The gesture of writing and translating in il naso d’argento

Abstract

Italo Calvino stood out as a multifaceted author who sought to contemplate the book and the world in crisis, what can be observed both in his critical and literary writing. He wrote short stories, novels, essays, film and theater criticism, travel stories, and has kept significant correspondence with writers, intellectuals, and translators of various nationalities, as demonstrated by Lettere 1940-1985 (2000). Known for works such as Le città invisibili (1972), Le cosmicomiche (1965), Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979) and the trilogy I nostri antenati (1960), the author has also gained wide visibility when chosen, still young, to compile and translate two hundred folktales gathered from all regions of Italy in which has become Fiabe italiane (1956). For this paper, we chose “Il naso d’argento” to analyze aspects of the Italian folktale and Calvino’s work as a humanistic intellectual bringing them together. We look for theoretical basis, therefore, in the author’s own work about folktales – both in his letters, above-mentioned, and in his posthumous work Sulla fiaba (1996) –, in his Lezioni americane (1988) and, also, in Haroldo de Campos (1992), when questioning to what extent Calvino could be considered an author of these folktales.

KEYWORDS: Epistolography; Italian Literature; Short Narratives.