Calvino's Palomar
(Jack Marchment)
Juxtaposed with the tumultuous and violent reality of 1970s Italy, Palomar?s initial arrival into the literary world via the ?Corriere della sera? proved a cause for much debate. Indeed his silent stoicism, his decision to ?mordersi la lingua? rather than act upon his thoughts was as repulsive to the critic Pasolini as his creator, whom he had previously denounced for his ?cult of silence? and inclination towards mere ?descrittivita?. If an artistic device is to be judged on the reaction it provokes, then surely the extended discourse between Calvino and his long-standing rival Pasolini is a testament to the ?interest? of Palomar the protagonist.
For Palomar is something of an anti-Pasolini, the embodiment of silence and the direct antithesis of Pasolini?s endless discourse. Conveying many of the feelings expressed within Calvino?s prior essay ?Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature?, Palomar is rendered ?interesting? for his pertinent and topical position in the socio-political context. Within an era in which journalists and writers found themselves increasingly pressurised to commit to political discourse, Palomar, however much his creator might later have protested, appears entirely opposed to the zeitgeist. In a country coming to terms with the fall of Franco, an errant youth culture and a worrying resurgence of fascism, Palomar is ?interesting? for his very rejection of such topical gravitas. He reads waves rather than newspapers, he talks not of politics but of the universe and he seems able to make the trivial appear potentially life-altering. Most importantly however, the cosmic scale of his philosophies renders Palomar a protagonist capable of reducing the contemporary socio-political situation to a mere transient irrelevance. He embodies, I suggest, not the trite 'impegno' of the neo-realists, but the aerated, disinterested engagement of Calvino's cosmic-realism.
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