvino to Borges and García Márquez, saying that "Calvino is the warmest and brightest" of the three, and the Chinese writer Wang Xiaobo firmly believes that a real writer should "create in the imagination" like Calvino, which is what a writer should do.

Calvino & Borges at the Hotel Execil in Rome

"My father's characters are like my own ancestors. In November 2023, after many commemorations of her father's centennial, Calvino's daughter Giovanna gave an exclusive interview to Southern People Weekly, sharing her memories and evaluations of her father's work, introducing his wife and their family life that are rarely mentioned in Calvino's interviews and biographies, and providing Southern People Weekly with a portrait of her beloved father and one of his self-portraits in Living in a Tree: A Biography of Calvino (Note: see the third and fourth from the bottom of this article). In both images, Calvino has a thoughtful expression.

In 1981, Calvino proposed "three magic weapons" for the year 2000:

1. Recite a lot of poems, "Whether you are a child, a teenager, or an old man." If a person keeps repeating these poems spiritually, then they will stay with him for the rest of his life. ”

2. Focus on the difficult things that need to be taken to the extreme, "Be wary of things that are simple, superficial, and do for the sake of doing...... Not only in the language but also in what is done, focus on precision. ”

3. Understand that what you have now can disappear at any time. "That doesn't mean we have to give up everything, on the contrary, we have to enjoy it more than ever, but at the same time understand that what we have now can go up in smoke at any time. ”

Calvino in his study in Paris

On September 19, 1985, Calvino died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, and the attending doctor who opened his craniomy claimed that he had never seen such a complex brain structure as Calvino. Calvino is no longer with us, but his experiences and work remain intriguing tools for inspiring people to understand the increasingly complex realities in which they live.

Shuttling between reality and fantasy, the heart is bright all the way

"What is unforeseen in literature is interesting, and what is unforeseen is impossible to be programmed. ”

If Calvino survives to this day, he may not be surprised by the current popularity of ChatGPT. In an interview, Giovanna said that Calvino has a large collection of books exploring artificial intelligence, "as early as 1967, when he published his article Cybernetics and Ghosts, he predicted that artificial intelligence would change our perception of reality. ”

In the late 60s and 70s of the 20th century, Calvino's works became more and more abstract: "Invisible City", "Castle with Intersecting Destinies", "If on a Winter Night, a Traveler". In these works, he experimented with a kind of literary experimentation, permutating and combining them according to a custom procedure...... In 1981, Calvino hypothetically programmed a computer and fed "all the material that would unfold the text in a completely faithful manner to the author's ideas and style", half-jokingly that many books in a bookstore could be written by a computer, and perhaps the computer would be better "created".

However, Calvino declined to provide information about his life, "Biographies or personal information are extremely private, and the disclosure of them is like psychoanalysis." He emphasized, "For an author, only the work has value." In order not to disappoint the reader, he playfully added - "I will tell you what you want to know." But I'll never tell you the truth. ”

In January 1925, Calvino with his parents in San Manuel, Cuba

Calvino was born on October 15, 1923 in a small Cuban city, and two years later his family moved to San Remo, Italy, where his parents named him Italo in honor of his homeland Italy. "My parents decided to return to China after years of living in the Caribbean...... This sense of uncertainty has always made me look forward to other places. ”

In October 1933, Calvino with his brother in St. John's

As a teenager, Calvino was obsessed with comics and films, and the world on the screen made him feel "full, necessary, and coherent", and he dreamed of becoming a dramatist, graduating from high school and going to university to study agriculture before moving on to the Faculty of Letters. In the memories of his high school classmates, Calvino was a listener, but cherished his words, "only shocking you with the occasional sarcastic comment or grim joke in his deep, almost baritone noise." ”

In the summer of 1940, the war invaded the life of 17-year-old Calvino, stirring strong emotions in him. In the spring of 1941, he wrote a batch of "ultra-short stories" and compiled them into a volume entitled "Am I Crazy or Others Are Crazy", but the submission was rejected, but this did not kill his creative ambitions. In the summer of 1943, Calvino picked up his pen again, writing "ultra-short stories or existential fables about the future", dealing with incomprehensible life, the ambiguous identity of the individual, and opposition to autocracy and the gathering instinct of the masses.

