Italo Calvino, from “Invisible Cities” to “Indivisible Cities” – Libération

A Pléiade bringing together the eight novels by the Italian author and an extension signed by Oulipo.

In the American lessonsa series of lectures published after his death, Italo Calvino posits that “excessive ambition of intentions can be a reason for reproach in many fields of activity, but not in literature. Literature only lives if it sets itself disproportionate objectives, even beyond any possibility of achievement. The Italian author’s eight novels are now grouped together in a volume in La Pléiade, reflecting the extent of an extraordinary journey, since the Spider Nest Trail (1947) until Mr. Palomar (1983). «L’ambition excessive» of Calvino is deployed there, which we could try to summarize by a desire to think about the world by constructing stories. Thinking about the world, that is to say trying to understand it and act in it, with the help of science and philosophy. It is Calvino’s particularity to have carried this aspiration not by writing essays, but by choosing to tell stories. And crafted stories, which dare narrative efficiency, not hesitating to draw from the tale and the epic. This undoubtedly explains why he was on the fringes of the avant-gardes of his time, considered too quickly as a classic, a misunderstanding from which his work had difficulty overcoming, particularly in Italy.

Through the wanderings of war

The Spider Nest Trail is new to this volume