1

Dear Mr Ricci,

Here is my CV. I was born in 1923 under a sky in which the radiant Sun and melancholy Saturn were housed in the harmonious Libra. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life in what was in those days a still-verdant San Remo, which contained cosmopolitan eccentrics amid the surly isolation of its rural, practical folk; I was marked for life by both these aspects of the place. Then I moved to industrious and rational Turin, where the risk of going mad is no less than elsewhere (as Nietzsche found out). I arrived at a time when the streets opened out deserted and endless, so few were the cars; to shorten my journeys on foot I would cross the rectilinear streets on long obliques from one angle to the other – a procedure that today is not just impossible but unthinkable – and in this way I would advance marking out invisible hypotenuses between grey right-angled sides. I got to know only barely other famous metropolises, on the Atlantic and Pacific, falling in love with all of them at first sight: I deluded myself into believing that I had understood and possessed some of them, while others remained for ever ungraspable and foreign to me. For many years I suffered from a geographical neurosis: I was unable to stay three consecutive days in one city or place. In the end I chose definitive wife and dwelling in Paris, a city which is surrounded by forests and horn-beams and birches, where I walk with my daughter Abigail, and which in turn surrounds the Bibliothèque Nationale, where I go to consult rare books, using my Reader’s Ticket no. 2516. In this way, prepared for the Worst, and becoming more and more dissatisfied as regards the Best, I am already anticipating the incomparable joys of growing old. That’s all.

Yours sincerely,
Calvino

[From the book Tarocchi (Tarot Cards) (Parma: F. M. Ricci, 1969). At the end of this volume in the ‘I segni dell’uomo’ series there is a biographical note by the author of the text, in the form of a facsimile of an autograph letter to the publisher, Ricci.]

2

Dear Mr Ricci,

Here is my CV. I was born in 1923 under a sky in which the radiant Sun and melancholy Saturn were housed in the harmonious Libra. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life in what was in those days a still-verdant San Remo, where two worlds clashed, one cosmopolitan and eccentric, the other rural and enclosed; I was marked for life by both these aspects of the place. Then I moved to industrious and rational Turin, where the risk of going mad is no less than elsewhere. I arrived at a time when the streets opened out deserted and endless to the pedestrian that I was; to shorten my journeys which consisted of a series of right angles, I would mark out invisible hypotenuses while crossing the grey streets; a way of proceeding that today is not just impossible but unthinkable. Chance led me to cross other famous cities, on the sea and on rivers, on ocean and channel, on lake and on fjord, falling in love with all of them at first sight: some I believed I had understood and possessed, while others remained for ever ungraspable and foreign to me. For many years I suffered from a geographical neurosis: I was unable to stay three consecutive days in one city. Having said that, I could not but marry a foreigner; a foreigner everywhere, who had naturally ended up in the only city which was never foreign to anyone. That is why, dear FMR, we often meet at Orly airport.

As for my books, I regret not having published each one under a different nom de plume: that way I would feel freer to start again from scratch each time, just as I always try to do anyway.

Yours,
Calvino

[From the book Tarots (Parma: F. M. Ricci, 1974). Written in French, unpublished in Italian. When Franco Maria Ricci asked me for an autograph copy in French of my earlier biographical letter, I decided to rewrite the text completely. (Author’s note.)]