California Italian Studies

This thematic issue of California Italian Studies, entitled “Calvino’s Memos: Between the Old and the New Millennium,” is comprised of comparative and interdisciplinary scholarly articles as well as more informal “Notes from the Field”—including excerpts from works in progress, artists’ statements, and commentaries—inspired by or related to the ideas and writings of Italo Calvino, in particular (but not exclusively) the lectures known and published posthumously in Italian as Lezioni americane—in English as Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988). The publication of this issue of California Italian Studies coincides with and celebrates the 100th anniversary of Calvino’s birth (October 15^th, 1923). Calvino’s Memos were originally lectures prepared, beginning in January 1985, after he was invited in 1984 to be the 1985-86 Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. For all the Norton endowed lectures, Harvard stipulated that poetry was to be interpreted in the broadest sense, including all poetic expression in language, music, or fine arts. Calvino’s predecessors included, among others, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Chávez, Aaron Copland, Northrop Frye, Helen Gardner, Pier Luigi Nervi, Octavio Paz, Frank Stella, and Igor Stravinsky; and among his successors over the years were Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Luciano Berio, John Cage, Umberto Eco, Nadine Gordimer, Herbie Hancock, William Kentridge, Toni Morrison, Linda Nochlin, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Orhan Pamuk, and Agnès Varda. The Memos theorize principles or “values” that in Calvino’s view were especially relevant and important for literature (or, rather, poetry in the broader sense set forth by Harvard)—always seen in relation to other forms of discourse and expression—as it faced the new millennium, a millennium which Calvino, who died on September 19, 1985 at the age of 61, would not see. These future-oriented values for Calvino were also crucial to the reading and interpretation of poetic/literary works from the first and second millennia. The scholarly work included in this issue of California Italian Studies ranges in fact from studies pertaining to antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modern literature and culture, to multidisciplinary reflections on literature, art, and science inspired by or based on the Memos, as well as critical problems and themes relevant to the contemporary era and the future of the humanities.