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lecture > SLIM 23 / Calvino and the Cold Warmth of Exactitude

  • Event date: The October 16 2023, 18:00 (Local time)
  • For a fee: No

On the occasion of the 23rd edition of the Week of Italian Language in the world, and of the Centennial Celebrations of writer Italo Calvino (1923 – 1985), a lecture by writer and poet Andrea Bajani on Calvino’s language. In English.

In the fall of 1985 𝐈𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐨 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐨 was to deliver a series of talks he called 𝑺𝒊𝒙 𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝑴𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒖𝒎 over the course of his Norton lectureship at Harvard, but never did as he died before leaving Italy.
Five of the projected six lectures were completed, addressing attributes Calvino would most like to find in the literature of the next millennium: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. The sixth lecture, which he never got to write, would have been on consistency. An𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚 𝐁𝐚𝐣𝐚𝐧𝐢 will address the third one, 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞.
Although Calvino’s intention was not to talk of the future but of literature, 𝑺𝒊𝒙 𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒔 can be valuable in many different aspects of life. 

Date and time: Monday, October 16 | 6:00 pm
Venue: Istituto Italiano di Cultura
1023 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles

Andrea BajaniAndrea Bajani is one of the most respected and award-winning novelists and poets of contemporary Italian literature. He is the author of four novels and three collections of poems. His novel, If You Kept a Record of Sins, published in the US by Archipelago and translated by Elizabeth Harris, won the Super Mondello Prize, the Brancati Prize, the Recanati Prize and the Lo Straniero Prize. His latest novel, Il libro delle case (The Book of Homes) was finalist for the Premio Strega and the Premio Campiello, and is being translated in seventeen countries, by the most prestigious publishing houses, such as Gallimard, Anagrama, Fraktura, Kampa, Humanitas. He is currently writer in residence at Rice University, in Houston, Texas.

 

This event is part of the 23rd edition of the Week of Italian Language in the World – the Italian Language and Sustainability, with a specific focus on the work of Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985), celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The event is also part of Six Memos for the Present 1923-2023, an interdisciplinary lecture series celebrating Italo Calvino’s centennial, curated by USC Professor Gian Maria Annovi. Each lecture will expand Calvino’s text in different directions with the goal of fostering a discussion on the role of literature in today’s society.  Download the full program.

  • Organized by: USC Department of French and Italian in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles
  • In collaboration with: USC Dornsife Dean for the Humanities, Dean of Undergraduate Education and Dean of Graduate Education, USC Departments of Comparative Literature, English, and Visual Studies Research Institute.