Italo Calvino: A Traveller in a World of Uncertainty
If the present, with its conflicts and uncertainties, is impossible to know, asks Italo Calvino, how can we hope to understand the past?
‘The thing I’d like most in the world’, says the reader in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979), ‘is to make clocks run backwards.’ And understandably so. Written after a period of creative uncertainty, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller is a profoundly – even wilfully – disorienting work. It starts in a familiar enough way, with you, the reader, settling down to read Calvino’s latest novel. But you soon realise something’s wrong. The printers have not only messed up the pages, but got Calvino’s book mixed up with a completely different one. Put out, you go back to the bookshop to exchange it for another copy, only to be given another novel entirely – and for precisely the same thing to happen again. And again. Soon your head is spinning. You’re not sure of anything anymore. Who could blame you for wanting to turn the clock back to before all this confusion began?
To continue reading this article you need to purchase a subscription, available from only £5.
Start my trial subscription now
If you have already purchased access, or are a print & archive subscriber, please ensure you are logged in.
Please email digital@historytoday.com if you have any problems.