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ITALO CALVINO AND SAMUEL BECKETT:
REGENERATIVE CREATION IN
THE FICTION OF THE 1960s
In his extremely influential and oen misinterpreted essays entitled ‘e
Literature of Exhaustion’ () and ‘e Literature of Replenishment’ (),
American writer John Barth (– ) offers some reflections on contempor-
ary fiction, attempting to define different categories of writers according to
their styles and historical awareness. Far from claiming that literature has
exhausted its possibilities and should be considered as a dead form, Barth ex-
presses his confidence in and admiration for some of his contemporaries who
managed to give new flavour and meaning to literary production, thanks to
their ability to ‘speak memorably to our human hearts and condition’ in a way
that is suited to the man of the twentieth century. Among the many writers
who are mentioned in the two essays, Italo Calvino (–) and Samuel
Beckett (–) are particularly praised for their endeavours, and men-
tioned as examples to identify respectively a ‘postmodern’ and an ‘up-to-date’
writer. is article attempts to take up the indirect connection which Barth
creates between Calvino and Beckett in his essays. rough a comparison of
some of the works which the two authors created during the s, it will be
possible to see how they both manage to achieve a balance between exhaus-
tion and replenishment, touching the limits of fictional writing not in order
to drain them, but to stretch them further to new possibilities.
Faced with a crisis taking root in the difficulty of expressing themselves and
depicting what is around them, at the beginning of the s Italo Calvino
and Samuel Beckett start to shape their writing with analogous features. Tak-
ing chaos and order, imagination and rational thinking as the framework for
their fictional creations, both authors empty the process of writing of some
of its constitutive elements, creating a void whose ultimate aim is not the
annihilation and exhaustion of literary composition, but a new and fruitful
beginning from scratch. rough an examination of Calvino’s Le cosmicomi-
che (Cosmicomics, ) and Ti con zero (t zero, ) alongside Beckett’s
How It Is () and some of the so-called ‘residual’ pieces or ‘Residua’
(–), it will become clear how these texts work from a point zero at
which a certain idea of literature and the human subject is negated, not to
move towards a final end, but to work for a gradual restoration of man’s
potential and ability to imagine. Drawing on the similarities connecting the
John Barth, ‘e Literature of Exhaustion’, in e Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-
Fiction (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), pp. – (p. ); ‘e Literature of
Replenishment’, in e Friday Book, pp. –.
Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing and Other Short Prose (London: Faber and Faber, ),
p. xii. References to this edition are given in the text identified by the abbreviation TFN.
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di pensare per immagini’ (‘shape visions with closed eyes, to create colours
and forms from the alignment of black alphabetical characters written on
white paper, to think through images’). In answer to this dilemma, the author
envisions two possible ways of reaction. Either ‘riciclare immagini usate in
un nuovo contesto che ne cambi il significato’ (‘recycle used images in a new
context that changes their meaning’), something usually done by postmoder-
nist authors, or ‘fare il vuoto per ripartire da zero’ (‘wipe the slate clean and
start from scratch’), a condition which, Calvino maintains, has been reached
precisely by Beckett, who ‘ha ottenuto i risultati più straordinari riducendo
al minimo elementi visuali e linguaggio, come in un mondo dopo la fine del
mondo’ (‘has obtained the most extraordinary results by reducing visual and
linguistic elements to a minimum, as if in a world aer the end of the world’).
Here, using for the second time the same image of a world aer the end of
the world, Calvino seems to put Beckett’s minimalist style into a positive
perspective, casting a new light on the negativity which normally surrounds
the Irish writer. Considering his minimalism not as a way to exhaust literary
creation, but as a possibility for man to start again from scratch and regain
the ability to imagine, Calvino points to the potential of the void created by
Beckett. While his remarks on Beckett are undoubtedly interesting in the light
they cast on the Irish author, it is even more fascinating to notice how similar
observations could be applied to the works that Calvino himself produces in
the same period.
At the beginning of the s, Calvino and Beckett find themselves in a
similar position in their writing careers. Aer each publishing a trilogy of
novels—Calvino’s Il visconte dimezzato (e Cloven Viscount, ), Il barone
rampante (e Baron in the Trees, ), and Il cavaliere inesistente (e Non-
Existent Knight, ); Beckett’s Molloy (), Malone Dies (), and e
Unnamable ()—the two authors reach what appears to be the dead end
of their novelistic discourse. In a letter written in , Beckett confesses to
his friend Jacob Schwartz that he was ‘terrified that he had come to the end
of what was called his career as a writer proper’, owing to his inability to
write another novel. Nevertheless, rather than give up, both authors take this
condition of crisis as a starting-point for the development of a new form and
style of writing. While Calvino asserts that ‘per uno scrittore la situazione di
crisi [è] la sola situazione che dia frutto, che permetta di toccare qualcosa di
vero’ (‘for a writer a condition of crisis [is] the only fruitful situation which
Lezioni americane (Milan: Garzanti, ; repr. Milan: Mondadori, ), pp. – (pp. ,
).
