a girl on a bench

If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino is a real mind twister, hopping from story to story, narrator to narrator, it can be a challenge to keep up with all the plots starting and stopping while still seeing the bigger picture. Though many delish page turns that truly brag Calvino’s skill, the book is truly a testament to the relationship between reader and writer. Being both, I felt such deep resonance with the angles of both characters. This book is truly relatable to all.

Notable quotes from the book (I’m sorry there are so many, I had too many I loved!):

"There are days when everything I see seems to me charged with meaning : messages it would be difficult for me to communicate to others, define, translate into words, but which for this very reason appear to me decisive. They are announcements or presages that concern me and the world at once: for my part, not only the external events of my existence but also what happens inside, in the depths of me; and for the world, not some particular event but the general way of being of all things. You will understand therefore my difficulty in speaking about it, except by allusion." (pg. 55) 

"...it is my relationship with my life, consisting of things never concluded and half erased, that the subject of seashells forces me to contemplate; hence the uneasiness that finally puts me to flight... I, on the contrary, have been convinced for some time that perfection is not produced except marginally and by chance; therefore it deserves no interest at all." (pg. 57)

"with a written language it is always possible to reconstruct a dictionary and a grammar, isolate sentences, transcribe them or paraphrase them in another language, whereas I am trying to read in the succession of things presented to me every day the world's intentions toward me, and I grope my way, knowing that there can exist no dictionary that will translate into words the burden of obscure allusions that lurks in these things." (pg. 61)

"In her voice you seek the confirmation of your need to cling to things that exist, to read what is written and nothing else, dispelling the ghosts that escape your grasp... "Reading," he says, "is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead..."" (pg. 71-72)

"One reads alone, even in another's presence. But what, then, are you looking for here? Would you like to penetrate her shell, insinuating yourself among the pages of the books she is reading? Or does the relationship between one Reader and the Other Reader remain that of two separate shells, which can communicate only through partial confrontations of two exclusive experiences?" (pg. 147)

"What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space." (pg. 156) 

"...and sink into his or her book; two parallel readings will accompany the approach of sleep; first you, then you will turn out the light; returning from separated universes, you will find each other fleetingly in the darkness, where all separations are erased, before different dreams draw you again, one to one side, and one to the other." (pg. 157) 

"They are like elemental particles making up the work's nucleus, around which all the rest resolves... It is through these apertures that, in barely perceptible flashes, the truth the book may bear is revealed, its ultimate substance. Myths and mysteries consist of impalpable little granules, like the pollen that sticks to the butterfly's legs; only those who have realized this can expect revelations and illuminations." (pg. 254) 

Learn more or buy If on a winter’s night a traveler here.