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Having Exhausted Every Possibility At The Moment When He Was Coming Full Circle, Antonino Realised That Photographing Photographs Was The Only Course That He Had Left - Or, Rather, The True Course He Had Obscurely Been Seeking All This Time. (last Line Of The Story The Adventure Of A Photographer )

-Italo Calvino

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Having Exhausted Every Possibility

Italo Calvino

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Having Exhausted Every Possibility At The Moment When He Was Coming Full Circle, Antonino Realised That Photographing Photographs Was The Only Course That He Had Left - Or, Rather, The True Course He Had Obscurely Been Seeking All This Time. (last Line Of The Story The Adventure Of A Photographer )

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Whether There Is Such A Thing As Reality, Of Which The Various Levels Are Only Partial Aspects, Or Whether There Are Only Levels, Is Something That Literature Cannot Decide. Literature Recognizes Rather The *reality Of The Levels.*

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There Is Still One Of Which You Never Speak.' Marco Polo Bowed His Head. 'venice,' The Khan Said. Marco Smiled. 'what Else Do You Believe I Have Been Talking To You About?' The Emperor Did Not Turn A Hair. 'and Yet I Have Never Heard You Mention That Name.' And Polo Said: 'every Time I Describe A City I Am Saying Something About Venice.

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Inevitability Of Death

Continuity Of Life

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Having Exhausted Every Possibility At The Moment When He Was Coming Full Circle, Antonino Realised That Photographing Photographs Was The Only Course That He Had Left - Or, Rather, The True Course He Had Obscurely Been Seeking All This Time. (last Line Of The Story The Adventure Of A Photographer )

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Yet, Even Now, Ever Time (often) That I Find That I Don't Understand Something, Then Instinctively, I'm Filled With The Hope That Perhaps This Will Be My Moment Again, Perhaps Once Again I Shall Understand Nothing, I Shall Grasp That Other Knowledge, Found And Lost In An Instant.

I Had Fallen In Love. What I Mean Is: I Had Begun To Recognize, To Isolate The Signs Of One Of Those From The Others, In Fact I Waited For These Signs I Had Begun To Recognize, I Sought Them, Responded To Those Signs I Awaited With Other Signs I Made Myself, Or Rather It Was I Who Aroused Them, These Signs From Her, Which I Answered With Other Signs Of My Own . . .

I Will Start Out This Evening With An Assertion: Fantasy Is A Place Where It Rains.

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You Are About To Begin Reading Italo Calvino's New Novel, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel Every Other Thought. Let The World Around You Fade. Best To Close The Door; The Tv Is Always On In The Next Room. Tell The Others Right Away, "no, I Don't Want To Watch Tv!" Raise Your Voice -- They Won't Hear You Otherwise -- "i'm Reading! I Don't Want To Be Disturbed!" Maybe They Haven't Heard You, With All That Racket; Speak Louder, Yell: "i'm Beginning To Read Italo Calvino's New Novel!" Or If You Prefer, Don't Say Anything: Just Hope They'll Leave You Alone.

When Politicians And Politically Minded People Pay Too Much Attention To Literature, It Is A Bad Sign - A Bad Sign Mostly For Literature. But It Is Also A Bad Sign When They Don't Want To Hear The Word Mentioned.

Traveling, You Realize That Differences Are Lost: Each City Takes To Resembling All Cities, Places Exchange Their Form, Order, Distances, A Shapeless Dust Cloud Invades The Continents.

What He Sought Was Always Something Lying Ahead, And Even If It Was A Matter Of The Past It Was A Past That Changed Gradually As He Advanced On His Journey, Because The Traveller's Past Changes According To The Route He Has Followed: Not The Immediate Past, That Is, To Which Each Day That Goes By Adds A Day, But The More Remote Past. Arriving At Each New City, The Traveller Finds Again A Past Of His That He Did Not Know He Had: The Foreignness Of What You No Longer Are Or No Longer Possess Lies In Wait For You In Foreign, Unpossessed Places.

It Is Only After You Have Come To Know The Surface Of Things ... That You Can Venture To Seek What Is Underneath. But The Surface Of Things Is Inexhaustible.

You Have With You The Book You Were Reading In The Cafe, Which You Are Eager To Continue, So That You Can Then Hand It On To Her, To Communicate Again With Her Through The Channel Dug By Others' Words, Which, As They Are Uttered By An Alien Voice, By The Voice Of That Silent Nobody Made Of Ink And Typographical Spacing, Can Become Yours And Hers, A Language, A Code Between The Two Of You, A Means To Exchange Signals And Recognize Each Other.