Ibid.
Letter to Jacob Schwartz, February , quoted in Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A
Biography (New York: Touchstone, ), p. .
Una pietra sopra (Turin: Einaudi, ), p. .
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
allows him to touch something truthful’), Beckett considers this situation of
crisis as the basis for creating ‘a new form’. Faithful to these claims, both
of them turn their back on the form of the novel as classically conceived,
and start articulating their fictional writing in the shape of short stories or
concise pieces of prose. e idea of a new start from scratch comes to light
in the works of this period. Written in a ‘genere interamente nuovo’ (‘com-
pletely new genre’), Calvino’s cosmicomic tales have at their basis the desire
to start from scratch. As the author asserts, ‘ognuna delle cosmicomiche la
scrivo pensando che questa è la prima cosa che scrivo, partendo da zero: ed
è questo piacere di ricominciare, la vera molla’ (‘I write each cosmicomic
tale thinking that this is the very first thing I am writing, starting from zero:
it is this pleasure of starting again that embodies the real spur’). Similarly,
Beckett’s residual pieces ‘conform to no one literary model or genre’. e
same can be said of How It Is (), a work that, while still labelled a novel,
hardly looks like one.
Rather than being a creative crisis per se, this difficulty of expression seems
to have its roots in the problematic relation connecting the individual with the
outside world. Interesting to notice, in this respect, is Calvino’s assertion in
that a writer finds himself in a situation of crisis when ‘un dato rapporto
col mondo, sul quale egli ha costruito il suo lavoro, si rivela inadeguato, ed
è necessario trovare un altro rapporto’ (‘a set connection with the world,
on which the author had based his work, becomes inappropriate, and it is
necessary to find a new one’). e Italian writer expresses his concerns more
fully in an essay entitled ‘Il mare dell’oggettività’ (‘e Sea of Objectivity’),
published in and considered as the beginning of what the author defined
as a new age. In this article Calvino conveys his distress at the condition of
the individual in contemporary society, picturing him ‘sommerso dal mare
dell’oggetività, dal flusso ininterrotto di ciò che esiste’ (‘submerged by the sea
of objectivity, by the uninterrupted flux of what exists’). Unable to distinguish
himself from an incessant flow of things, images, and copies of images, which
are not created by him but imposed on him, the individual is gradually losing
any potential to act on the world, to ‘indirizzare il corso delle cose’ (‘direct
the flow of things’). Echoing Calvino’s concerns in slightly different words,
Samuel Beckett, quoted by Tom Driver in ‘Beckett by the Madeleine’, Columbia University
Forum, (); quoted here from V. S. Pritchett, New Statesman, April , in Samuel Beckett:
e Critical Heritage, ed. by Laurence Grawer and Raymond Federman (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, ), pp. – (p. ).
Calvino, Lettere –, p. ( November ).
Ibid., p. ( August ).
Leslie Hill, Beckett’s Fiction: In Different Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
), p. .
‘Dialogo di due scrittori in crisi’, in Una pietra sopra, pp. – (p. ).
‘Il mare dell’oggettività’, in Una pietra sopra, pp. – (p. ).
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Beckett confessed to Tom Driver in that ‘one cannot speak any more of
being, one can speak only of the mess’. As Calvino’s individual is oppressed
by an uncontrollable flux of things, Beckett’s man succumbs to the confusion
and chaos determining the material reality around him. Now that a point has
been reached at which the mess ‘invades our experience at every moment’, it
has become impossible to speak of man in opposition to what is outside. With
humanity almost drowned by this ‘mess’ as Calvino’s subject is drowned by a
sea of objectivity, what is at stake in both cases is man’s ability to assert and ex-
press himself when faced with an uncontrollable ‘flux’ and a recalcitrant ‘mess’.
