Why Read the Classics?

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1999 by Stephen Wade

Italo Calvino. Jonathan Cape. [pounds]16.99. 278 pages. ISBN 0224-03729-3.

It has now become clear that Italo Calvino will prove to be one of this century's major writers. In recent years, his work has been established alongside such pan-European thinkers as Barthes and Eco, particularly in the sense that his interests are polymathic. Calvino is an essayist, a literary theorist, a writer of fiction and, to a large extent, a visionary. Paradoxically, much of the modernity he has explored in his narratives has its roots in the simplicity of folk tales, and his own short fiction has the elemental power of myth and allegory.

In these essays, however, we have a kind of summation of all this, albeit in a piecemeal form. By this I mean that within this large collection of literary essays, Italo Calvino mixes critical judgement with literary history, and reflections on the writer's art with sheer readerly enthusiasm. This powerful mix is the result of his assembling a personal 'canon' of texts, and in that sense some of his choices reflect that idiosyncrasy which all readers have: personal passions, a taste in obscure writers; and, a few absolute favourites which have clearly inspired his own creativity.

In the dimension of personal taste, the leaders are Dickens in Our Mutual Friend, Stendhal and Dante, but there are many more, and after an initial essay which tries to establish what a classic is, the essays range from classical to modern texts, not always in terms of accepted classical status. Some of the writers discussed may even merit being rediscovered.

In fact, Signor Calvino is such a good critic that he sneaks in brief chatty references and even fragments of autobiography before we realise it. The case of Hemingway shows this for instance: 'There was a time for me when - and for many others, those who are more or less my contemporaries - Hemingway was a god.' The essay then proceeds to show Hemingway's appeal as well as his limitations.

The book's title is something of a misnomer in this respect, because the question is tackled directly in the first essay. Then a certain enquiry about the nature of a 'classic' is assumed as the author proceeds to explain the gamut of literary achievement in virtually every prominent form. However, the defining essay does lead to the interesting proposition that 'A classic is a work which persists as background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.' How this is developed I will leave unexplained. The reader will certainly relish Italo Calvino's demanding method of elaborating on a thesis; yet this is not to say that there is no humour. The style is always interesting: allusive, entertainingly digressive and always displaying knowledge easily and without mere show.

In the end, the heart of these essays is the author's ability to locate what is significant for our time and for his own creative sources. There is no better illustration of this than the career of Balzac, surely the professional writer in extremis. In 'The City as Novel in Balzac' we have several perceptions which should guide an aspiring novelist in the dark areas of disenchanted modernity. Balzac has been there already, Signor Calvino claims: 'The myths that will inform both popular and highbrow fiction over a century all surface in Balzac.'

There is also the element of setting in the book: Italo Calvino is adept at placing his texts in their intellectual milieu, and his grasp of social and cultural history is always evident. In the obscure writer, Giammaria Ortes, for instance, we have an example of the author's fascination with obsessive eccentrics: 'It is no accident that Ortes belongs to a theatrical century, and to a theatrical city par excellence' and 'At that time Venice was more than ever the ideal backdrop for eccentrics, for a whole kaleidoscope of characters straight out of Goldoni.'

The book is teeming with such insights, and Italo Calvino's ability to illustrate his particular imaginative quests as both reader and writer cannot fail to win over new adherents of his cause. What is that cause? Arguably, it is the assertion that literature is the most direct way into the joys and ills of a civilisation, and that although elaborate theoretical enquiries may eventually help, there is no substitute for the wonderful reverberations of a 'classic', whether canonical or simply personal.

STEPHEN WADE