"When man cannot articulate his thoughts clearly, they are expressed through allegory. These ultra-short stories are rooted in the political or social experiences of a young man during the bitter period of fascist rule. ”

Calvino in 1949

In 1944, Calvino joined the Italian Communist Party and fought a guerrilla war against the Nazis. On November 15 of that year, he was arrested and imprisoned. The next morning, a group of workers in the next cell were killed, and Calvino was taken to a recruitment center in a car. On the way he managed to escape, hid in a tunnel for three days and three nights, and from there climbed the mountains and found the partisans.

Guerrilla warfare was an important part of Calvino's life, and his close relationship with politics lasted until 1957. In the same year, he published his masterpiece "The Baron in the Tree", which tells the story of a baron who is so disgusted by the hypocritical values of the aristocracy that he decides to leave his family and live in a tree. "Distance is where the value lies. We need to stay away, but we can't let it stop us from the struggle...... My baron lives in a tree: this is how I want to look at politically inclined intellectuals. ”

Manuscript of the first page of The Baron in the Tree

Calvino lived in seclusion in Paris for 15 years, where he was closely associated with Roland Barthes and others. Barthes once said of Calvino on a French television show: "He is emotionally revealing and creating...... There is a kind of sensitivity, which can also be described as human nature, and I would even say that it is benevolent...... In his observations, there is always a kind of irony that is neither hurtful nor aggressive, in which there is detachment, there is smile, and there is sympathy. ”

A year before his death, when asked which literary figure he wanted to be, Calvino confessed that he admired Shakespeare's Matricusio (note: Romeo and Juliet's friend and servant), "I admired him for his light, fantastic fantasy in that savage world...... I also admired his wisdom and voice of reason in Capulet's feud with Montagu...... Matricuccio adheres to the old rules of chivalry...... He was a modern, skeptical and sarcastic man...... He shuttles between reality and fantasy, and his heart is bright all the way. ”

Calvino and Pablo Neruda in Turin in 1950 or 1951

Start with Resistance literature and challenge the labyrinthine prison

"In an era and a country where everyone rushes to express their opinion and make judgments, Palomar has developed a Xi of biting his tongue three times whenever he wants to make a claim. He spoke only when he bit his tongue and still felt convinced of his claim. ”

In 1962, Calvino published an article in Menapor magazine, "Challenging the Labyrinth". "The title of the article seems to formally encapsulate the reason for Calvino's experimentation: the 20th-century human wandering in a labyrinthine prison obsessed with defining the prison in which failure always ambushes the explorer-cartographer...... Challenging cognitive activities that are consistently inconclusive...... This docility and resolute Stoicism runs through The Observer (1963), a novel that is the perfect conclusion to the series 'Picture of Italy'. The series also includes "Argentine Ants", "Property Speculation" and "Smoke Cloud". In Calvino's own words, the works sought to "depict society with realistic objectivity."

Calvino's sensibilities were deeply influenced by the Italian poet Montale, whose poems saved him in the autumn and winter of 1944 when he was hopeless and helpless in prison. In painting the "picture of Italy", Calvino discovered the terrifying, deformed, and unpredictable Montale's "evil of life" ("The Evil of Life" is Montale's famous poem, focusing on the hardships and sufferings of life), and what he saw and heard as a scrutineer in the polling station of Cotorengo in Turin in 1961 became a kind of strong demand for resistance - not to give up the challenge, not to give up the tool of the "cartographer".

"I was also one of the writers who started out in the literature of the Resistance. I am reluctant to give up the epic adventures of Resistance literature, the dual energies of body and spirit. The picture of contemporary life could not meet my needs, so I turned my writing to a fantasy adventure style that transcended our time and social reality...... I like action more than stillness, will more than obedience, exceptions more than convention. ”

In the early 1960s, Calvino's focus shifted: leaving Turin and moving back and forth between Rome and Paris, he said that some Ligurians had never left their homeland like a limpet on a rock, while others "made the world their home and settled with what came their way", and he himself belonged to the latter.

In 1964, Mr. and Mrs. Calvino at the Aquarium of Havana, Cuba

In April 1962, Calvino met Esther Judith Singh, a Russian-Argentinian woman, at a friend's home in Paris, who worked as a translator for UNESCO and the International Atomic Energy Agency. They were married in Havana in 1964, and their honeymoon was a bit of a return to their homeland. During his trip to Cuba, Calvino also met with Che Guevara.

