Who is Italo Calvino in short?

Italo Calvino was one of the greatest writers of the late twentieth century. Certainly he was the most famous: known and translated all over the world, Calvino ended up representing the Italian writer par excellence.

What is Italo Calvino’s thinking?

The motivation for writing is the awareness of having taken part in great events in history and the will to contribute to the moral reconstruction of humanity, tested by the great conflicts.

What is Italo Calvino’s most important work?

You with Zero.
The path of the spider’s nests.
The Halved Viscount.
The Non-Existent Knight.
Marcovaldo. Immediate availability.
The Baron Rampante. Immediate availability.
American Lessons. Immediate availability.
The Invisible Cities. Available in 2-3 days.

Which literary movement does Italo Calvino belong to?

Calvino’s literary debut takes place in the sign of Neorealism, with the short novel The path of the spider’s nests (1947), centered on the experience of the partisan struggle.

When and why did Calvino come up with the idea of writing Cosmicomics?

In 1965 the collection of short stories Le cosmicomiche was released. In this work Italo Calvino combines his scientific interests with his literary ones, united by a basic problem: man’s inexhaustible need to know and understand the world.

What was Neorealism for Calvino?

Italo Calvino, in the 1964 Preface to his debut novel The path of spider’s nests, explains precisely that Neorealism “was not a school, but a set of voices, largely peripheral, a multiple discovery of the different Italies, especially of Italy hitherto most unknown in literature “.

What does Calvino teach us?

Italo Calvino, through his stories, has always taught us to live the greyness of life with levity. An expressive figure of his work and a talisman to take with you in everyday life is precisely lightness, the virtues of which are clarified in American Lessons.

What does Calvino think of the war?

The war had been a collective experience, the Resistance had left an ideal legacy that writers needed to tell. The path of the spider’s nests was born from this “mania”. In an atmosphere of renewed freedom, expressing oneself had become an imperative.

Why is it called Neorealism?

In this period a new artistic and literary movement develops which, due to its tendency to get closer to life and to expose the wounds of society, takes the name of Neorealism.

Who are the fathers of Neorealism?

The major exponents of Neorealism were: Elio Vittorini, Cesare Pavese, Italo Calvino (only in the first period), Carlo Levi, Alberto Moravia, Vasco Pratolini, Primo Levi, Ignazio Silone. They set themselves up as continuers of nineteenth-century Realism, arguing with the narrative already existing in Italy.

What are the main themes of Neorealism?

the Resistance and the partisan struggle, the memories from the concentration camps, the struggle of the marginalized, the post-war social disarray.

What’s after realism?

Decadentism. It begins in France at the end of the 19th century. It was above all the naturalists who defined them with the term “decadent” (that is, without true art or morality).

What is realism in a nutshell?

Realism is based on truth, that is, it tells real daily life events, as they are. The subject of which the realism often tells are the less well-to-do social classes, such as the peasant one, and also deals with their rights.

Who Invented Realism?

Verismo was a literary movement born in Italy between 1875 and 1895 by Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana with the collaboration of other writers.

What is the greatest exponent of realism?

Sicilians are the greatest exponents of realism: Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana and Federico De Roberto; the latter was born in Naples, but lived in Catania, the birthplace of Verga and Capuana.

Why is Pirandello a realist?

Pirandello starts from the dominant realism or naturalism in the second half of the nineteenth century and that he wanted a true work of art, which seemed to be made by nature or made by himself and in which the hand of the author should not be seen.

Who was the first Italian author to theorize realism?

The first Italian author to theorize realism was Luigi Capuana, who theorized the “poetry of truth”.

What is the peculiar element of the Italian literary tradition for Calvino?

Calvino’s intent is precisely to unmask the mechanisms underlying all narratives, thus creating a novel that goes beyond itself, as a reflection on its own nature and configuration.

How does Calvino write?

Calvino’s style is clear and elegant due to his constant search for clarity and simplicity in expressing himself. Even the use of dialectisms to better adapt to the events narrated does not hinder the reading that flows clean and linear in all its simplicity.

Where is Italo Calvino’s tomb located?

Cemetery of Castiglione della Pescaia, Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy

Today everyone knows his works. Because Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a genius: he writes more than almost anyone else and also works as a lawyer, minister and natural scientist. Even during his lifetime, Goethe was idolized for his lines

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: short profile

Name: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nationality: German
Birthday: August 28, 1749, in Frankfurt am Main
Date of death: March 22, 1832, in Weimar
Well-known works: Götz von Berlichingen (1773), Iphigenie auf Tauris (1779), Torquato Tasso (1790), Faust (1808), Elective Affinities (1809)
Best-known quote: “You can also build something beautiful out of stones that are placed in your way.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an important poet and naturalist. He is considered one of the most important creators of German-language poetry.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: A Biography

Goethe, born on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt am Main, is the scion of a rich family. Instead of attending a normal school, several tutors teach him Latin, Greek, history and fencing. He hardly has any friends. Because the boy talks precociously; always and everywhere he wants to command.

