Italo Calvino, and Crossing Paths with Anarchists
Last Saturday afternoon, despite being completely exhausted, and thinking that a walk would make me feel better, I dragged myself off the couch and headed towards the center of Turin. Little did I know that it would turn into a weekend-long hunt to find where Italo Calvino used to live, and the discovery of new editions of his works. The day was nice, despite the lung-crushing smog of the last two or three months (we’ve had all this smog because we’ve had such nice, sunny weather, with no rain or snow in sight).
Anarchist Protest of Seemingly Gargantuan Proportions?
The newspapers had been all aflutter, warning about an anarchist protest of seemingly gargantuan proportions in the historical center of town. Gargantuan or at least one the size of which hadn’t been seen since 2019 (can you really talk about it as though it’s something enormous when so little time has passed? It’s not as though it’s the biggest protest by anarchists in the history of their protests, or in the last 60 years. Dunno. Something about that wording just seemed off to me.) Given the buildup, I thought I would head towards Piazza Solferino, one of the most beautiful squares in town, and the meeting point for this protest, to see if there really was as big a law enforcement presence as what had been predicted (the city government had asked for assistance from other cities).
Article 41-bis (carcere duro)
The anarchists’ stated reason for the protest was objecting to Article 41-bis of the Italian Prison Administration Act, otherwise known as the carcere duro, or “hard time” provision, which includes solitary confinement and other rules and regulations, such as extremely limited visitation (sometimes as little as one hour per month). They have used the case of Alfredo Cospito, an avowed anarchist who lived in Turin, as their focal point. Cospito has been in prison since 2012 for various crimes, but was placed under the 41-bis restrictions in May 2022. In October 2022 he decided to begin a hunger strike to protest his treatment (I didn’t know it was possible to live for so long without eating but he’s apparently taking some sort of supplements), and in order to shine a light on what he feels is the injustice of Article 41-bis. The regulation is mostly used as a way to keep certain groups of convicted felons, for instance heads of organized crime syndicates (the law, in fact, refers to prisoners with links to organized crime, terrorist or subversive organizations), from being able to orchestrate further criminal acts from their prison cells. It’s all a long, complicated story, but suffice it to say that I wanted to get out for a walk and it’s always nice to have a destination in mind.
Business As Usual
As I walked towards Piazza Solferino, I thought things seemed pretty much business as usual. Saturday afternoon, tons of people out and about going for walks and window shopping. As I got closer to Piazza Solferino, I did start to see some of the streets blocked off here and there, but it wasn’t until I got almost to the square that I really did start to see a ton of police vehicles and officers. I skirted the borders of the square, cutting down past the Golden Palace Hotel. All the while I heard people in Piazza Solferino chanting and banging on drums. The police were milling about, looking bored.
Piazza C.L.N. and Profondo Rosso
As I turned away from Piazza Solferino, I decided to head to Piazza C.L.N., famous in the world of cinema for being the location of the apartment in Dario Argento’s 1975 horror classic, Profondo Rosso (Deep Red). As I type this, I just remembered that I was lucky enough to be in this square back in 2009 when prog-rockers Goblin, introduced by Dario Argento himself, performed the entire soundtrack live while the movie was screened.
Tennessee in Turin by Way of Feltrinelli
Tucked in a corner of Piazza C.L.N. is a Feltrinelli bookstore. Feltrinelli is the largest bookstore chain here in Italy. In general, I prefer to support the indie bookstores but a few months ago when I was in this particular Feltrinelli I was shocked to find notebooks by a company whose journals I love, DesignWorks, Ink. Astounding. I mean, this is a Tennessee-based company whose journals I have lugged back in my suitcases because I love their lie-flat design, ribbon markers, perpetual calendar across the top of each page, the whole deal. Although I hadn’t found one of the journals I normally buy, I did buy a nice notebook which had more or less all the same qualities, other than the fact that the notebooks are not hardbound like books. But, really, any excuse or none at all is a good enough reason for me to step into a bookstore.
