The essays collected in this volume for the first time were published in the sources listed below. The asterisk (*) indicates that the title is the one used by the author; whereas words in bold print are the bibliographical notes that Calvino himself had prepared with a view to the eventual publication of some of his essays.
‘Why Read the Classics?’ (*), L’Espresso, 28.6.1981.
‘The Odysseys within The Odyssey’ (*), partially published in la Repubblica, 21.10.1981. Later in Risalire il Nilo. Mito fiaba allegoria, ed. Ferruccio Masini and Giulio Schiavoni (Palermo: Sellerio, 1983).
Xenophon, Anabasis, introduction to the BUR (Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli) edition (Milan: Rizzoli, 1978).
‘Ovid and Universal Contiguity’ (*), Preface to an edition of the Metamorphoses, 1979. The only changes Calvino made to this preface written for the Einaudi edition are the change of title, and the addition of the paragraph on p.33, beginning ‘This technique of metamorphosis’ and ending ‘straightening, joining, separating etc.)’.
(Pliny), ‘The Sky, Man, the Elephant’ (*), preface to Pliny, Storia naturale (Turin: Einaudi, 1982).
‘Nezami’s Seven Princesses’ (*), la Repubblica, 8.4.1982.
‘Tirant lo Blanc’, in Tesoros de España, published by the spanish Ministry of Culture for the Exhibition, ‘Ten Centuries of Spanish Books’, in the New York Public Library, 1985.
(Ludovico Ariosto), ‘The Structure of the Orlando Furioso’(*). Text written for the radio, in 1974, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of Ludovico Ariosto’s birth, broadcast on 5.1.1975. Calvino modified the title which had been used when the text was published in Terzoprogramma, 2–3 (1974).
(Ludovico Ariosto), ‘Brief Anthology of Octaves’ (*), La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 79:1–2 (January-August 1975).
‘Gerolamo Cardano’, written on the fourth centenary of the death of Gerolamo Cardano, physician and mathematician, Corriere della sera, 21.9.76.
‘The Book of Nature in Galileo’ (*), written in French, under the title ‘Exigences et perspectives de la sémiotique’, for Recueil d’hommages pour A.J. Greimas (Amsterdam-Philadelphia, 1985). Translated into Italian by Carlo Fruttero.
‘Cyrano on the Moon’ (*), la Repubblica, 24.12.1982.
(Daniel Defoe), ‘Robinson Crusoe, Journal of Mercantile Virtues’ (*), in Libri del tempo (Turin: Aurora Zanichelli, 1957).
(Voltaire), ‘Candide or Concerning Narrative Rapidity’ (*). Preface to an Italian edition of Voltaire’s Candide with illustrations by Klee, BUR (Milan: Rizzoli, 1974).
‘Denis Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste’, la Repubblica, 25.6.1984.
‘Giammaria Ortes’, introduction to Calcolo sopra la verità della storia e altri scritti (Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1984).
‘Knowledge as Dust-cloud in Stendhal’ (*), in Stendhal e Milano. Atti del 14° Congresso Internazionale Stendhaliano (Florence: Olschki, 1982), where it appeared under the title ‘La conoscenza della Via Lattea (Knowledge of the Milky Way)’.
‘Guide for New Readers of Stendhal’s Charterhouse’(*), la Repubblica, 8.9.1982.
‘The City as Novel in Balzac’ (*). Preface to a translation of Ferragus, written for the Centopagine series (Turin: Einaudi, 1981).
‘Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend’, la Repubblica, 11.11.1982.
‘Gustave Flaubert, Trois Contes’, la Repubblica, 8.5.1980.
‘Leo Tolstoy, Two Hussars’, preface written for the Centopagine series (Turin: Einaudi, 1973).
‘Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’, preface written for the Centopagine series (Turin: Einaudi, 1972).
‘Henry James, Daisy Miller’, preface written for the Centopagine series (Turin: Einaudi, 1971).
‘Robert Louis Stevenson, The Pavilion on the Links’, preface written for the Centopagine series (Turin: Einaudi, 1973).
‘Conrad’s Captains’ (*), on the thirtieth anniversary of Conrad’s death, l’Unità, 3.8.1954.
‘Pasternak and the Revolution’ (*), Passato e presente, 3 (June 1958).
(Carlo Emilio Gadda), ‘The World is an Artichoke’ (*). Speech delivered at a meeting of the Premio Internazionale degli Editori (International Publishers’ Prize), in Corfù, 29 April–3 May 1963, supporting the (eventually successful) candidacy of C. E. Gadda. Translated from the French original. Unpublished.
‘Carlo Emilio Gadda, the Pasticciaccio’. Gadda’s American publisher asked Calvino to write this introduction to introduce the novel to the new reading public of the paperback edition. Partially published in la Repubblica, 16.4.1984. Here we give the full edition.
‘Eugenio Montale, Forse un mattino andando’, in Letture montaliane in occasione dell’80° compleanno del poeta (Genoa: Bozzi, 1977). Partially published in Corriere della sera, 12.10.1976.
‘Montale’s Cliff’, (*), in memory of Eugenio Montale, la Repubblica, 15.9.1981.
‘Hemingway and Ourselves’ (*), Il Contemporaneo, I:33 (13.11.1954).
‘Francis Ponge’, written on the occasion of the poet’s 80th birthday, Corriere della sera, 29.7.1979.
‘Jorge Luis Borges’, speech delivered at the Italian Ministry of Education on the occasion of a visit by the Argentinian writer, partially published in la Repubblica, 16.10.1984.
‘The Philosophy of Raymond Queneau’ (*). Preface to an Italian edition of Bâtons, chiffres et lettres and of other essays by Raymond Queneau (Turin: Einaudi, 1981).
‘Pavese and Human Sacrifice’ (*), Revue des Études Italiennes, 2 (1966).