Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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Cacciari, Massimo
b. 5 June 1944, Venice
Philosopher and politician
A disciple of architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri, Cacciari came to occupy the chair
of Aesthetics at the University of Venice. One of Italy’s most influential social
philosophers associated with the critical trend known as pensiero debole (negative
thought), Cacciari’s philosophy should be placed within the milieu of the political
activism of the 1960s in which, as a member of the Italian Communist Party (see PCI),
he participated vigorously He served as a Communist deputy in Parliament from 1979 to
1984, and was then briefly associated with the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS).
The concept of ‘crisis’ informs Cacciari’s work, and he argues that although crisis is
fundamental to capitalist development, it may also be made to function for the working
class. He wrote extensively on the relation between philosophy and modern architecture
in Architecture and Nihilism (1993) and in Dallo Steinhoff (Posthumous People) (1980)
on the concentration of intellectual and philosophical activity in Vienna at the end of the
nineteenth century. His Dell’inizio (On the Beginning) (1990) is a mystical and religious
meditation inspired by Heidegger, blending together mystical and Marxist elements
reminiscent of one of Cacciari’s favourite authors, Walter Benjamin. Cacciari was elected
mayor of Venice of 1993, and re-elected in 1997.
LAURENCE SIMMONS
Calasso, Roberto
b. 1941, Florence
Writer, essayist and chief editor
A graduate in English literature from the University of Rome, Roberto Calasso has
published various articles on philosophy and literature, important translations of
Nietzsche and Karl Kraus and three essay-novels, La rovina di Kasch (The Ruins of
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Kasch) (1983) and Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia (The Marriage of Cadmus and
Harmony) (1988) and Ka (1996) which have been critically acclaimed both in Italy and
abroad. In his creative writing, Calasso challenges his reader to undertake a highly
intellectual, philosophical and spiritual journey through time. His narrative originates
from and develops the notion of storytelling as a strategy for tracking history to its
mythical beginnings. Calasso has also been for many years the chief editor of the
prestigious Milanese publishing house, Adelphi.
FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI
Calvesi, Maurizio
b. 18 September 1927, Rome
Art historian and critic
A student of Lionello Venturi and a supporter of Carlo Argan, Calvesi has attempted to
explore the links between art and social history, and the relationship between past and
present.
After an early career as an arts administrator and then a teacher, Galvesi was
appointed to the University of Rome in 1976. In the 1980s and 1990s he held positions
with the Venice Biennale. He has also been art critic for L’Espresso and Il Corriere
delta sera, and has curated numerous exhibitions of historical and modern art.
Like many other eminent Italian art historians, Galvesi has published books and
catalogue articles on a multitude of subjects, including Dürer, Giorgione, Michelangelo,
Francesco Colonna, the Carracci, Titian, Correggio, Futurism, Dada, Duchamp, de
Chirico, the avantgarde, Renato Guttuso, Alberto Burri and Pop Art, crowned by the
inevitable monograph on Garavaggio. Of particular note is his work on L’Informale,
which, he insists, had peculiar characteristics in Italy because of the late development of
the avantgarde.
See also: art criticism
Further reading
Galvesi, Maurizio (1981) Le due avanguardie. Dal futurismo alla Pop Art (The Two Avantgardes:
From Futurism to Pop Art), Bari: Laterza.
——(1990) Le realtà del Caravaggio (The Reality of Caravaggio), Turin: Einaudi.
MAX STAPLES
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Calvino, Italo
b. 15 October 1923, Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba; d. 19 September 1985, Siena
Novelist, essayist and critic
Widely regarded as the greatest Italian fiction writer of the second half of the twentieth-
century, Galvino’s reputation and popularity in Italy was matched by wide international
renown, with his work appearing extensively in translation and exercising a strong
influence over the so-called ‘postmodern’ and ‘magic realist’ schools in both the USA
and the UK.
Born in Cuba while his parents were on scientific field work there, Calvino returned
with his family to Italy in 1925 to live in the northern town of San Remo on the Ligurian
Riviera. The family background in science—his father was a noted agronomist, his
mother a botanist and his maternal uncle and aunt both chemists—would leave its mark
on Calvino’s fiction, not least in his fascination with organizing principles and with the
processes of close observation.
Between 1943 and 1945 he took part in the Resistance movement, fighting with the
partizans in the area around San Remo. He was captured and briefly imprisoned by the
Fascists, but managed to escape and take refuge in the Alps with Communist groups. In
1945 he joined the PCI and continued to be an active member of the party until the
Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, after which he resigned.
Having begun his university studies in Turin in 1941, originally following in his
father’s footsteps by enrolling in agronomy, he eventually graduated in letters in 1947
with a dissertation on the work of Joseph Conrad. In the same year he joined the Einaudi
publishing house, for which he would continue to work in various editorial and advisory
capacities for most of his professional life. At Einaudi, Calvino soon became part of a
close-knit group of writers and intellectuals around Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini,
with whom Calvino collaborated on a number of literary and cultural magazines
including the short-lived but highly influential Il Politecnico and, in the late 1950s, il
menabò. Later, Calvino himself edited a major collection of Pavese’s letters in 1966 and
wrote a critical study on Vittorini in 1968.
A productive year, 1947 also saw the publication of Calvino’s first novel, Il sentiero
dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest of Spiders). Already displaying the poetically
precise but nimble style that would characterize all his subsequent writing, the novel
recounted Calvino’s own experiences of the war through the eyes of a street-urchin
named Pin, continually transforming what had been real events into elements of a
fabulous adventure story. The novel nevertheless also strove to conform to the aesthetic
and political tenets of neorealism which dominated literature and cinema during this
period (see also narrative). Reviewed favourably by Pavese, who declared it the work of
one of Italy’s most promising novelists, Il sentiero was awarded the Riccione Prize.