However, when Goethe moved to Leipzig and later to Strasbourg to study law, it became clear that there was not always much behind the big mouth: the show-off was plagued by a number of fears. Goethe can see no blood, no wound. He has to do something about it!

So Goethe takes part in anatomy courses and forces himself to look when corpses are cut open. Goethe climbs church towers to overcome his fear of heights. And at night he sneaks through cemeteries – until he no longer has to tremble in the dark.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is in his mid-20s when he starts writing in earnest. In just a few weeks he wrote “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, his first novel, which consists of letters from a man who was unhappily in love. This book is a sensation! It expresses exactly what young people across Europe think and feel. Werther literally becomes fashionable: many people suddenly dress like the character in the novel, wearing yellow pants, a yellow waistcoat, and a blue overcoat. And all over the country the name Goethe is now known.

Even the only 18-year-old Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach took notice of Goethe. He brings the talented poet to court as his advisor! Goethe experienced his wild years in Weimar. He is always on the go with Karl August. They bathe naked in streams and ride through the district at night, sometimes wrapped in sheets: let the simple-minded farmers believe in ghosts!

Goethe’s escape to Italy

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is now a respected statesman. But he quickly got tired of the annoying official duties in Weimar. With nothing but a garment bag and a satchel full of papers, he fled to Italy in the fall of 1786. There he finally wants to write again.

The light, the landscapes, the sea, the ancient buildings and paintings – all overwhelm the traveler. When Goethe started his journey home to Weimar in April 1788, he had two completed plays with him: “Iphigenie auf Tauris” and “Egmont”.

An unusual selfish

After his return, Goethe meets what is perhaps the most important person in his life: Christiane Vulpius, who years later becomes his wife and the mother of his son August. He also meets Friedrich Schiller, who initially finds his fellow poet terrible. Friedrich Schiller says of Goethe: “I think he is an egotist of an unusual degree.”

But the two soon become inseparable friends. Friedrich Schiller and Goethe give each other all the new works to read. And together they later keep the Weimar Court Theater running. When Schiller dies in 1805, Goethe says he not only loses a companion, but “half of my own existence”.

To distract himself, Goethe throws himself into his work: In the play “Faust I”, the main character – like Goethe himself – is looking for happiness. In order to get it, Faust is even willing to sell his soul to the devil! The play premiered in Braunschweig in 1829. Since then it has been performed thousands of times on Germany’s stages. And no high school student can avoid Goethe’s “Faust” today.

The poet himself never experienced any of this. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died in Weimar on March 22, 1832 at the age of 82.

Why is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe so famous?

After a disappointed love, he wrote »The Sorrows of Young Werther« in early 1774. This novel soon made him famous throughout Europe. In addition, he dealt with the Fauststoff and created numerous other works.

Who is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe profile?

Goethe, born on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt am Main, is the scion of a rich family. Instead of attending a normal school, several tutors teach him Latin, Greek, history and fencing. He hardly has any friends.

What kind of person was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?

Goethe was a richly gifted man and blessed with good fortune throughout his life. He was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1749 and grew up in a wealthy family. His father was an educated man who lived his life according to strict principles without learning a real trade.

What did Johann Wolfgang von Goethe write?

Even today, almost 200 years after his death, his dramas, novels and poems are read all over the world. You probably also know a few of his works, such as the multi-part drama “Faust” (1808/1832) or the famous ballad “Erlkönig” (1782). They are regarded as examples of outstanding German literature.

What is Goethe’s most famous poem?

By far the most famous work by Goethe is without a doubt Faust. Goethe worked on this work for 60 years; he had already written the first parts in 1774.

What is typically Goethe?

GOETHE was talented and lucky all her life. He had influential friends, his works were successful and he was popular with women. Despite his restless lifestyle, which was shaped by a lot of travel, he was lucky enough to have a caring wife and a family in CHRISTIANE VULPIUS.

What was Goethe’s writing style like?

In addition to long poems comprising several hundred verses, there are short two-liners, verses with a high level of linguistic and metaphorical complexity, simple sayings, strict and antique metering, song-like or mocking stanzas, and rhyming poems in free rhythms.

What did Goethe want to achieve?

Life as a student. His father decided that Johann Wolfgang should study law in Leipzig and Strasbourg. The young Goethe actually wanted to study history and classical philology (linguistics) in Göttingen, but bowed to his father’s will.

What is happiness Goethe?

