Seis propuestas para el próximo milenio

Por Italo Calvino y Esther Calvino

«El milenio que está por terminar ha asistido al nacimiento y a la expansión de las lenguas modernas de Occidente y de las literaturas que han explorado las posibilidades expresivas y cognoscitivas e imaginativas de esas lenguas. Ha sido también el milenio del libro, dado que ha visto cómo el objeto libro adquiría la forma que nos es familiar. La señal de que el milenio está por concluir tal vez sea la frecuencia con que nos interrogamos sobre la suerte de la literatura y del libro en la era tecnológica llamada postindustrial. No voy a aventurarme en previsiones de este tipo. Mi fe en el futuro de la literatura consiste en saber que hay cosas que solo la literatura, con sus medios específicos, puede dar. Quisiera, pues, dedicar estas conferencias a algunos valores o cualidades o especificidades de la literatura que me son particularmente caros, tratando de situarlos en la perspectiva del nuevo milenio.»Italo Calvino

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Siruela
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 16 oct 2012
• ISBN: 9788415723172

Italo Calvino

ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers. Born in Cuba, he was raised in San Remo, Italy, and later lived in Turin, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. Among his many works are Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s night a traveler, The Baron in the Trees, and other novels, as well as numerous collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. His works have been translated into dozens of languages.

Comentarios para Seis propuestas para el próximo milenio

[rmagahiz · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

In the five essays here (the sixth went unwritten because of the author's death), we are pointed towards a great variety of authors, ancient and modern, whose work exemplified one aspect of artistic value: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity. Calvino includes himself in the fifth chapter and it is both sad and fascinating to speculate on what it tells us what direction he might have continued his writing had he lived. It will send a Goodreads member interested in such matters off to seek out the books mentioned.

[thronm · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

A brilliant set of reflections on literature, art, historical development of ideas and modern times. Deserving of a reading once a year at least.

[jcamilo_720582 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Calvino famous last speeches - he actually died before finishing the 6th and last one - in his light and clear style and literature analyse of what he considered would be the most important traits for literature in the XXI Century.

[jonfaith · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

I would not be so drastic. I think we are always searching for something hidden or merely potential or hypothetical, following its traces whenever they appear on the surface. I think our basic mental processes have come down to us through every period of history, ever since our Paleolithic forefathers, who were hunters and gatherers. The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss.

Calvino's posthumous lectures are a grand gallop across a cherished earth of letters. The Six Memos For The Next Millennium are a celebration of Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity (the sixth was never written at the time of Calvino's passing). The ruminations and citations extend from Ovid and Lucretius onward through Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cyrano, Valery, Flaubert, Musil and, especially, Borges. This is a wonderful construction, one without grandiosity, but teeming with an organic eloquence.

Were I to choose an auspicious image for the new millennium, I would choose that one: the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he ahs the secret of lightness, and that what many consider to be the vitality of the times--noisy, aggressive, revving and roaring--belongs to the realm of death, like a cemetery for rusty old cars.