Italo Calvino: the First Geographer of the New Millennium

Abstract

The contribution sets out to capture the aspects that aroused interest more than others in a geographical context in the vast and multifaceted literary production of Italo Calvino, whose centenary was celebrated in 2023. In fact, the encyclopaedical nature of his work led him to write valuable texts in which non-fiction – addressed to everyone along with diversified scientific knowledge (geographers included) – and storytelling successfully mingle together. The criteria and processes for the interpretation, observation and story of the world applied by Calvino, show a clear originality deriving from an evocative combination of rationality (science) and imagination (poetry), from the wealth of his visions of space, linked not only to actual experiences, but also to elaborations of incomparable imagination. This paper looks at the concept of landscape, the relationship between society and nature and the sense of living in the city. Still today, the Ligurian writer can propose suggestions and means to the community of geographers whereby to navigate today’s spatial-temporal coordinates, offering precious in-depth opportunities to describe and interpret the complexity of the world.