Wednesday, July 8, 2015

My investment in Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales finally pays off - the key to the door was in the possession of the hairy man

What a wise investment!  I bought Italo Calvino’s gigantic Italian Folktales (1956) for $11.95, going by the back cover.  In today’s dollars, that is $22.92, but now the list price is $25.00.  It’s like I made $2.08 just by storing and moving the book for twenty-six years.  Let’s not look at the discounted Amazon price.

The important thing is that I have finally read it, all two hundred tales, all 713 pages.  It is a great book, comparable in many ways to a Grimm collection, comparable in every way except significance.  The book would not exist without the example of the Grimms, who set off an flurry all over Europe of folklorists tracking down elderly peasant women and transcribing their weird stories before it was too late.

Calvino ransacked every old collection he could find, selecting, combining, and improving as he went along, again following the precedent of the Grimms.  For example: “My personal touches here include the prince’s yellow suit and leggings, the description of the transformation in a flutter of wings, the gossip of the witches who traveled the world over, and a bit of stylistic cunning” (note to tale 18, “The Canary Prince,” p. 719).

One great result of the folklorists’ research was that that many old stories had made their way all over the world, so the reader of any collection of folktales has to have the patience for more versions of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack the Giant Slayer, among many others.  I am on the alert for novelty, for small touches and original oddities.  In Italy, when a king is needed  in a story, he is often the King of Portugal.  In “Ill-Fated Royalty,” more kings are needed – how about the King of Scotland?  “At the bottom of the mountain was a door that led directly into Scotland, and the key to the door was in the possession of the hairy man” (283).  In northern Italian folktales, kings often live next door to each other, observing the household business (and beautiful princesses) in the palace across the street.

The motifs and devices repeat in their own patterns.  It was amusing to read Italian Folktales alongside John Crowley’s Little, Big, which is practically an Aarne-Thompson tale type index disguised as a novel.  A Calvino tale has three sisters who each gives her brother a gift, along with instructions about when to open it; the identical scene pops up in Crowley.  Here is Crowley’s talking fish, there is one of many in Calvino.  All of your favorites are here, assuming you have learned to enjoy folktales.

Calvino was, at the point he compiled and wrote Italian Folktales, working for a publisher in Turin.  The publisher in fact commissioned him to write the book.  Publishing was different back then. He had written several books of fiction, all of interest – I have recently revisited most of them – but his first masterpiece, The Baron in the Trees, would appear in the following year.  Unless Italian Folktales is his first masterpiece.  I will present the evidence for that tomorrow.

A pleasant surprise of Italian Folktales has been to see how much later Calvino is germinating among these old stories.  What luck that he was able to write them.

15 comments:

  1. I have this and I confess it's the only Calvino I've not yet read - maybe the size is putting me off.... However, the fact that you say it's full of Calvino like elements does rather attract me! :)

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  2. The only Calvino you have not read! Impressive. I had read everything in English - except for Italian Folktales - up until, oh, 1996 or so, but since then there have been more books and he has escaped me. I believe a couple more that are new to English are appearing within the next year or so. I assume much of it is minor stuff, along the lines of the Hermit in Paris scrapbook. Minor Calvino is generally pretty interesting.

    Anyway, yes, a good Calvino reader will get a lot out of Italian Folktales. And, yes, it is a dang big book. It required some tenacity.

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  3. Terrific. I saw in the margin that you've been reading this, and I've been eagerly awaiting your post (posts, hopefully) on it. I've carried this thing around for 20+ years too. I plan to get to it starting this year.

    If it's not too many folktales to take in at once, you may be interested in turning now to an almost equally fat book, Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales or Pentamerone (about which I hope to post soon). Basile's work, the first authored collection of fairy tales in Europe, precedes Grimm (who likely ransacked Basile, though as you note above it's fairly clear that versions of these stories had floated all over Europe for quite some time) and is a marvel of weirdness and sparkling language, with a fairly specific Neapolitan slant. I didn't expect to be a great fan of fairy tales, but found myself looking forward every day to reading a couple of these at night.

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  4. Calvino also ransacked Basile! Italian Folktales has a lot of Basile in it, or under it, or behind it.

    Neapolitan slant - this is in a way what I will write about tomorrow. The only thing I have learned about Italian literature.

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  5. I bought this book at a secondhand shop years and years ago but have yet to manage to read even one story. I will read it, I will. And now you have boosted my motivation just a little.

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  6. I had read a tiny bit of the book long ago. Fifty pages, even.

    I will increase your motivation a bit more later today.

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  7. My favorite thing about reading these folk tales (as reading, say, Ovid) was trying to discern their rules as they come out over 700+ pages. When Calvino is the one compiling them, the rules look a little different than they do in Grimm, even though the stories are often substantially the same.

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  8. There is a consistency to the illogic.

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  9. I love folktales but only rarely get round to reading any, which is a shame. I didn't know about this book by Calvino - it sounds really good.

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  10. Anecdotally, I remember seeing copies of this book in more than one professor's office or house, around the time I bought it myself. Maybe it was a popular bookish gift. Anyways, a book with a real reputation.

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  11. This sounds like the perfect book for the bathroom (sorry Italo). What your post most reminded me, though, is how little Calvino I have read. I need to work up a head of steam with my reading and may have to ask for some of your tenacity.

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  12. The average length of a folktale is 3.5 pages. Calvino has no argument with the idea of bathroom books.

    Yes, try some more Calvino, please. The Baron in the Trees, the Cosmicomics stories, if on a winter's night a traveler, and Inivisble Cities are the best, I think (utterly conventional opinions, I also think), but every time I have returned to a more minor book recently I have been impressed.

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  13. Of course almost every book by Calvino is wonderful. But my favorite is Mr. Palomar.

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  14. Calvino's contribution to the fruitful "Mr. _____" genre.

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    1. i have Mr Palomar so may try that next. I've read if on a winter's night and Invisible Cities so will keep an eye open for The Baron in the Trees and Cosmicomics..

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