e relation that the two authors establish with this flux or mess is at the
core of the crisis they face, and of the solutions they develop in reaction to
it. Both the content and the form of the works produced during the s
appear to be shaped in order to respond to this unpleasant condition. On the
level of content, the two authors go back to what can be seen as the origin
of the world, generating bare landscapes where only a few elements are able
to survive. is minimalism allows the authors to focus on the process of
creation of the human consciousness, exploring its abilities to impose itself
and generate new images. Strictly linked to this attempt are the changes in
style which characterize the works of this period. Both authors develop what
can be considered as a minimalist technique, which Calvino names ‘rigore
stilistico reduttivo’ (‘stylistic reductive rigour’). While asserting at first that ‘a
consegnarci più disarmati nel labirinto delle cose’ is precisely ‘l’estremo ridut-
tore della tecnica ai nudi dati visivi’ (‘the reduction of the writing technique to
mere visual data [. . .] delivers us helpless to the labyrinth of things’), Calvino
then wonders whether this particular technique could not be seen as a way
to reassert human consciousness, ‘per essere certi di che cosa veramente la
coscienza è, di qual è il posto che occupiamo nella sterminata distesa delle
cose’ (‘to be sure of what consciousness really is, of where our place is in the
endless multitude of things’). It is along this stylistic route that both authors
move. While employing a minimalist style whose neutrality apparently dis-
cards subjectivity and accommodates the mess and the unstoppable flow of
things, their texts work towards a re-evaluation of human consciousness and
a revitalization of the possibilities that are le to it. As regeneration has to
come face to face with exhaustion in order to be able to flourish, the works of
this period are characterized by a double-edged movement pointing towards
exhaustion to eventually restart anew.
is double-edged movement becomes clear in the ambivalent relation
which these works have with respect to subjectivity. e first impression
Quoted by Driver in ‘Beckett by the Madeleine’; quoted here from Samuel Beckett: e
Critical Heritage, p. .
Ibid., p. .
Calvino, ‘Il mare dell’oggettività’, p. .
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
given by the protagonists of Calvino’s cosmicomic tales and Beckett’s residual
pieces is of an almost total annihilation of the human subject, as the characters
appear as dehumanized voices narrating a story. Devoid of almost all their
physical and psychological features, presented through a ‘linguaggio sperso-
nalizza[to]’ (‘depersonalized language’), ‘lacking its proper subject’, the
voices guiding the narration can hardly be considered as subjects or fictional
characters in the common sense of the term. Nevertheless, this annihilation of
subjectivity is only apparent. In fact, while stripped of their human features,
these voices still express the same doubts and uncertainties proper to any hu-
man subject, struggling with the same process of reasoning and imaginative
creation. Far from eliminating the subject, both Beckett and Calvino go back
to the origin of its formation and coming into being. Appearing as speaking
minds trying to claim a particular space in the universe, the characters in
these texts result in a ‘cartesian cogito pitted against some form of cosmos
in flux’, as Kathryn Hume says of Calvino, or an ‘ego striv[ing] constantly
to match his “microcosmic self ” against the universal structure of being’, as
Frederick John Hoffman suggests of Beckett. For instance, the protagonist
of almost all the cosmicomic tales is a narrative voice called Qfwfq, repre-
senting a man before the creation of man, the potentiality which is at the
origin of man itself. Living in what appears as an image of contemporary
society, but remembering the origin of the universe, Qfwfq can be seen as a
‘coscienza astratta e totale dell’infinito’ (‘abstract and total consciousness’),
as a ‘denominatore comune o monade infinitesimale di vita e di soggettività’
(‘common denominator or infinitesimal monad of life and subjectivity’). In a
similar way, Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit say of Beckett that ‘it is almost
as if he welcomed our unhappily sophisticated sense of all the external and
internal forces that determine our misapprehension of others and of objects
in order to imagine starting again, in order to reconstitute the human as a
monadic consciousness’. While removing any form of subjectivity from their
characters, creating figures which cannot be considered as particular subjects,
both Calvino’s cosmicomic tales and Beckett’s texts go back to the primal
processes of the mind, exploring what is le of its rational and imaginative
functions.
Mario Boselli, ‘Ti con zero o la precarietà del progetto’, Nuova Corrente, (), pp. –
(p. ).
Paul Davies, Ideal Real: Beckett’s Fiction and Imagination (London: Associated University
Presses, ), p. .
Calvino’s Fiction: Cogito and Cosmos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. .
Samuel Beckett: e Man and his Works (London: Forum House, ), p. .
Francesca Bernardini Napoletano, I segni nuovi di Italo Calvino (Rome: Bulzoni, ), p. .
Contardo Calligaris, Italo Calvino (Milan: Mursia, ), p. .
In their introduction to Arts of Impoverishment, ed. by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit
(London: Harvard University Press, ), p. .