Fortune is the goddess of living people, and to truly feel her favor one must live and see people quite vividly striving and quite sensuously enjoying.

What dramas did Goethe write?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is perhaps best known for The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), the first novel of the Sturm und Drang movement, and for Faust (Part I, 1808; Part II, 1832), a play about a man who sells his soul to the Devil that is sometimes considered Germany’s greatest contribution to world literature.

Was Goethe happy?

Weimar, July 24, 1797: Goethe still had 34 years, seven months and 28 days to live, but he had already made his will. He was said to have a happy constitution during his lifetime and especially after his death.

What does Goethe say about love?

“Learn to grow old with a young heart.”

Why did Goethe say more light?

The simplest interpretation is that Goethe said: “Open the second shutter so that more light can come in!” Others, on the other hand, interpret it in a highly philosophical way.

What did Goethe research?

The Scientist Goethe – Anatomy and Color Theory. Goethe was a universal genius with many talents and an industrious and ambitious researcher: he worked in botany, mineralogy, anatomy and physics. His scientific work brought amazing results to light.

There is hardly an Italian with a completed school education who does not know this first verse of the “Divina Commedia” (Divine Comedy), Dante’s main work. Not only because Dante is part of the standard program of Italian schools, but probably also because, in beautifully poetic words, he recalls the less poetic confusion and disorientation of the “mid-life crisis” that everyone probably goes through. But few still know how the Divine Comedy then continues, and in this respect Dante’s work shares the fate of Goethe’s “Faust”, which everyone in Germany knows – by name – but which only a few have read in its entirety.

Admittedly, both – Goethe’s “Faust” and Dante’s “Divine Comedy” – are not exactly easy to digest literature. Both draw extensively and confidently from the theology, philosophy and the sciences of the respective time. Without extensive accompanying commentary, Dante’s monumental work (more than 14,000 verses) is difficult to understand, and the fact that it is written in rhyme and in a chosen and no longer very modern language does not make matters any easier.

But the Divine Comedy is not only famous for its literary quality, it also represents a valuable reflection of the time and made a decisive contribution to the formation of the Italian language. For this latter reason, it has a similar meaning for Italian as Luther’s translation of the Bible has for German.

Today we know quite a lot about Dante’s life, but there are only a few direct sources, most of what is known about him has been derived from other sources, much also from the works of the poet himself. We don’t even know what he looked like us: all his portraits were painted long after he was dead, by artists who had never seen him. That’s why his slightly crooked nose, which one sees in all Dante’s portraits, is possibly just an invention of one painter, whom everyone else then copied.

Dante was born in Florence at the end of May or beginning of June 1265, where today you can also visit his birthplace (see photo above) – more precisely: his presumed birthplace. His family belonged to the wealthy city nobility, which determined and promoted Dante’s political career. The often bloody clashes between the Ghibellines and Guelphs (between the partisans of the emperor and those of the pope), which then tore apart the Italian city republics, were also to be of decisive importance for Dante’s life.

During Dante’s political tenure, events in Florence became increasingly turbulent, and the Ghibellines and Guelphs increasingly fragmented into many feuding factions. On the occasion of a visit by a papal legate, unrest broke out in Florence in the summer of 1300, which led to the excommunication of the city. In order to establish papal sovereignty over Florence and to incorporate Tuscany once and for all into the Papal States, Pope Nicholas IV called on Charles of Valois for military help. On November 1, 1301, Charles entered Florence and Dante’s house was probably destroyed during the acts of revenge of the troops loyal to the Pope. A little later, in January 1302, Dante was sentenced in absentia to a fine and to disqualification from all public offices. Because he stayed away from Florence, he was then condemned, along with other partisans, to be burned at the stake if he returned to the city.

Dante then lived in exile until his death in Ravenna in 1321, staying in many cities in central and northern Italy, most likely at the court of La Scala in Verona, in Treviso with Gerardo da Camina and from 1318 in Ravenna Guido Novello da Polenta. There are very few direct sources for the whereabouts of Dante at that time, so that today numerous towns and small towns in Italy, with more or less plausible explanations, insist that Dante visited at least once.

Dante’s hopes that Henry III, who was crowned Roman-German king in 1309 and then emperor three years later in Rome, could pacify the enemy factions in Italy and thus make his return to Florence possible, were not fulfilled. In 1315 Dante turned down an offer to return to Florence as it was conditional on payment of a fine and a public apology, whereupon the 1302 death sentence against him was renewed. During a stay in Venice in 1321 he fell ill and after returning to Ravenna he died there on September 14 of the same year.