I heard him laugh in response to me, and the laughter was full of sarcasm...... Unwilling to accept the illusion of temporary peace, he demanded the highest sacrifice for himself and others, and he was convinced that if he did not make sacrifices today, he would make even greater sacrifices tomorrow. In 1967, Calvino recalled the meeting, "For us, Guevara is the absolute gravitational force that summons the revolution and everything in the world to come, and he fiercely criticizes all the gestures that we think we can be comfortable with." ”

In 1965, Calvino moved into Rome with his new wife, and their daughter, Giovanna, was born shortly after. As a father for the first time in 40 years, Calvino was thrilled by this "unexpected pleasure". "As a father, I try to go with the flow, I don't try to weaken the boring and authoritarian father figure, I do what I want to be. In a 1980 interview, Calvino explained his "non-doing" approach to education, "As long as the family is happy together, a family can function...... You don't have to be happy every day or you become an animal, but you have the potential to be happy, the potential to live a smooth life without failing miserably...... I just want to teach you how to rebel against all the current methods of education imposed by the environment, which can be defined as false and stupid. ”

In 1966, Calvino was with his daughter Giovanna

More than forty years later, Calvino's daughter, Giovanna, reminisces to us about her father and their family life.       

"Baron in the Tree" and "Housing Crisis" are both based on real family experiences

Southern People Weekly: Calvino wrote about Kublai Khan in "The Invisible City", can you talk about his imagination and cognition of the East, especially China?

Giovanna: My father had read a lot of Chinese classics, he was very familiar with Chinese history, and he had in-depth and extensive exchanges with his sinologists and friends. Unfortunately, he did not have the opportunity to travel to China during his lifetime, and he realized that his perception of the East may be as subjective as most Westerners.

In fact, the narrator of The Invisible City also points out to some extent that Kublai Khan and Marco Polo speak completely different languages, and that their dialogues are not based on verbal expressions, but through certain displays or performances, in which the interlocutor is required to infer and imagine what the other person might be saying, and the dialogue between the Mongol Khan and the Venetian traveler is as illusory as the cities depicted in the book.

In the early 60s of the 20th century, Calvino and Pasolini

Southern People Weekly: Calvino was obsessed with movies when he was young, and he was especially fond of American and French movies at that time.

Giovanna: When we lived in Paris, my parents went to the cinema at least once a week, and sometimes they would take me with them, and they both loved the American classics of the 1950s, and I dare say I followed them to all the Fred Astaire films.

Southern People Weekly: What do you think of the influence of film art on his literary creation? In your opinion, which of his literary works is the most suitable for making a movie?

Giovanna: I think Baron in the Trees can be made into a visually aesthetically pleasing film, and based on its overall story design, the plot line can unfold at any moment on the low ground and on the tall trees. I was also interested to see how the actors interpret the characters in this novel, which I found very charming and interesting. In addition, there are a few books that I am not very optimistic about adapting into films, such as "If On a Winter Night, A Traveler", which is difficult to present in pictures, and if you try to put it on the screen, the result may be unsatisfactory and confusing to the audience.

Calvino's "Baron in the Tree" was published in the June 1957 issue of the Aegnaoudi Bulletin

Southern People Weekly: Around 1957, "Baron in the Tree" and "Housing Crisis" were published almost at the same time, but the styles of the two works are very different.

Giovanna: For me personally, I'm more interested in the similarities between the two works than in talking about the differences between them. The underlying underlying underlying theme of both stories is about the disappearance (or destruction) of the natural environment. "The Housing Crisis" is more direct and autobiographical, and in a way, it basically retells the story of my grandmother (who was a botanist) who had to sell off a large part of her garden to pay her property taxes.

Calvino with his mother Evelina Calvino before the microscope. Evelina Calvino (1886-1978), a botanist who published numerous scientific publications and worked alongside her husband, devoted her life to scientific research

My grandparents' garden was filled with exotic plants and plants that are unique and precious in Europe. My grandfather (an agronomist) was the first to introduce avocados and grapes to Italy, and my grandmother was good at cross-growing different varieties of roses, and she even created a rose named after my mother and gave it to her as a wedding gift. My grandparents were arguably the first environmentalists, and they wrote books emphasizing the need to protect ecosystems, a theme that also runs through much of my father's literature. My grandmother eventually had to sell her large garden, and they fell into the hands of the developer, who buried it in concrete and built an ugly apartment building in its place, which eventually disappeared from my father's childhood garden, which was later recreated in the novel The Baron in the Tree, which describes the park of the Violante house (adjacent to the baron's residence).