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is approach to the subject is only one of the many apparent contra-
dictions which animate the works under analysis. Challenging the classical
binary system of thinking, able to make the positive emerge from the negative
and regeneration spring from reduction, the ‘rigore stilistico riduttivo’ which
both Calvino and Beckett develop is based on such apparent paradoxes. Two
of these paradoxes seem to be particularly important in order to understand
how the works of the two authors are able to reinsert human consciousness
into the flow and mess of things: chaos and order, rationality and imagination.
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
objects. What is le of the protagonist is a mere voice, murmuring in the
mud. ‘e sack the tins the mud the dark the silence the solitude nothing
else for the moment’ (HII, p. ) announces the voice at the beginning of the
novel, defining the few elements which are still present in what appears to
be a minimal and deadly scenario, where very little, almost nothing, is le.
Nevertheless, despite these dreadful conditions, man still manages to exist,
thanks to a voice which is still able to utter words. ‘Escape hiss it’s air of the
little that’s le of the little whereby man continues standing laughing weeping
and speaking his mind’ (HII, p. ), or again, ‘all that almost blank that was
so adorned a few traces that’s all seeing who I always more or less so little so
little there but there little there but there’ (HII, p. ). Standing, laughing,
weeping, and speaking: the primal actions of man can still be performed in
an almost blank world, small actions which the author compares to a ‘little
miracle among so many thanks to which I live on lived on’ (HII, p. ).
Amongst them, the action of speaking plays a pivotal role, as the narrative
voice appears as the origin of the little which is still present.
Owing in part to the lack of pauses, in part to the minimal level of action
or external features to be associated with characters and landscapes, the voice
takes over, making the novel appear as a long act of creation, highly if not
totally reliant on the words it utters. Rather than moving towards another
disintegration of being or annihilation of existence, Beckett starts recreating
a possible universe through an exploration of the potentialities that are still
le to the imagination, in turn expressed by the spoken (and written) words.
As Shira Wolosky points out, ‘Beckett’s gesture towards reduction inevitably
gives way to reproductive and inventive energy’. is energy seems to be
contained in and to explode from that imaginative murmur in the mud which,
according to J. E. Dearlove, ‘explores the fluid universe of the mind and its
imagination’. It is this creative murmuring which starts a work of recreation
from scratch. In fact, with what H. Porter Abbott defines as an ‘action of
linguistic productivity’, Beckett explores the dynamics at the basis of the act
of imagination, reasoning, and communication, going back to the primordial
being slowly creating a world through the use of language. Interesting in this
respect is the training offered by the voice, focusing on the ‘basic stimuli’ that
can be achieved by simple actions:
training continued no point skip
able of basic stimuli one sing nails in armpit two speak blade in arse three stop thump
on skull four louder pestle on kidney
‘e Negative Way Negated’, New Literary History, (), – (p. ).
Accommodating the Chaos: Samuel Beckett’s Nonrelational Art (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, ), p. .
‘Beginning Again’, in e Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett, ed. by John Pilling
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. – (p. ).
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five soer index in anus six bravo clap athwart arse seven lousy same as three eight
encore same as one or two as may be (HII, p. )
rough this bizarre, violent, but nonetheless comic list of commands, the
voice starts attributing a meaning to every simple action that can be per-
formed, opening the way to a minimal schema of signification.
At first glance, Calvino’s cosmicomic universe seems to have very little in
common with Beckett’s sterile dimension. Presenting an eclectic and dynamic
cosmos, spanning different ages of the formation of the universe, Calvino
seems to be light years away from Beckett’s world. Nevertheless, some strik-
ing similarities exist between the two. For instance, most of the cosmicomic
tales present a process of creation from a primordial state of bareness, where
only a few elements are present. Calvino’s initial position is still that of a
void, in which the elements that will characterize the universe are in a process
of formation or evolution. In ‘Quanto scommettiamo’ (‘How Much Shall We
Bet?’) the initial situation is one in which ‘non c’era ancora niente che potesse
far prevedere niente, tranne un po’ di particelle che giravano’ (‘there was
still nothing that could make one foresee anything, apart from a couple of
revolving particles’), while in ‘La spirale’ (‘e Spiral’) Qfwfq imagines him-
self a shapeless mollusc, asserting that ‘forma non ne avevo, cioè non sapevo
d’averne, ossia non sapevo si potesse averne una’ (LC, p. : ‘I had no form,
or rather I didn’t know I had one, or rather I didn’t know it was possible to
have one’). Moreover, Calvino’s cosmos comes into being thanks to an action
of linguistic productivity similar to the one found in Beckett’s text. Particu-
larly representative is the cosmicomic tale entitled ‘La forma dello spazio’
(‘e Form of Space’), which can be considered a clear example of Calvino’s
attempt to create ‘an image of the universe by means of the written word’.
