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
I am a prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the constraints of the present moment, suggesting that society has reached a critical point where future possibilities are uncertain.
Italo Calvino's quote captures the feeling of being trapped in a present that is overwhelming and extravagant yet devoid of genuine livability. He suggests that human society has peaked, reaching an extreme in its development, and now stands at a crossroads where envisioning future possibilities feels nearly impossible. This acknowledgment of stagnation or excess calls for a deeper reflection on the nature of progress and the potential for transformation in society.
Themes
PresentSocietyChangeFuturePossibilityCycle
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about societal change during a lecture on modern philosophy.
More from Italo Calvino
All quotes →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.
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...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.
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Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
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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.
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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 can’t make anything.
Italo CalvinoRead
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