Southern People Weekly: Calvino once said, "As far as I'm concerned, the Resistance brought me into the world, and the same is true for my writing." "In the eyes of many readers, your father's works are full of childlike fun and fantasy, but he actually has a critical and sharp side, what do you think he fought against all his life?

Giovanna: My father had a strong vision of the pursuit of social justice, which was a guiding ideology throughout his life. He was deeply frustrated by the corruption of the polity caused by various criminal acts. I think my parents had a mediocre impression of the meeting with Castro and Guevara, who found both leaders to be very dogmatic, self-aggrandizing, and detached from reality.

He wrote most of himself into Marcovaldo

Southern People Weekly: Which of your father's books did you read first, and how did you feel when you first read his work?

Giovanna: To be honest, I don't remember the first time I read one of his works. His words have always been around me, and his characters are so familiar to me that they are like my own ancestors.

Southern People Weekly: Which character do you think Calvino most resembles in his work, and why?

Giovanna: My father is in some ways very similar to Cosimo, the main character in The Baron in the Tree. In the house that my parents built in Tuscany more than fifty years ago, my father designed his office as a cubicle within a floor, a small cubicle at the top of the last staircase leading to the spacious main hall below, where he loved to nest as if he were perched on a branch, and where he could "see" what was going on below. He also opened a window in this compartment, from where he could see the scenery outside from the treetops and the sea behind the trees. So, in some ways, when he writes, he sees the world in the same way and from the same perspective as Cosimo. However, he also implanted some of his personal imprints into the characters of several other works. Early in his relationship with my mother, he wrote to her that he had written most of himself into Marcovaldo, but no one found out.

Southern People Weekly: There isn't much in the biography of Calvino about your mother, what kind of woman was your mother, what qualities did your father admire most about her, and what influence did she have on your father's life and work?

Giovanna: In fact, I have just compiled and published a collection of letters from my parents for the first two years of their relationship, Letters to Chiquita, 1962-1963, in which he explains that he wants to share his life with her, because he feels completely understood with her, and he mentions that his association with my mother brings out the best in himself.

I think my mother's artistic appreciation and her perception of the world complemented my father's in some way. She was different from the women he had met before, so to speak, she was completely like a refreshing breeze. Born into a family of artists (her mother and sister were both professional pianists), she loved to read, although she had little literary ambition herself. Like my father, my mother was fascinated by the possibilities of language, and she lived in several multilingual areas. In our family, everyone spoke a different language: my mother spoke Spanish to my father, he answered in Italian, and I spoke French. When they spoke in front of me and didn't want me to understand, they spoke English because I didn't learn much English.

Southern People Weekly: Did your father say why he loved one of your mother's favorite portraits in "Living in a Tree: A Biography of Calvino"?

Giovanna: I'm guessing you're talking about the picture taken in 1962, when they met and loved each other very much, but they were both living in different countries. From the collection of letters I just mentioned, you may be able to find annotations to these photographs in a few love letters.

Southern People Weekly: I really like the photo in my biography where your father took you to the flower market in Paris, can you tell us about your experience of visiting the flower market with your father and daughter, what plants and flowers did your father usually buy, and how did he choose them?

Giovanna: I also like this picture, although I don't remember exactly which flower market I went to. I think my father basically followed my mother's instructions when choosing flowers, he admired her aesthetic taste, and he once said that he could only live in the house she decorated.

Southern People Weekly: Your mother seems to be also very fond of art collecting, and there are many pictures of your Roman house in the book, including many of her collections of African masks and other exotic objects.

Giovanna: In the 1950s, when my mother moved to Paris from Buenos Aires and started collecting African art, she used to go to a gallery in the Latin Quarter called Clay, which was owned by her friend, and they also sold Victorian mourning jewelry, which often combined the hair of the deceased with jewelry, and my mother had a large collection of these artworks, and some of the surrealist poets and fashion designers frequented that gallery, and they often had the same works of art as my mother. I remember when I was a kid I heard her talk about an African mask that she had saved up to collect, and Yves Saint Laurent was the first to buy it, and Yves Saint Laurent was one of her favorite designers, so she didn't hate him too much for it.

He predicts that artificial intelligence will change our perception

Southern People Weekly: When I read Calvino's letters, I was impressed by the fact that he described you when you were 5 years old in a letter to a friend: "Happy, alert, able to speak 3 Chinese, not very interested in reading and writing and arithmetic, but carefree and full of imagination." "Living in a Tree: A Biography of Calvino also mentions your father's liberal and enlightened educational philosophy. What kind of father do you remember? Calvino is a childlike and fond of games, do you play any games when you interact?