ree characters are falling in parallel lines, two male figures infatuated
with the same female character falling between them. is line summarizes
the content of the story, taking place in a dimension where ‘non c’era sotto
nessuna terra nè nient’altro di solido’ (LC, p. : ‘there was no earth or
anything solid underneath’). e three bodies fall ‘indefinitamente’ (‘indefi-
nitely’), ‘in uno spazio indefinito’ (‘in an undefined space’), or at least that
is the impression they have, since ‘non c’erano prove nemmeno che stessi
veramente cadendo’ (LC, p. : ‘there wasn’t even any proof that I was really
falling’) because of a lack of referentiality. Similarly to How It Is, the speaking
voice leads the reader through this void, gradually creating a fantastic new
dimension from it. As in Beckett’s story, the bareness of the surroundings
Calvino, Le cosmicomiche (Turin: Einaudi, ), p. . Further references to this edition
are given in the text identified by the abbreviation LC.
Italo Calvino, from the back cover of the edition of the Cosmicomiche, quoted in Beno
Weiss, Understanding Italo Calvino (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), p. .
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
is set in opposition to the richness of the speaking voice, which animates
the narration with its conjectures and hypotheses on a possible relationship
between the Tenente Fenimore and Ursula H’x. Little by little, a different
dimension is created, an imaginative world which is as much dependent on
the voice as the realm created in How It Is is based on the murmur in the mud.
is time, the ‘ingombro della materia’ (LC, p. : ‘obstruction of physical
matter’) takes the shape of the words written on the page. e letters of the
text become the space in which the characters start to move freely, jumping
from the ‘v’ to the ‘u’, ‘nascondendoci dietro gli occhielli delle “l” [. . .] della
parola “parallele” ’ (LC, p. : ‘hiding behind the letters “l” [. . .] of the word
“parallel” ’). From a situation in which nothing can be defined, an entire world
is created as the words are written down on the page. e letters which ani-
mate the new dimension envisioned in the texts are drawn from those parallel
lines in which the characters were falling. Curved in different shapes, these
straight lines which ‘non significano altro che loro stesse’ (LC, p. : ‘had no
meaning beyond themselves’) start to assume a meaning beyond themselves,
to symbolize and refer to something ‘other’. In so doing, the indeterminate
precipitation towards an unknown void can be stopped, and new possibilities
can be created for the characters. As in How It Is, a primordial system of
reference and signification is envisioned, developing from an original void
and a situation of almost nothingness. Moving on from this point, it is now
possible to have a closer look at this primordial system, to consider this new
shape outlined by an ‘imaginative murmur’ and ‘righe di scrittura corsiva
tracciata su pagina bianca’ (LC, p. : ‘lines of cursive writing traced on a
white page’).
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
only at a later stage, or not determined at all, the words struggle to establish
and define themselves, and disappear in this incessant flow. Yet, while not
being imposed, a possibility for meaning is not completely denied to the ear
and the mind which are willing to search for one. Quoting the voice once
more, ‘fallen in the mud from our mouths innumerable and ascending to
where there is an ear a mind to understand a means of noting a care for us the
wish to note the curiosity to understand an ear to hear even ill these scraps of
other scraps of an antique rigmarole’ (HII, p. ). Pointing to the negative
to emerge finally in a positive perspective, this coexistence between chaos
and order appears as a first attempt to rescue the cognitive faculties of an
individual that would otherwise sink in the mess and flux of things. rough
the creation of a minimal system which is only sketched and not completed,
the reader’s faculties are asked to participate directly in the completion of this
form. Metaphorically mirroring the situation of man in contemporary society,
the new generative form embodied by the voice accommodates the unreadable
and chaotic mess of the outside world, while simultaneously opening up new
positive possibilities to readers who attempt to fill the missing and unsaid
gaps in the text with new imaginative acts.
Similarly to Beckett, in his cosmicomic tales Calvino envisions a universe
where chaos and order exist as two necessary components of the same image.
Not by chance, one of Calvino’s favourite images is that of the crystal, where
a structure of almost perfect regularity is always undermined by disorder and
imperfection. As Kerstin Pilz asserts, ‘Calvino points to the crystal as an image
that visualises his ideal of writing, which is open towards new epistemological
perspectives inclusive of chance and disorder yet remains centred around his
predilection for order and precision’. Almost reiterating Hubard’s remark on
Beckett’s new form, which for the critic is characterized by a chaotic principle
within the creative process, Pilz’s claim is fictionally embodied in the content
of the cosmicomic tale ‘I cristalli’ (‘Crystals’).
