Come leggere un'onda

La descrizione calviniana e l'utopia del metodo

Abstract

The article proposes an analysis of Lettura di un'onda, the opening text of Palomar by Italo Calvino (1983).  The aim is to show how, even in the face of a very effective literary representation of the sensitive experience, the question of method progressively takes over, denouncing the main epistemological problems of description. The article starts from the analysis of the passage, read as a paradigmatic example of the whole book. Through the analytical reading of the text, conducted also taking into account some variants of the author, the aim is to show how the ideal of descriptive accuracy tries to take shape on the written page, focusing especially on the analysis of some corrections within the text. Finally, through a comparison with the author's non-fiction production, we show how Calvino's writing, declined in the different forms of description, narration and meditation, tries to avoid the failure of knowledge, trying to represent the complexity and mutability of reality.