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.
Italo CalvinoRead
There is no language without deceit.
Interpretation
Language inherently involves some level of deception or manipulation.
Italo Calvino's quote suggests that language is not just a tool for communication, but also a means of influencing perceptions and realities. This idea highlights the complex relationship between words and truth, as the act of expressing thoughts can often mask or distort the underlying meanings, leading to a world where deceit is woven into the fabric of our conversations.
In practice
In a discussion about literature, this quote can illustrate how authors manipulate language to create deeper meanings.
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.
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.
...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you canβt make anything.
Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others - all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.
I'm not interested in using my father's death as some touch point for why I've become an actor - it's grossly opportunistic.
[I]t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.
The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.
I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian.
I came to realize clearly that the mind is no other than the Mountain and the Rivers and the great wide Earth, the Sun and the Moon and the Skyβ.
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