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| Italo Calvino (1923-1985) |
"Writers write what they can. The act of writing is a function that
becomes effective only if it allows one to express one’s inner self. A
writer feels several kinds of constraints—literary constraints such as
the number of lines in a sonnet or the rules of classical tragedy. These
are part of the structure of the work within which the personality of
the writer is free to express itself. But then there are social
constraints such as religious, ethical, philosophical, and political
duties. These cannot be imposed directly on the work but must be
filtered through the writer’s inner self. Only if they are part of the
innermost personality of the writer can they find their place in the
work without suffocating it."
Italo Calvino blev 1983 intervjuad av Damien Pettigrew och Gaspard Di Caro. Hela intervjun
finns i Paris Review. Om skrivandets hantverk säger Calvino:
"I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross
out more than I write. I have to hunt for words when I speak, and I have
the same difficulty when writing. Then I make a number of additions,
interpolations, that I write in a very tiny hand. There comes a moment
when I myself can’t read my handwriting, so I use a magnifying glass to
figure out what I’ve written. I have two different handwritings. One is
large with fairly big letters—the os and as have a big
hole in the center. This is the hand I use when I’m copying or when I’m
rather sure of what I’m writing. My other hand corresponds to a less
confident mental state and is very small—the os are like dots. This is very hard to decipher, even for me.
My pages are always covered with canceling lines and revisions. There
was a time when I made a number of handwritten drafts. Now, after the
first draft, written by hand and completely scrawled over, I start
typing it out, deciphering as I go. When I finally reread the
typescript, I discover an entirely different text that I often revise
further. Then I make more corrections. On each page I try first to make
my corrections with a typewriter; I then correct some more by hand.
Often the page becomes so unreadable that I type it over a second time. I
envy those writers who can proceed without correcting."
