In the letter below, Italo Calvino writes to fellow author Mario Socrate. In 1957, Calvino had left Italy’s Communist party, due to revelations about Stalin’s crimes. Later that year he wrote The Baron in the Trees, a work of fantasy about the “problem of the intellectual’s political commitment at a time of shattered illusions.” Mario Socrate, too, used fantasy to express his political dissent and confusion, for example, in Parabolic Fables (Favole paraboliche), the book of “fantasy-poems” Calvino mentions in his letter. Calvino proposes a “cosmic literary movement,” possibly referring to their shared sense that fantastical ideas were best expressed with naturalistic and universal language. Here, the two authors discuss their ideas for the future of Italian art, as well as their mutual friend Franco Lucentini, an Italian author who had been imprisoned in 1941 for distributing anti-fascist leaflets.
Turin 23 April ‘61
Dear Mario,
I have not yet seen your book of fantasy-poems. I am pleased to know it has come out; let me have a copy, if you can; if not, I’ll ask it for myself from the publisher.
I would like to found a cosmic literary movement. Or rather have it founded by Lucentini who has these ideas firmly rooted in his head, and went to see the eclipse at Recanati. But he has not got time. I don’t either. Amongst the names of the very few people admitted as members, yours would be one. I’d be ready to declare myself a follower of the cosmic literary movement for a period of six months, maybe even a year, accepting its directives in a disciplined way (that is to say not only drawing them up but also carrying them out). Not for any longer than that; literary tendencies only count if they are of short duration.
The fact is that until we fight head on everything that is happening and being thought about in contemporary Italian literature, the arts, cinema etc., we will not make any progress.
The truth is one really ought to stop for a moment and think. And how can we do that? I came back yesterday from Scandinavia after a fortnight’s travel in those countries. But it was not the right season, in all senses. Now I am leaving for Majorca for the Formentor Prize. When I get back I will have to write the treatment for a film about underwater fishing. And then there is the publishing work, which I do badly and it takes up my time, but at least it is something serious and that is why I always say I am going to leave it but I never do.
Recently I have been frittering away my time a lot. The feeling that I am drowning in a sea of pointless activities is grabbing me by the throat. But these are times when what you don’t write counts for more than what you do write. I have destroyed that book on America, on which I had worked for many months. It hadn’t turned out badly, but for me to go down the road taken by travel writers was opting for an easy way out.
I will certainly come to Rome in May and we can meet. I have now rented a house in Rome but it is still empty and I do not know when I will be there. Very best wishes,
Calvino
From Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985. Edited by Michael Wood. Princeton University Press, 2013. pp. 213-214.
FURTHER READING
A rumination on Italo Calvino’s letters at the New Republic.