Portrayals of writers in the letters by Italo Calvino: Vittorini, Pavese, Morante

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to capture and analyze some “portrayals” of the Italian writers Elio Vittorini (1908-1966), Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) and Elsa Morante (1912-1985), present in Italo Calvino’s epistolary, constituted by Lettere 1940-1985 (2001) and I libri degli altri: Lettere 1947-1981 (1991). In advance, we know that these “portrayals” are partial, their dates are the same when compared to the respective letters, some of them multiply more, updating in sequence along the way, some less, as threads that compose the texture of the intellectual and human relationship that Calvino (1923-1985) reveals to have with them. The choice of these three names is justified by the fact that they are some of his main interlocutors (Vittorini and Pavese, strong presences in the Publisher Einaudi of Turin, where Calvino has worked for over thirty years, and Elsa Morante, writer and friend whose career was closely followed by him), with crucial contributions to Calvino’s personal and intellectual life, and, moreover, since this epistolary exchange constitutes a testimony of Italian literary, political, and social life from 1940 to 1985.