^^P78 translation as close reading & theft. Shoutout to volume translator Ann Goldstein!
P90 “Translating is an art: the transfer of a literary text into another language[…] always requires some type of miracle.”
P130 “the motivation to write is always connected to the lack of something we would like to know and possess, something that escapes us.”
P142 “I wish every book I write were the first, I wish I had a new name every time.”
^^P21, Calvino on the avant-garde (of 1957)
P139 “A great book is valuable not because it teaches us to know a definite individual, but because it presents to us a new way of understanding human life, applicable to others as well, and which we, too, can use to recognize ourselves.”
P140 “Thus writing a book becomes an experience of initiation, involves a continuing education of oneself, and this should be the goal of every human action.”
^^p125 Calvino on Italy, Italian language
P127 “What language is the book of the world written in?”
P138 “A book, books. The thought that books are generated by books, as if by a biological power of the written page can be distressing: if the written matter passes through the hand that writes, and the author is only a tool of something that writes itself independently of him, maybe it‘s not we who write books, but books that write us.”
pickNot clear who edited/selected these excerpts from Calvino‘s non-fiction writing on writing—the Calvino estate? No intro, no context, just Calvino on translation, Italian language, Italian novel, folklore, reading, “Homo legens,” sitting, publishing, the absolute book. Fave= interview w/ Tullio Pericoli on imitation & style & influence & “progress” in painting & lit. P88 “Novels are like wines in that some travel well and some travel badly.” 2023
The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays | 