Moving between a contemporary Manhattan and an original past in which
nothing had yet acquired a definite form, Qfwfq starts a phantasmagoric tale
about the formation of the universe, focusing his attention on the mutual in-
terplay between order and disorder. Echoing the voice of How It Is professing
‘something wrong there’, the narrator shows his discontentment with a world
which appears as ‘amorfo, sbriciolato e gommoso’ (‘amorphous, crumbled up,
gummy’), as a ‘pasta di molecole alla rinfusa’ (‘paste of random molecules’).
e perfect order which seems to govern the world, visualized in the orga-
nized grid of streets in Manhattan, is just a disappointing illusion. As Qfwfq
complains, ‘so che mi fanno correre tra lisce pareti trasparenti e tra angoli
Mapping Complexity (Leicester: Troubador, ), p. .
Calvino, Ti con zero (Milan: Mondadori, ), p. . Further references to this edition are
given in the text identified by the abbreviation TCZ.
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
alla ricerca di un senso compiuto’ (‘a semantic body constantly looking
for an absolute meaning opposes itself to the structures’ crystal clarity’). Both
Beckett and Calvino move along this line, developing their narrations through
chaotic movements which contain a skeleton of symmetry, presenting a clarity
and a meaning that can be subverted by any next word.
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
claims, ‘the ill has already been done, the imagination has started working
again, peopling its universe ever so slightly’. While the outside elements of
a recognizable world, ‘islands, waters, azure, verdure’, are all ‘vanished’ (TFN,
p. ), the possibility of creating is not yet completely lost. From the outside
world, the text brings the reader into the enclosed and bare space of ‘the
rotunda’, which appears as the first site created by a not-yet-completely-dead
imagination. Once the ‘all white in the whiteness’ of the rotunda is asserted,
a simple instruction comes from the narrating voice, ‘measure’ (TFN, p. ).
rough a series of exact calculations, ‘diameter three feet, three feet from
ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles AB CD divide
the white ground into two semicircles ACB BDA’ (TFN, p. ), the voice gives
a precise idea of the area created by the imagination, asserting it concretely.
As Brian Finney points out, ‘the most noticeable characteristic of this image
is its concreteness. It is observed, described with the use of architectural and
geometrical terminology, measured, felt.’ What is created in this last, or
first, imaginative act becomes immediately present to the mind in the form of
an intelligible image with clear and defined dimensions. If ‘externally all is as
before and the sight of the little fabric quite as much a matter of chance, its
whiteness merging in the surrounding whiteness’ (TFN, p. ), once inside
the rotunda a minimal possibility for differentiation and recreation becomes
attainable. Not only is the space of the rotunda clearly stated, but the two
bodies contained in it, once more precisely arranged in the space available,
their positions ‘mathematically defined’, can be distinguished from their
surroundings. As Peter Fifield asserts, ‘instead of joining the all-changing
constitution of their abode, becoming part of indefinite being, they [the two
figures] are distinct from it. [. . .] us they emerge as definite beings in an
environment of unpredictable and inhospitable flux.’ Once more, the pos-
sibility for recognition and assertion of a solid body or image is granted by
the presence of a system which is applied ever so slightly, gently fixing the
bodies in space while leaving a high level of indeterminacy and vagueness. As
in How It Is, Beckett creates a world which balances between substance and
void. rough the application of mathematical and geometrical language to
the fictional discourse, the Irish author generates a reduction which presents
the possibility of creating, or rather imagining, a solid and concrete image. In
this respect, Beckett’s ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ appears as a description of
what Mario Porro defines as ‘figurative thought’, functioning ‘according to an
Understanding Samuel Beckett (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), p. .
‘A Reading of Beckett’s “Imagination Dead Imagine” ’, Twentieth-Century Literature,
(), – (p. ).
C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski, e Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove
Press, ), p. .
‘ “Of being—or remaining?”: Beckett and Early Greek Philosophy’, in Beckett/Philosophy, ed.
by Matthew Feldman and Karim Mamdami (Stuttgart: ibidem, ), pp. – (p. ).
