Italo Calvino was an Italian novelist and short story writer. He was born on October 15, 1923, and died on September 19, 1985. His most famous works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He was admired in countries like Britain, Australia, and the United States. At the time of his death, he was the Italian writer with the most translated books.

Biography

Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, a suburb of Havana, Cuba, in 1923. His father, Mario Calvino, was a scientist who studied plants and farming in tropical areas. He also taught agriculture and floriculture. Mario was born in Sanremo, Italy, 47 years before Italo. In 1909, Mario moved to Mexico, where he worked for the Ministry of Agriculture. In an essay about his life, Italo wrote that his father had been an anarchist, a follower of Kropotkin, and later a Socialist Reformist. In 1917, Mario went to Cuba to do scientific experiments after living through the Mexican Revolution.

Italo’s mother, Giuliana Luigia Evelina "Eva" Mameli, was a botanist and university professor. She was born in Sassari, Sardinia, and was 11 years younger than her husband. She married while still working as a junior lecturer at the University of Pavia. Eva came from a family that valued science and civic duty. She gave Italo his unusual first name to remind him of his Italian heritage, even though he would grow up in Italy. Italo later said his name seemed "belligerently nationalist." He described his parents as very different in personality, suggesting there might have been unspoken tensions in their family life. As a teenager, Italo struggled to relate to poverty and the working class, feeling "ill at ease" with his parents’ friendly attitude toward laborers who visited his father’s study every Saturday to collect their pay.

In 1925, less than two years after Italo’s birth, the family returned to Italy and settled permanently in Sanremo on the Ligurian coast. His brother, Floriano, who became a geologist, was born in 1927. The family lived part of the year in Villa Meridiana, an experimental floriculture station that also served as their home, and part of the year on Mario’s ancestral land in San Giovanni Battista. Mario worked on growing exotic fruits like avocados and grapefruits, which earned him a place in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani. The rich forests and wildlife of Sanremo inspired some of Calvino’s early stories, such as The Baron in the Trees. In an interview, Calvino said Sanremo continued to appear in his books.

Italo and Floriano would climb the tree-covered estate and spend hours reading adventure stories on the branches. In The Road to San Giovanni, Calvino wrote about the difficulty he and his father had communicating: "Talking to each other was difficult. Both of us had many words to say, but when we were together, we became quiet and walked in silence." As a child, Calvino loved The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and felt his love for stories made him the "black sheep" of a family that valued science more than literature. He was also interested in American movies, cartoons, drawing, poetry, and theater. Calvino remembered his earliest memory as seeing a Marxist professor attacked by Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts. He said, "I remember clearly that we were at dinner when the old professor came in with his face beaten up and bleeding, asking for help."

The parents believed in Freemasonry and republicanism, with ideas influenced by anarchism and Marxism. They hated the ruling National Fascist Party and refused to teach their sons about any religion. Italo attended St George’s College, an English nursery school, and a Protestant elementary school run by Waldensians. His secondary school, a classical lyceum, was at the state-run Liceo Gian Domenico Cassini. His parents asked him to skip religion classes, but teachers, janitors, and classmates often questioned his refusal to follow the majority’s beliefs. Later, Calvino said this experience made him "tolerant of others’ opinions, especially about religion." In 1938, Eugenio Scalfari, who later founded L’Espresso and La Repubblica, joined the same class a year younger. The two became close friends, and Calvino credited their university discussions with helping him understand politics.

Eva delayed Italo’s enrollment in the Fascists’ armed scouts, the Balilla Moschettieri, and arranged for him to be excused from religious duties as a non-Catholic. However, as a required member, he could not avoid the Avanguardisti’s parades and was forced to take part in the Italian invasion of the French Riviera in June 1940.

In 1941, Calvino enrolled at the University of Turin, choosing the Agriculture Faculty where his father had taught. To please his family, he hid his literary interests and passed four exams in his first year while reading anti-Fascist works by Elio Vittorini, Eugenio Montale, Cesare Pavese, Johan Huizinga, and Pisacane, as well as physics books by Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein. Calvino’s real goal was to become a playwright. His letters to Eugenio Scalfari were filled with ideas for plays and future theatrical projects. He cited Italian and foreign authors like Luigi Pirandello, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Cesare Vico Lodovici, Ugo Betti, Eugene O’Neill, and Thornton Wilder as his influences. Calvino disliked Turin students and saw himself as part of a "provincial shell" that protected him from the Fascist regime. He described himself and his peers as "hard guys" from the provinces who avoided intellectual sophistication, mocked patriotic rhetoric, and had little interest in romantic ideas.

In 1943, Calvino moved to the University of Florence and reluctantly passed three more agriculture exams. By the end of the year, Germany had occupied Liguria and created Benito Mussolini’s puppet Republic of Salò in northern Italy. At 20 years old, Calvino refused military service and went into hiding. He

Selected publications

A list of Italo Calvino's writings is provided, including books that have been translated into English and a few important works that remain untranslated. More complete lists of his works can be found in the books Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin and Understanding Italo Calvino by Beno Weiss.

Legacy

The Scuola Italiana Italo Calvino, a school in Moscow, Russia, that teaches the Italian curriculum, is named after Italo Calvino. A crater on the planet Mercury, called Calvino, and a main-belt asteroid named 22370 Italocalvino, are also named after him. The Salt Hill Journal and the University of Louisville give an annual award called the Italo Calvino Prize. This prize is given for a work of fiction written in the creative and imaginative style of Italo Calvino.

Kai Nieminen, born in 1953, wrote a flute concerto in 2001 based on the story Mr. Palomar. The piece was written for Patrick Gallois.