Reading Along the NYRB
50 Years New York Review of Books 50 Jahre
Ever since I read "The Baron in the Trees" I have liked Calvino and his writings, even though so far I have only dipped into two other books: "The Invisible Cities" and "Mr Palomar". Almost a year ago arte broadcasted a portrait of Calvino (fr/dt) which I enjoyed a lot.
"
Italo Calvino - Ein Portrait"
Now here we have a view of the writer, written by Michael Wood: "Agile Among the Tombs". Wood approaches a central theme with Calvino: home. The more home and homeland are growing in meaning in Germany, it seems the more we tend to make this world more inhospitable for others. The CSU just formed a new ministry, the Heimatministerium, while there are efforts within the European Community to make it increasingly difficult for people who have to flee their home country to reach European Shores.
Wood quotes a sentence in Calvino's "The Road to San Giovanni":
"A general explanation of the world and of its history must first of all take into account the way our house was situated ..."
That is what I like in Calvino, a combination of history and philosophy, and he also is a great story teller.
The other books reviewed in this issue of July 14, 1994 are:
"Prima che tu dica 'Pronto'" and
"Six Memos for the Next Millenium"
Über "
Die unsichtbaren Städte" schrieb ich schon
hier. "
Der Baron auf den Bäumen" las ich in der schönen vergriffenen dtv Ausgabe mit dem Bild von Piatti, in der Übersetzung von Oswalt von Nostiz - die Ausgabe erscheint inzwischen bei Fischer. Der große David Levine setzt Calvino in die Astgabel eines aufgeschlagenen Buchs, von woaus er scharfsinnig und wach und, wie ich meine, etwas verschmitzt die Welt betrachtet.
 |
| aus Privatbeständen |
On the Waterfront
In the same issue of the NYRB there is a lovely book review by Jonathan Raban (
Coasting), and here I am thinking foremost of a book by Alain Corbin, who belongs to the group of historians around Carlo Ginzburg (whose
Threads and Traces had been published only the previous year). Others are Natalie Zemon Davis (
The Return of Martin Guerre), Philippe Ariès (together with George Duby:
Histoire de la vie privée), Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error), to name a few. I read Corbin's remarkable book:
The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. All those are great books.
Der Wagenbach Verlag hatte sich in den Achtzigern lobenswerterweise der Herausgabe dieser Bücher in Deutschland gewidtmet; inzwischen sind viele leider vergriffen. Aber dieses Jahr ist, in der Übersetzung von Victoria Lorini, "
Faden und Fährten" erschienen. Und im Berenberg Verlag erzählt Maike Albath unter Anderem über Ginzburg und seinen Kreis in ihrem Buch:
Der Geist von Turin
