wonderfilled, and beautiful in every way
Rating:
5 / 5
I mail-ordered this book, and when I unwrapped it I was so struck by its beauty that I felt guilty. It reads just as it looks, Calvino being the perfect fairy-tale teller. For fairy tale collectors, this book holds more treats, too, for there are tales that you will recognise as being not only Italian. It is both the perfect book to treasure for oneself, and to give as a very special present.
Italian Folktales
Rating:
5 / 5
I love this book.Some of the stories are exactly the same yet told in very different ways. Everything is here, humour, sadness, religion, fear, the animal world, the spiritual world, brutality, witchcraft, the will to survive and the list goes on. I bought my two weeks ago, but it looks like I've had it for two years.
Italo Calvino's Labor of Love
Rating:
5 / 5
I haven't been a particular fan of folk tales in the years that have passed since more or less my tenth birthday, but it's hard not to adore this charming, magical, and fantastic collection of traditional Italian stories as recounted by master storyteller and author Italo Calvino.In the book's introduction, Mr. Calvino seems to regard his production of this almost 800-page volume as a sort of obligation. But in reading its pages, it's clear that it was really a labor of love, a massive project undertaken by an already established writer who had no need to produce something so unusual and challenging in order to help his own reputation. But we are clearly better off because of he did produce it. Inside are exactly 200 precious stories, parables, fables, and good old fashioned yarns -- all of them plucked from the Italian folk tradition, dusted off, and improved by Mr. Calvino. I admit that "improved" is not a word I'd usually want to read in regard to a modern production of classic literature, but from the bits and pieces I know from experience, improvement was needed: many of the tales were originally published based on cobbled together version of traditional oral stories with partially-developed sub-plots and characters whose names or motives change partway through the story. I have seen the original Italian versions of at least three of the stories between this book's covers -- Fra Ignazio, Rosemary, and the Peacock Feather -- and was thoroughly confounded by the original, only to be charmed later by Mr. Calvino's cleaner and more thoughtful retellings. It is important to remember that the Italian literary tradition dates further back in a direct line than any other in Western Europe: many of these tales were originally written in Italian long before the language evolved beyond being anything more than a vulgar street slang and when only Latin and Greek was spoken in the drawing rooms of literate Italians. And yet it wasn't until 1956 and Mr. Calvino's self-described obligation that more than a couple dozen or so of these wonderful stories was gathered in a single volume. Hats off also to George Martin, Mr. Calvino's translator, surprisingly enough, for only this book. Mr. Martin does a terrific job of preserving Mr. Calvino's cadence and subtle linguistic flare, and he does it while staying away from the temptation of translating too literally, a flaw that has a hold on many less talented translators.
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