The Minute You Start Saying Something, 'ah, How Beautiful! We Must Photograph It!' You Are Already Close To View Of The Person Who Thinks That Everything That Is Not Photographed Is Lost, As If It Had Never Existed, And That Therefore, In Order Really To Live, You Must Photograph As Much As You Can, And To Photograph As Much As You Can You Must Either Live In The Most Photographable Way Possible, Or Else Consider Photographable Every Moment Of Your Life. The First Course Leads To Stupidity; The Second To Madness.

Elsewhere Is A Negative Mirror. The Traveler Recognizes The Little That Is His, Discovering The Much He Has Not Had And Will Never Have.

You Walk For Days Among Trees And Among Stones. Rarely Does The Eye Light On A Thing, And Then Only When It Has Recognized That Thing As The Sign Of Another Thing: A Print In The Sand Indicates The Tiger's Passage; A Marsh Announces A Vein Of Water; The Hibiscus Flower, The End Of Winter. All The Rest Is Silent And Interchangeable; Trees And Stones Are Only What They Are.

The Soul Is Often In The Surface, And The Importance Of 'depth' Is Overestimated.

Cities, Like Dreams, Are Made Of Desires And Fears, Even If The Thread Of Their Discourse Is Secret, Their Rules Are Absurd, Their Perspectives Deceitful, And Everything Conceals Something Else.

The Lives Of Individuals Of The Human Race Form A Constant Plot, In Which Every Attempt To Isolate One Piece Of Living That Has A Meaning Separate From The Rest-for Example, The Meeting Of Two People, Which Will Become Decisive For Both-must Bear In Mind That Each Of The Two Brings With Himself A Texture Of Events, Environments, Other People, And That From The Meeting, In Turn, Other Stories Will Be Derived Which Will Break Off From Their Common Story.

Don't Ask Where The Rest Of This Book Is!" It Is A Shrill Cry That Comes From An Undefined Spot Among The Shelves. "all Books Continue In The Beyond.

Biographical Data, Even Those Recorded In The Public Registers, Are The Most Private Things One Has, And To Declare Them Openly Is Rather Like Facing A Psychoanalyst.

Arriving At Each New City, The Traveler Finds Again A Past Of His That He Did Not Know He Had: The Foreignness Of What You No Longer Are Or No Longer Possess Lies In Wait For You In Foreign, Unpossessed Places.

New York Is Perhaps The Only Place In America Where You Feel At The Centre And Not At The Margins, In The Provinces, So For That Reason I Prefer Its Horror To This Privileged Beauty, Its Enslavement To The Freedoms Which Remain Local And Privileged And Very Particularized, And Which Do Not Represent A Genuine Antithesis.

Photography Has A Meaning Only If It Exhausts All Possible Images.

Your First Book Is The Only One That Matters. Perhaps A Writer Should Write Only That One. That Is The One Moment When You Make The Big Leap; The Opportunity To Express Yourself Is Offered That Once, And You Untie The Knot Within You Then Or Never Again.

You Take Delight Not In A City's Seven Or Seventy Wonders, But In The Answer It Gives To A Question Of Yours.

This Is What I Mean When I Say I Would Like To Swim Against The Stream Of Time: I Would Like To Erase The Consequences Of Certain Events And Restore An Initial Condition. But Every Moment Of My Life Brings With It An Accumulation Of New Facts, And Each Of These New Facts Bring With It Consequences; So The More I Seek To Return To The Zero Moment From Which I Set Out, The Further I Move Away From It. . . .

The Novels That Attract Me Most Are Those That Create An Illusion Of Transparency Around A Knot Of Human Relationships As Obscure, Cruel, And Perverse As Possible.

The More Enlightened Our Houses Are, The More Their Walls Ooze Ghosts.

Novelists Tell That Piece Of Truth Hidden At The Bottom Of Every Lie.

Who Are We, Who Is Each One Of Us, If Not A Combination Of Experiences, Information, Books We Have Read, Things Imagined? Each Life Is An Encyclopedia, A Library, An Inventory Of Objects, A Series Of Styles, And Everything Can Be Constantly Shuffled And Reordered In Every Way Conceivable.

It Is Not The Voice That Commands The Story: It Is The Ear.

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