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elementary or primitive logic, [. . .] which can be broken into very simple op-
positions: inside and outside, full and empty, light and dark, high and low’.
ese simple oppositions are at the core of life in the rotunda, animated by
constant ‘variations of rise and fall’, by intervals ‘more or less long’ of light and
dark, low and high temperature (TFN, p. ). ey give a shape to what was
in the beginning a mere thought, making imaginable what the imagination
provides in the first place. Stripped of the superfluous, a possibility for life
is envisioned in this defined and yet undetermined space. Moving between
precision and vagueness, the shape of the rotunda is not completely defined,
and its finalization seems to be assigned to the reader, who can fill the white
spaces still revolving around the precise measurements. Without either falling
back into an undetermined flux or dwindling into a sterile thinking moving
towards nothingness, the language of ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ generates
an abstraction which is still able to present an image, facing the reader with
an essentiality appearing as the germ for a new creation rather than as the
leovers of a process of exhaustion.
A story such as ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ presents some striking simi-
larities with some ideas expressed by Calvino around the same period. In
a letter written in , talking about his cosmicomic tales, the author as-
serts that ‘tengo più ai racconti più astratti, ai paradossi geometrici, a quelli
che hanno a che fare con concezioni dello spazio limite delle possibilità
d’immaginazione’ (‘I prefer the more abstract tales, the geometrical para-
doxes, the tales concerning the liminal space of imaginative possibilities’).
Following this idea, which mirrors the process portrayed in Beckett’s text,
Calvino develops a particular kind of imagination, which he defines as ‘im-
maginazione geometrica e un po’ astratta’ (‘geometrical and rather abstract
imagination’). It is in the third section of Ti con zero that this kind of
imagination is most evident. Oen considered the more minimalist texts,
stories such as ‘Ti con zero’, ‘Il guidatore notturno’ (‘e Night Driver’), and
‘L’inseguimento’ (‘e Chase’) are presented as ‘raccont[i] logico-deduttiv[i]’
(‘logical-deductive tales’) causing ‘una freddezza da degré zero che è un valore
che ho cercato di proposito’ (‘a coldness of degré zéro, which is a value that
I purposely looked for’). In a condition similar to the one created by Beckett,
in which all external elements are reduced to the minimum, and where there
seems to be ‘no possible referential stability’, Calvino creates new images
through a rational imagination. Offering ‘playful geometric and mathematical
‘Images and Scientific Knowledge in Calvino’, in Image, Eye and Art in Calvino, ed. by
Birgitte Grundtvig and others (London: Legenda, ), pp. – (p. ).
Lettere –, p. ( April ).
Ibid., p. ( September ).
Ibid., p. ( March ).
David Watson, ‘e Fictional Body’, in Samuel Beckett, ed. by Jennifer Birkett and Kate Ince
(London: Longman, ), pp. – (p. ).
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
dialectics’, these stories can be seen as ‘the creation of an ambience of abstract
reality based on concrete reality’. Particularly interesting is ‘Il guidatore
notturno’. Abandoning the voice of Qfwfq, the story generalizes even more
the identities of the characters, leaving the name of the protagonist unknown
and referring to the other characters simply as Y and Z. e story oscillates
between an ordered scheme and an intricate net of doubts. It is night, a mo-
ment when all forms lose their solidity in the darkness. erefore, the story
requires ‘una lettura più precisa ma semplificata, dato che il buio cancella
tutti i particolari del quadro che potrebbero distrarre e mette in evidenza
solo gli elementi indispensabili’ (TCZ, p. : ‘a more precise but simplified
reading, since darkness erases all the distracting details and highlights only
the indispensable parts’). As in ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’, Calvino’s story
presents a situation of minimal simplicity. e action takes place between A,
where the narrator lives, and B, where Y lives, in ‘un’autostrada a tre corsie’
(‘a three-lane highway’) where ‘il senso dello spazio e del tempo’ (TCZ, p. :
‘the meaning of space and time’) seems to be lost. e outline of the story
is similarly straightforward and geometrical: aer an argument with Y, the
narrator jumps in the car to reach B before his rival Z, whom Y is supposed
to have called aer the quarrel. However, as in Beckett’s text, this geometrical
simplicity does not fall into an infertile minimalism, but offers unexpected
possibilities to the mind. ‘Ora che le possibilità esterne diminuiscono quelle
interne prendono in me il sopravvento, i miei pensieri corrono per conto
loro in un circuito d’alternative e di dubbi che non riesco a disinnescare’
(TCZ, p. : ‘Now that external possibilities diminish, internal possibilities
take over, my thoughts run free in a circuit of alternatives and doubts that
I cannot defuse’). Having no certainties as to whether Y has actually called
Z, or whether Z is driving in the same or the opposite direction, the story
develops as a series of hypotheses and deductions representing the work of
the narrator’s mind. While taking place in an extremely bare setting, the story
opens up to a journey of speculations to which no final answer is given,
maintaining once more a balance between precision and indeterminacy, es-
sentiality and proliferation. As Francesca Serra asserts, ‘la logica in realtà
diventa in questi testi pretesto [. . .] per le più vertiginose catene di ipotesi’
(‘logic becomes in these texts a pretext [. . .] to create incredible chains of
hypothesis’). Moreover, Calvino’s story goes a step further, overtly pointing to
the essential act of communication which can emerge from this imaginative
and geometrical simplicity. In the attempt to reduce itself to ‘comunicazione
essenziale’ (TCZ, p. : ‘essential communication’), the voice in the story
leaves any determinate subjectivity behind, transforming itself into the primal
Weiss, Understanding Italo Calvino, p. .
