''If on a winter's night a traveler'' ( it, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore) is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...
. The
postmodernist narrative, in the form of a
frame story
A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent.
Frame and FRAME may also refer to:
Physical objects
In building construction
* Framing ( ...
, is about the reader trying to read a book called ''If on a winter's night a traveler''. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book he or she is reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by
William Weaver
William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conq ...
in 1981.
Structure
The book begins with a chapter on the art and nature of
reading
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch.
For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...
, and is subsequently divided into twenty-two passages. The odd-numbered passages and the final passage are narrated in the second person. That is, they concern events purportedly happening to the novel's reader. (Some contain further discussions about whether the person narrated as "you" is the same as the "you" who is actually reading.) These chapters concern the reader's adventures in reading Italo Calvino's novel, ''If on a winter's night a traveler.'' Eventually the reader meets a woman named Ludmilla, who is also addressed in her own chapter, separately, and also in the second person.
Alternating between
second-person narrative
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the a ...
chapters of this story are the remaining (even) passages, each of which is a first chapter in ten different novels, of widely varying style, genre, and subject-matter. All are broken off, for various reasons explained in the interspersed passages, most of them at some moment of plot climax.
The second-person narrative passages develop into a fairly cohesive novel that puts its two protagonists on the track of an international book-fraud conspiracy, a mischievous translator, a reclusive novelist, a collapsing publishing house, and several repressive governments.
The chapters, which are the first chapters of different books, all push the narrative chapters along. Themes which are introduced in each of the first chapters will then exist in succeeding narrative chapters. For example, after reading the first chapter of a detective novel, the narrative story takes on a few common detective-style themes. There are also phrases and descriptions that are similar between the narrative and the new stories.
When the titles of the fragmentary fictions are read in order—as they are by a character near the end of the narrative—they form a sentence: ''"If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave— What story down there awaits its end?—he asks, anxious to hear the story."''
The theme of a writer's objectivity appears also in Calvino's novel ''
Mr. Palomar'', which explores if absolute objectivity is possible, or even agreeable. Other themes include the subjectivity of meaning, the relationship between fiction and life, what makes an ideal reader and author, and authorial originality.
Cimmeria
Cimmeria is a fictional country in the novel. The country is described as having existed as an independent state between
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
and
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. The capital is Örkko, and its principal resources are peat and by-products, bituminous compounds. Cimmeria seems to have been located somewhere on the
Gulf of Bothnia, a body of water between
Sweden to the west and
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...
to the east. The country has since been absorbed, and its people and language, of the 'Bothno-Ugaric' group, have both disappeared. As Calvino concludes the alleged, fictional encyclopedia entry concerning Cimmeria: "In successive territorial divisions between her powerful neighbors the young nation was soon erased from the map; the autochthonous (native) population was dispersed; Cimmerian language and culture had no development".
The pair of chapters following the two on Cimmeria and its literature are followed by one describing another fictional country called the Cimbrian People's Republic, which allegedly absorbed Cimmeria after World War II.
Characters
The main character in the first part of each chapter is you, the reader. The narrative starts out when you begin reading a book but then all of the pages are out of order. You then go to a bookstore to get a new copy of the book. When at the bookstore, you meet a girl, Ludmilla, who becomes an important character in the book. You think Ludmilla is beautiful, and you both share a love of books. Throughout the rest of the narrative, you and Ludmilla develop a relationship while on the quest for the rest of the book you had started reading. There are a number of minor characters that appear at various points in the story including Lotaria (Ludmilla's sister), Ermes Marana (a translation scammer), and Silas Flannery (an author).
Influences
In a 1985 interview with Gregory Lucente, Calvino stated ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' was "clearly" influenced by the writings of
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...
. The book was also influenced by the author's membership in the literary group
Oulipo
Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...
.
[Calvino, Italo. ''Comment j'ai écrit un de mes Livres'', Bibliothèque oulipienne; cited in Paul Fournel's preface to the French translation of the book, Éditions du Seuil] The structure of the text is said to be an adaptation of the structural semiology of
A.J. Greimas
Algirdas Julien Greimas (; born ''Algirdas Julius Greimas''; 9 March 1917 – 27 February 1992) was a Lithuanian literary scientist who wrote most of his body of work in French while living in France. Greimas is known among other things for th ...
.
In a letter written to critic Lucio Lombardo Radice dated November 13, 1979 (published in ''Italo Calvino: letters, 1941–1985''), Calvino mentions
Mikhail Bulgakov,
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal a ...
,
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. The tone and subject matter of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle port ...
,
Juan Rulfo,
José María Arguedas,
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
and
G.K. Chesterton as having influenced, in various ways, the narrative style of the ten stories that comprise the book.
Legacy and opinion
Dave Langford reviewed ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' for ''
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
'' #45, and stated that "a splendidly batty book about books.
..Offbeat and fun."
''
The Telegraph'' included the novel in 69th place in a list of "100 novels everyone should read" in 2009, describing it as a "playful postmodernist puzzle".
Author
David Mitchell described himself as being "magnetised" by the book from its start when he read it as an undergraduate, but on rereading it, felt it had aged and that he did not find it "breathtakingly inventive" as he had the first time, yet does stress that "however breathtakingly inventive a book is, it is only breathtakingly inventive once" – with once being better than never.
Novelist and lecturer
Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomas (born 5 July 1972 in Hammersmith) is an English author who writes contemporary postmodern fiction. She has published ten novels, including ''The End of Mr. Y'' and ''PopCo'', as well as the ''Worldquake'' series of children's bo ...
uses it to teach innovative contemporary fiction, as an example of different kinds of narrative techniques.
Sting named his 2009 album ''
If on a Winter's Night...'' after the book.
English musician and composer
Bill Ryder-Jones released the album ''If...'' on 14 November 2011. The album is a musical adaptation of the book and serves as an "imaginary film score".
The 2021 video game ''If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers'' was named after the book.
See also
*
Aarati Kanekar
*
Cimmerians
The Cimmerians (Akkadian: , romanized: ; Hebrew: , romanized: ; Ancient Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ) were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people originating in the Caspian steppe, part of whom subsequently migrated into W ...
* ''
One Thousand and One Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
''
* ''
Pale Fire
''Pale Fire'' is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic col ...
''
* "
Pierre Menard, Author of the ''Quixote''"
*
Self-reference
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philos ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:If on a winter's night a traveler
1979 novels
Novels by Italo Calvino
Metafictional novels
Self-reflexive novels
Novels about novels
Postmodern novels
20th-century Italian novels
Second-person narrative novels
Frame stories
Oulipian works
Giulio Einaudi Editore books