Italo Calvino Anniversary Editions with Bright, Beautiful Covers by Jack Smyth
I made a beeline upstairs, headed for the English-language section. On my way back to that corner of the store, I got completely sidelined by a beautiful display of books issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Italo Calvino’s birth, in October 2023. After doing some research, I found that the books are being published by Mondadori (a huge publishing house based in Milan) with bright, beautiful covers by Jack Smyth. Smyth is an Irish graphic artist who won an international competition to design this collection, which has a whopping 26 titles. You might recognize other book covers Smyth has done – I know I did when I glanced at his website. Scroll to mid-page to see the Calvino covers here.
More Mesmerizing Book Covers
After I dragged myself away from the rack of Calvino’s books, I finally made it to the English-language section. I stood looking at two other new books with mesmerizing covers for a long time: Samantha Shannon’s A Day of Fallen Night and Amélie Wen Zhao’s Song of Silver, Flame Like Night. Can you tell I am heavily influenced by a book’s cover? Not to say that I just stood there staring at the covers. I thoroughly checked out the books.
I don’t have much experience with speculative fiction and while I was intrigued with both of these books, I resisted making any purchases. I need to give myself a gold star for that because I can’t remember the last time I walked into a bookstore and walked out without a book (and as you’ll read below, this lasted about 15 hours).
Later that Evening, A Nasty Turn
Later that evening, while I was checking the news, I read that things had taken a nasty turn with the anarchists. They damaged several cars (or several dozen? It wasn’t clear to me.) by breaking windshields; defaced the historic obelisk in Piazza Savoia; and broke windows at one of the upscale furniture stores near the Santuario della Madonna Consolata (“La Consolata”).
In Search of Italo Calvino in Torino (An Excuse for Another Walk)
Sunday morning rolled around and the weather was once again beautiful. Lucky us with the sun but, seriously, we need some more rain and snow to get us out of the smog pit that is the city right now. I was checking on Italo Calvino and trying to find out where he might have lived here in the city, because he did live here in Turin for a good part of his life, both as a youngster and when he worked as a consulting editor for the Einaudi publishing house (which, coincidentally, has its headquarters just down the street from Piazza Solferino, where the anarchists started their protest the previous day).
I found some information online about a potential home somewhere not too far from the Mole Antonelliana, the symbol of Torino. Since I wanted to get another walk in, I asked my husband if he would feel like trying to find this house. At the same time, since one of the ways to get to where we needed to go would cross paths with where the anarchists had done damage and I was curious to see what the extent of it was, I suggested taking that route.
Armed with completely scanty information gleaned from only one online article, we started out and as we got closer to the Consolata, I noticed a few people with cameras. I made the comment that they were probably going to take photos of the Roche Bobois showroom, the furniture store. We got over there and saw all of the windows of that store destroyed, as well as the windows of an art gallery next to it, where a man and a woman were trying to clean up.
Does it make me angry that Roche Bobois sells living room sets that cost more than houses in some places? I suppose, although for the most part even if I had the money to buy something like that, I would probably feel stupid doing so. And anyway, once paid for, I would probably end up screeching like Annette Bening in American Beauty about the couch costing so much and what’s the matter with you, trying to sit on it?!
The Praying Queens of Vincenzo Vela
Directly across the street from these two stores stands the lovely Consolata, probably my favorite church here in the city, mainly due to all the ex voto on the walls and the over-the-top Baroque interior. At this sanctuary the ex voto are primarily hand-drawn expressions of thanks for prayers answered after illnesses, accidents, and wars. The Consolata also has two of my favorite statues, “the praying queens,” by Vincenzo Vela. Dressed in their white marble lace and kneeling side by side in eternal prayer, Maria Theresa of Austria (wife of Charles Albert of Sardinia) and her daughter-in-law, Adelaide of Austria (wife of Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia), occupy a corner of the church to the left of the main altar. Unfortunately, neither the main corridor with the ex voto nor the corner with the statues was open for viewing the last time I went in there. Maybe it depends on whether there’s a mass being said.
As we were standing there looking up at the walls of the church, which had been paint-bombed, a woman walked by and said, yes, and they also wrote some terrible language on the ground over there. Naturally, I had to see what this terrible language was, so we walked a few steps to the side entrance of the church (as a matter of fact, directly through those doors would be the praying queens). As we were taking photos, a woman walked by and told her companion, “As a Christian, this really bothers me.”