Giovanna: To be honest, as a father, he was quite strict, and I don't remember him playing with me, but that's probably due to my poor memory these days. When I was a kid, I loved to draw, and I remember in the first house we moved into when we moved to Paris, my father's office was on the top floor, and every day after I finished painting, I would climb the stairs to his office to show him my work, and he would always give constructive criticism to encourage me.

My father wrote a fairy tale called "The Drawing of Anger", in which the protagonist of the book, the little girl Rodoline, was based on me. My parents had an Italian couple friend in Paris, their son was the same age as me, and I had to stay with him in the evening when our parents had dinner, but I couldn't stand him, so my father described in that fairy tale the fight between me and the little boy.

In the spring of 1940, Calvino, under the pseudonym Jacob, published four cartoons, one of which was "Radio," in the "Paper Basket" column of the magazine Bertoldo. Caption in the comic: Ever since they gave me the medal, even the radio signal didn't dare to say "you...... You...... You're ......" ("You" comes out on the radio...... You...... You...... You...... You...... Your ......" voice)

Southern People Weekly: Your father also likes to create comics, we have seen a lot of his self-portraits and portraits and portraits created for him in this biography, which one of your father's self-portraits do you like the most?

Giovanna: Most of his self-portraits were created when he was younger, but this one was created later in his life, and I think this self-portrait captures his state very well: looking down intently at a book, or trying to solve a puzzle.

Comical self-portrait painted by Calvino, 1975

Southern People Weekly: Of all the photos taken of your father, which one do you think best portrays his personality?

Giovanna: I like this 1936 picture of my father when he was a boy, it's his most classic expression, his brow is slightly frowned, and people who don't know him will think if he's angry, but that's not the case, it's the most typical way he looks when he's deep thinking.

Photograph taken by Calvino in 1936

Southern People Weekly: I saw a memoir that recorded that your father had a conversation with you in the ward the day after surgery, and he once called you a "turtle", which is a certain code between your father and daughter?

Giovanna: When I was a kid, we had a lot of turtles around our homes in Tuscany, and every summer I would catch a few of them and keep them in the garden. My father loved to observe turtles, and in fact I read years later that he had written a story called "Conversations with Turtles" (which was supposed to be included in his novel Palomar, but ended up not earning money, and that was probably my favorite short story he wrote). Anyway, when he underwent 8 hours of brain surgery in the hospital, his cognition was affected by the strong stimulation of the drugs, and I asked him who I was, tried to figure out if he could recognize me, and I think he was free to associate when he replied "turtle".

Southern People Weekly: After moving to Rome in 1980, it is said that your father was particularly fond of observing geckos?

Giovanna: There's a chapter in the novel Palomar where Mr. Palomar observes a gecko in his balcony window, and in our Tuscan home, my father would observe the gecko entering the house, and the balcony in that chapter is actually in our house in Rome.

Calvino on the terrace of his home in Rome

Southern People Weekly: In your opinion, what is the most pertinent evaluation of him by the outside world, and what is the biggest misunderstanding? How would you describe his creation and contribution?

Giovanna: My father is often seen as an intellectual postmodern writer, but this is abstract and too label-oriented. He has a talent for organizing words and ideas to create works that go far beyond language, and he uses language to expand our understanding of reality. For example, he seeks to transcend the narrow "ego," the subjective perspective of our human race's racial superiority and centrism, trying to imagine from the perspective of a turtle, an atom, or a rock.

He was also very interested in artificial intelligence, and he spent a lot of time and energy on this subject to a very systematic collection of books, which are now contributed to the National Central Library of Rome. As early as his 1967 article "Cybernetics and Ghosts", he predicted how artificial intelligence would change our perception of the real world.

Southern People Weekly: Please recall the last time you communicated with your father. Today, what would you most like to say to him at the age of 100?

Giovanna: My father died very suddenly, and I was immature and didn't know anything about it. If I could talk to him now, I would tell him in person that I love him.

(References: "Calvino Classics" series, "Living in a Tree: A Biography of Calvino", "Italo Calvino: Novelist, Storyteller", Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985, etc.) We would like to thank Wu Yingying and Jin Wei of Yilin Publishing House for their assistance in contacting and interviewing. ）

Southern People Weekly reporter Li Naiqing

Editor-in-charge: Zhou Jianping