Calvino (Rome: Salerno, ), p. .
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Regenerative Creation in Calvino and Beckett
to a previous or external existence. As Bernardini Napoletano asserts, ‘il lin-
guaggio dei racconti cosmicomici si pone come un prius rispetto al contenuto
e alle immagini stesse, che non preesistono alla scrittura, ma emergono dalla
costruzione sintattica’ (‘the cosmicomic tales’ language appears as a prius
with respect to the content and the images presented in the tales. erefore,
the content and images do not exist before the writing, but emerge from the
syntactical construction’). Similarly, David Watson points out how Beckett’s
texts ‘become more a performance, a discourse in the process of enunciation,
rather than the closed representation of a pre-given fictional reality’. e
‘immagini parola’ (‘word images’), as Calvino defines them, which spring
from these texts enter into a relation of mutual dependence with the void
that surrounds them. Because of the indeterminacy and uncertainties which
still surround the measurements and deductions, the images presented do not
congeal into one determinate picture with one single meaning. Not only does
the imagination of the writer continue to work, but that of the reader is also
stimulated. Faced with a ‘representation [which] becomes inexhaustible’,
in which both the images created and their meaning are le uncertain, the
reader is asked to become an indispensable part of the accomplishment of the
process of signification. In this way the rational and imaginative functions of
the individual are re-established not just metaphorically, but realistically in
the figure of the reader. In this rational and imaginative game ‘lo scrittore è
un compilatore — meglio, combinatore — di giochi enigmatici la cui portata
liberatoria è solo nell’esercizio di intelligenza che essi impongono al lettore’
(‘the writer is compiler—better, combiner—of enigmatic games whose liberat-
ing value lies in the exercise of intelligence which they impose on the reader’).
It is in this context that Wolfgang Iser’s assertion that ‘negativity mediates
between representation and perception’ acquires its full significance. Not
only are Calvino and Beckett able to reinsert man’s consciousness into a time
in which he seems to be submerged by an incessant flux of things, but they are
also able to point to the true value of the negative from which they start their
endeavour, to show how ‘a un’osservazione attenta, anche il vuoto sembra
contenere le tracce di una nuova realtà materiale’ (‘to a focused observation,
even the void seems to contain traces of a new material reality’).
It is a late cosmicomic tale, ‘Il poco e il niente’ (‘Nothing and Not Much’),
that summarizes the value of the great work of reduction and recreation which
these two masters of the twentieth century have achieved. e text presents
I segni nuovi di Italo Calvino, p. .
‘e Fictional Body’, p. .
Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ), p. .
Calligaris, Italo Calvino, pp. –.
‘e Patterns of Negativity in Beckett’s Prose’, Georgian Review, (), – (p. ).
Bonsaver, Il mondo scritto, p. .
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a situation in which the universe takes its shape from a primordial nothing-
ness, in which most of the characters regret the first condition of ‘nulla’. At
first enthusiastic for the new condition of being, the narrator gradually finds
himself torn between a veneration for the non-being and an attachment to
the forms which emerged from it. e solution seems to be neither in being
nor in non-being but in what the character labels as the ‘poco’. As he asserts:
l’universo, fin tanto che lo si considerava come il colmo della totalità, della pienezza,
non poteva ispirare che banalità e retorica, ma se lo si considerava come fatto di poco,
poca cosa ricolmata ai margini del niente, suscitava una simpatia incoraggiante, o
almeno una benevola curiosità per quel che sarebbe riuscito a fare.
the universe, as long as it was considered filled with its totality and plenitude, could
not inspire anything but banality and rhetoric. But seen as made of little, as a little
thing at the margin of nothingness, it could inspire an encouraging fondness, or at
least a good-natured curiosity, for its potential.
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