In the centuries following Dante’s death, there were several violent disputes between Ravenna, where he is buried (see photo above) and Florence, which believed the poet’s proper burial place was in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. A monumental tomb was erected there (see the second photo above), but it has remained empty to this day, since Ravenna understandably has no intention of having the famous body taken. Even in Dante year 2021, 700 years after the death of the famous poet, this rivalry can still be felt, no longer fiercely as it used to be, but more subliminal. After all, the anniversary celebrations are also a tourist magnet.

Dante’s “Divina Commedia”, which was written between 1307 and 1321, is the first major poem in the Italian language and is still considered her main work today. Actually, the verse epic is only called “comedy”, the adjective “divine” was later added by Dante admirer Giovanni Boccaccio. Not because the work is about God, but because he found it simply glorious, even more “divine.” Incidentally, the word “comedy” should not be understood in the modern sense of “comedy”, but simply as the opposite of “tragedy”, i.e. a literary invention that does not end with murder and manslaughter, but with a happy ending: the I- In the end, narrator Dante finds nothing less than the meaning of life.

Before he gets there, however, he has to undertake an adventurous journey through the afterlife. Accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil, who serves as his guide, Dante first gets to hell (Inferno), then over the mountain of purification (Purgatorio) and finally to paradise (Paradiso), the high-altitude flight with the beloved childhood friend Beatrice. On the way there he meets hundreds of famous personalities from politics, literature and mythology who are waiting for salvation, with whom he talks and who tell the traveler about their lives. Hell and Paradise are each divided into nine concentric circles. The closer one gets to the narrower circles, the more sinful (in hell) or the holier (in paradise) are the deceased souls. Hell in particular, the most interesting part of the literary journey to the afterlife, is rich in contemporary criticism, which is occasionally quite sharp and is full of allusions to celebrities who were still alive in Dante’s time. The “Divine Comedy” has high ethical standards and holds up a merciless mirror to the reader, the political society and even the church of its time. At the end of his journey, in paradise, the poet finally recognizes the meaning of his existence in the love of God.

Dante worked on this work for 20 years. He wanted to surpass Virgil, the ancient poet, and present a picture of the world as a whole.

As already indicated above, one should not read this work today without a detailed commentary section, otherwise the reader of the 21st century will miss most of what the educated reader of the 14th century could understand without a commentary. And a little knowledge of the history of Dante’s time will certainly help to understand the “Divine Comedy” in all its literary scope today.

What did Dante Alighieri do?

DANTE ALIGHIERI is the most important Italian writer of the Middle Ages. His fame is mainly based on his three-part work “La Divina Commedia” (“The Divine Comedy”) and on his “Rime” on Beatrice “Il canzoniere”.

Who or what is Dante?

Dante is one of the most famous poets of Italian literature and of the European Middle Ages.

Why is Dante important?

Dante is considered the father of the Italian language. But why? In the fourteenth century there were several languages in Italy: the language of culture and literature was Latin, while the people spoke different vernaculars that did not yet form a unified language.

Why does Dante go to hell?

Merging Cicero’s violence with Aristotle’s bestiality and his deceit with malice or vice, Dante the poet was given three main categories of sin, symbolized by the three beasts Dante encounters in Canto I: these are lust, violence/bestiality and fraud/ …

What are the 7 circles of hell?

The really bad people can be found from the seventh circle onwards: violent criminals, suicides, blasphemers, fraudsters, thieves and traitors. Incidentally, all circles are occupied by all sorts of figures from Greco-Roman mythology and contemporary history.

Who ends up in hell?

Depending on the belief, it is thought of as a place of annihilation, purification or eternal damnation of the deceased. According to traditional ideas of Christianity, it is a place of torment where evildoers go after death, populated by demons and the devil.

Who wrote Dante’s Inferno?

Dante Alighieri

Where is Dante’s Inferno hanging?

In the meantime, Botticelli’s drawings had reached Great Britain. Botticelli’s surviving drawings for Dante’s comedy after an odyssey lasting centuries are now in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and in the Vatican Apostolic Library.

What is Dante’s death mask?

The death mask, as the name suggests, appears to be a copy of Dante’s face made after his death, better known as the death mask. According to tradition, it seems to have been later carved after the image on Dante’s tomb, the remains of which are in Ravenna.

Why was Dante banished from House of Florence?

Dante, who found himself on the losing side in the Florentine power struggles of the time, had been accused of activities hostile to the state around 1302. Therefore, the author of the “Divine Comedy” was banned from Florence for two years and sentenced to a fine.

Which of the following statements about dante alighieri is true?

The statement that correctly describes Dante Alighieri is this: The modern Italian language was strongly influenced by his writings.

How long did dante alighieri live?

Dante, in full Dante Alighieri, (born c. May 21–June 20, 1265, Florence [Italy]—died September 13/14, 1321, Ravenna), Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker.