Italo Giovanni Calvino Mameli
8 min read
Reading time
1,554
Words
Published
81
Books
5
Awards
Joining the Italian Communist Party in 1945 and leaving in 1957, Calvino wrote a story for Michelangelo Antonioni in 1970 titled Tecnicamente dolce which was never filmed. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Siena, Italy on 19 September 1985. Born on 15 October 1923 in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba, to Italian parents, Calvino became a key Italian writer.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Italo Calvino — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Italo Calvino by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Italo Calvino — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Joining the Italian Resistance during World War II, Calvino drew on that experience in his later writing. He was born on 15 October 1923 in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba, to agronomist Mario Calvino and Giuliana Luigia Evelina Mameli Calvino. The family soon returned to Italy, settling in Sanremo, Liguria. Calvino studied literature at the University of Turin and the University of Florence.
After World War II, Calvino launched his literary career. From 1945 to 1957, he was a member of the Italian Communist Party. He contributed to Boccaccio ’70 and Tiko and the Shark, both released in 1962. In 1970, he wrote a story for Michelangelo Antonioni titled Tecnicamente dolce, but the film was never produced. Calvino presided over the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1981.
Calvino married Esther Calvino; the couple kept their relationship private. He had one sibling, Floriano Calvino. Calvino was close friends with fellow intellectuals Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini. He was a member of the Italian Communist Party until 1957, reflecting his political engagement.
Calvino won the Viareggio Prize, the Feltrinelli Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the Ditmar Award. He was named Commander of the Legion of Honour. In 1981, he served as president of the jury at the Venice Film Festival. His influence persists through his novels and screenwriting, and he is remembered as a key 20th-century Italian writer.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Italo Calvino — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Italo Calvino's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Italo Calvino — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
Everything Can Change, but Not the Language That We Carry Inside Us, Like a World More Exclusive and Final Than One’s Mother’s Womb.
In an Age When Other Fantastically Speedy, Widespread Media Are Triumphing and Running the Risk of Flattening All Communication Onto a Single, Homogeneous Surface, the Function of Literature Is Communication Between Things That Are Different Simply Because They Are Different – Not Blunting but Even Sharpening the Differences Between Them – Following the True Bent of the Written Language.
Cities, Like Dreams, Are Made of Desires and Fears, Even If the Thread of Their Discourse Is Secret, Their Rules Are Absurd, Their Perspectives Deceitful, and Everything Conceals Something Else.
The Inferno of the Living Is Not Something That Will Be. If There Is One, It Is What Is Already There, the Inferno Where We Live Every Day, That We Form by Being Together. There Are Two Ways to Escape Suffering It. the First Is Easy for Many: Accept the Inferno and Become Such a Part of It That You Can No Longer See It. the Second Is Risky and Demands Constant Vigilance and Apprehension: Seek and Learn to Recognize Who and What, in the Midst of the Inferno Are Not Inferno, Then Make Them Endure, Give Them Space.
I Change My Method and Field of Reference from Book to Book Because I Can Never Believe in the Same Thing Two Times Running.
Reading Is Going Toward Something That Is About to Be, and No One yet Knows What It Will Be.
What Makes Lovemaking and Reading Resemble Each Other Most Is That Within Both of Them Times and Spaces Open, Different from Measurable Time and Space.
The City Does Not Tell of Its Past, but Contains It Like the Lines of a Hand…
Of Meaty Reading, Even If, of Every Book, I Manage to Read No More Than a Few Pages. but Those Few Pages Already Enclose for Me Whole Universes, Which I Can Never Exhaust.
Don’t Be Amazed If You See My Eyes Always Wandering. in Fact, This Is My Way of Reading, and It Is Only in This Way That Reading Proves Fruitful to Me. If a Book Truly Interests Me, I Cannot Follow It for More Than a Few Lines Before My Mind, Having Seized on a Thought That the Text Suggests to It, or a Feeling, or a Question, or an Image, Goes off on a Tangent and Springs from Thought to Thought, from Image to Image, in an Itinerary of Reasonings and Fantasies That I Feel the Need to Pursue to the End, Moving Away from the Book Until I Have Lost Sight of It.
Little-known facts about Italo Calvino — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
In 1970, Calvino wrote a story for Michelangelo Antonioni called Tecnicamente dolce, but the film was never produced.
He is a famous Italian novelist.
From 1945 to 1957, Calvino was a member of the Italian Communist Party.
He was a close friend of writers Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini.
In 1981, Calvino served as president of the jury at the Venice Film Festival.
During World War II, Calvino participated in the Italian Resistance.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Italo Calvino.
Celebrities similar to Italo Calvino — same craft, ranked by reach.
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