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Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino (Santiago de Las Vegas, 15 October 1923 – Siena, 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer. Born in Cuba and raised in Sanremo, he lived in Turin from the war years until 1964: there he graduated, worked for the publishing house Einaudi, and wrote his first books.[1][2]

Studies and the Resistance

Son of the agronomist Mario Calvino, who taught tropical agronomy at the University of Turin from 1936 to 1938, and the botanist Eva Mameli, he reluctantly enrolled in Agriculture, first in Turin and then in Florence.[1] MuseoTorino places his move to Turin in 1941–1942.[2] In 1944 he joined the Garibaldi brigade "Felice Cascione" of partisans in Liguria, under the nom de guerre "Santiago", and fought until April 1945.[1]

After the Liberation he was an activist of the Communist Party among Turin students and enrolled in Literature, where his teachers included Nicola Abbagnano and Luigi Pareyson; he graduated on 4 November 1947 with a thesis on Joseph Conrad.[1] In Turin he became friends with Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini, and between 1948 and the summer of 1949 he edited the cultural page of the Turin edition of «l'Unità», where he was among the first to recognize the worth of Primo Levi.[1]

At Einaudi

At Einaudi he started as a seller of books on installment, then became an editor and head of the press office; in thirty-five years he wrote about five thousand letters to authors, translators and consultants, and in 1980 he said he had devoted more time to other people's books than to his own.[1] With Vittorini he edited the "Gettoni" series and, from 1959, the magazine «il menabò di letteratura»; later he devised the "Centopagine" series.[1][3] His editorial correspondence is collected in «I libri degli altri», published by Einaudi in 1991.[4]

He wrote «Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno» in twenty days for the Premio Riccione, and Giulio Einaudi published it in the autumn of 1947; «Il visconte dimezzato» came out in Turin in 1952 in the "Gettoni" series.[1] He left the Communist Party in the summer of 1957, after the crisis of 1956.[1] With the Turin group Cantacronache he wrote the lyrics for "Dove vola l'avvoltoio", set to music by Sergio Liberovici, performed on 1 May 1958 at a CGIL rally.[5]

The Cottolengo and Marcovaldo

«La giornata d'uno scrutatore», published in Turin in 1963, is set in the polling station of the Cottolengo: Calvino had visited it as a Communist candidate in 1953 and returned there as a poll-watcher in the 1961 municipal elections.[1][6] At the end of that same year, 1963, «Marcovaldo ovvero Le stagioni in città» was published.[1] In those years he lived on Via Santa Giulia, in the Vanchiglia district, with a view of the Po.[7]

After Turin

In the summer of 1964, after marrying Esther Judith Singer in Cuba, he moved to Rome, continuing to travel to Turin twice a month for his publishing work; from 1967 to 1980 he lived in Paris.[1] Struck by a stroke on 6 September 1985 at Roccamare, he died at the hospital of Siena during the night between 18 and 19 September.[1] In Turin, the "Italo Calvino" public library, opened in 2008 on Lungo Dora Agrigento in the former Conceria Durio, is named after him.[8]

Related articles: Giulio Einaudi editore

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Sources

  1. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani —
  2. MuseoTorino
  3. Il Post — 19 September 2025
  4. Giulio Einaudi editore
  5. Il Post — 5 April 2012
  6. La Voce e il Tempo — 20 October 2023
  7. Il Sole 24 Ore — 20 January 2023
  8. MuseoTorino

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