Porco Dio would probably best be translated as “God is a pig” in this situation. And that got us talking. I said, well, maybe the anarchists think that God is a pig for letting something bad happen to one of their own (meaning Alfredo Cospito and his being placed in solitary confinement). My husband commented that the fact that they felt like they had to blaspheme God speaks to the fact that they believe God exists, and he wondered if they had really thought that through. We decided maybe the anarchists had spraypainted the expression just to get a rise out of people. The Church, the State (some of the public buildings in between the Consolata and Piazza Savoia were also defaced), the bourgeois shops. I suppose in their minds it’s all connected.
We walked away from the Consolata and went to see the defaced obelisk in Piazza Savoia, steps away from the Consolata.
The “1312” is a numerical representation of “ACAB,” or “all cops are bastards,” using a numerical representation of the letters of the alphabet where A = 1, and so on). Bad luck for you if you happened to be parked in this square the night of the protest. I would have been enraged to come out and find my car destroyed because of it.
An Invisible Abode to go with Invisible Cities
We left Piazza Savoia and continued on our trek to try to find the former residence of Italo Calvino. We arrived at the corner of Via Santa Giulia and Via Napione, looked around, and saw…nothing that gave us any indication of anything. I noticed an elderly man kind of leaning against the wall of a building with his cane. As he fiddled with his cigarettes, I walked over and asked him if he was from the area. We struck up a conversation and chatted a bit. Turns out he has lived in that building right over there for more than 40 years, but he had never once heard any talk that Calvino had ever lived in the neighborhood. True, Calvino died almost 40 years ago, and he wasn’t living in Torino at the time of his death, but still. Feeling like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities had morphed into an invisible abode, I thanked the man, who wished us “many beautiful things in life” (tante belle cose nella vita), which I thought was quite expansive of him. After a quick stop at a local café for a couple of small sandwiches and a shared Leffe rouge, we started back towards home.
Judging a Book Entirely by Its Cover
And…here’s where the willpower I mentioned earlier crumbled. We stopped back in Feltrinelli so I could get a better photo of the rack with all the Calvino books. Astute observers will note that such a photo does not appear in this blog post. That was really an excuse just to go back and buy something.
With regard to Italo Calvino, I fall firmly in the camp of judging a book entirely by its cover because my experience of reading his work has been extremely limited. I have read Six Memos for the Next Millenium (Lezioni americane. Sei proposte per il prossimo millenio) and at some point started If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore). In my opinion, writers would do well to read Six Memos, a series of six lectures Calvino was working on and had planned to deliver at Harvard at the time of his death in 1961, but maybe readers with no particular interest in writing would be better off with something else. Cosmicomics (Le cosmicomiche) and Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) are often cited as “the ones to read,” but I can’t offer an opinion on either of those.
The cover that caught my attention was this beauty, for Marcovaldo:
Not only does it have one of my favorite color combos, but I love the image of the title character ensconced in his mushroom cap house, white clothes hanging from a clothesline attached to the stalk. I also chose the book because, let’s face it, reading in a language which is not your first language can turn into a slog and I believe reading should be fun, not homework. At 126 pages broken into 20 stories, it’s short and divided into manageable chunks. The stories follow the main character, a man from the country living in an unspecified northern Italian town with his wife and children. I like to imagine him living in Torino. The collection covers five years in Marcovaldo’s life, with one story for each season of the year. Since the first story begins in spring, it’s a perfect time to start this book.
A Neighborhood Café, a Beautiful Book, and 7.5 Miles
We had zero luck finding Calvino’s invisible abode but we did find a nice neighborhood café, I bought a beautiful book, and we walked 7.5 miles, so, all in all, it doesn’t get much better than that.
How about you? Have you read anything by Italo Calvino? If so, what have you read and what did you think? If not, do you think you might try? I’d be curious to know. And do you know where he might have lived while he was here in Torino? Please let me know in the comments below.
Check out what I’ve been reading lately. Do you see any mesmerizing book covers there?
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