Calvino editore. Riflessioni sui paratesti calviniani

Abstract

Calvino editor. Reflections on Calvino’s paratexts

Several Italian writers and men of letters have contributed directly to the organization of publishing companies during the twentieth century. To this group belongs Italo Calvino, who entertained a long working relationship with the publishing house Einaudi, lasting nearly forty years. This professional experience, strictly interwoven with Calvino’s activity as a novelist, gave the writer the opportunity to promote his idea of literature, the same idea that permeates his fiction. Calvino was not only engaged in the choice of the books to be published, but also in the writing of the introductions and back covers that often took, because of their complexity, the character of short critical essays. Through his prefaces the writer established a long-distance dialogue with readers, tendering them not solely promotional reviews, but rather his own narratological reflections. Multiple levels of discourse − analytical, critical, and narrative − converge therefore in the introductory writings of Calvino, unused to the impersonal language or blandishments of the traditional publishing. Furthermore, compared to the books of other writers, the forewords prepared for his own books are more complex and frequently subject to constant changes of mind, hesitations and vacillations. In any case Calvino’s paratexts constitute an important key to approach his poetics and, more generally, large areas of the Italian literature after the Second World War.