While continuing his political miltancy and contributing articles to L’Unità and
Rinascita, Calvino next published Ultimo viene il corvo (Adam, One Afternoon) (1949),
a collection of short stories written in a realist mode, again centred on wartime
experiences. During the 1950s, however, the tendency towards fable and fantasy in his
fictional writing became more pronounced. Of major importance, and marking a decisive
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break with the realist genre, was the trilogy I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors) (1960),
which brought together Il cavaliere inesistente (The Non-Existent Knight) (1952), Il
visconte dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount) (1957) and Il barone rampante (The Baron in
the Trees) (1959), three parables that unashamedly used fable and fantasy in order to
explore profound ethical and philosophical questions. With this group of works, Calvino
confirmed his commitment to the fairy tale and to non-realist writing, a commitment
already made manifest by his magnificent collection of folk tales and fables, Fiabe
italiane (1956) (partially translated into English as Italian Fables in 1959 and then in a
fuller version as Italian Folktales in 1975). This fantastic/fabulative trend culminated in
the later 1960s with Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics) (1965) and Ti con zero (T Zero)
(1967), collections of short stories which effortlessly mix fable and science fiction in
order to explore modern cosmological notions and molecular aspects of the physical
universe.
During the 1970s, Calvino’s fascination with the actual processes of fabulation—the
making of stories—produced several outstanding international successes. These highly
structured fictions, which insistently foreground the very process of narrative
construction, remain among his most important works: Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities)
(1972); Il castello dei destini incrociati (The Castle of Crossed Destinies) (1969/73),
which uses readings of a deck of tarot cards as a structural narrative principle; and,
arguably his single most famous and important novel, Se una notte d’inverno un
viaggiatore (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller) (1979), a highly self-reflexive work that
fictionally presents itself as the incompletely-bound set of ten different chapters from ten
other (fictional) novels. Immediately translated into numerous other languages, If on a
Winter’s Night a Traveller deservedly became a runaway bestseller and reconfirmed
Calvino’s international standing. His last major work proved to be the less spectacular but
nevertheless brilliant Palomar (Mr Palomar) (1983), a work which succeeds in fusing all
his concerns with narrative and observation into a study of the nature of knowledge.
From the late 1960s onwards, Calvino lived in Paris where he associated with
intellectuals such as Roland Barthes and French experimental writers such as Raymond
Queneau and Georges Perec, both members of the famed Oulipo group (L’Ouvoir de
Littérature Potentielle (Workshop of Potential Literature)). By the time he returned to
live in Rome in 1980, Calvino’s national and international status had been amply
recognized through such awards as the Asti Prize (1972), the Premio Feltrinelli (1973),
honorary membership of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1975)
and the Oesterrischiches Staatspreis für Europeische Literatur (1976).
A prolific writer of essays, criticism and other occasional pieces, Calvino also
collected his nonfictional writings in a number of volumes, the most important being Una
pietra sopra (The Uses of Literature) (1980). At the time of his death in 1985 he was
preparing to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard, the unfinished text of
which was published as Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988). As the American
writer Robert Coover suggested, in his extended review of the Memos in the New York
Times Book Review (20 March 1988), Calvino’s limpid musings in these pages on the art
of imaginative fiction are really a profound reflection by the master himself on what was
best in his own work.
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Further reading
Brink, A. (1998) The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino, London:
Macmillan (places Calvino in a long tradition of European literature and devotes its last chapter
to If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller).
Calvino, I. (1988) Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carter, A.H. (1987) Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy, Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research
Press (a detailed study of Calvino’s use of fantasy for serious intellectual exploration).
Hume, K. (1992) Calvino’s Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos, Oxford: Clarendon Press (a
comprehensive monograph devoted to the major works).
Nash, C. (1987) World Games: The Tradition of Anti-Realist Revolt, London: Methuen (an
extensive survey with substantial comments throughout on Calvino’s habits and styles, and his
status within the tradition).
Ricci, F. (ed.) (1989) Calvino Revisited, Ottawa: Dovehouse (fourteen essays by leading critics
dealing with specific works and important aspects of Calvino’s writing).
Rushdie, S. (1991) Imaginary Homelands, London: Granta Books (contains an important essay by
one great novelist on the other).
JEFF DOYLE
GINO MOLITERNO
Camerini, Mario
b. 6 February 1895, Rome; d. 5 February 1981, Gardone Riviera
Film director
The subdued style and the minimalism of many of Camerini’s most characteristic films
manifest an ironic and sentimental sense of existence, with middle-class characters
portrayed in situations that indirectly address social and political issues. His most popular
work was done between 1929, when he directed his first film Rotaie (Rails) and the end
of the War. Several of his best films from this period such as Gli uomini, che mascalzoni!
(Men, What Rascals!) (1932) and Il signor Max (Mr Max) (1937) starred the young
Vittorio De Sica at the beginning of his career. During the 1940s, when the genre of the
sentimental comedy appeared exhausted, Camerini turned to the historical novel with two
rather conventional films: I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) (1941), adapted from
Alessandro Manzoni and La figlia del capitano (The Captain’s Daughter) (1949) from
Pushkin. With Suor Letizia (Sister Letizia) (1957), Camerini went back to his early, less
sweet portrayal of life but his last work was to be Don Camillo e i giovani d’oggi (Don
Camillo and today’s Young People) (1972).
CRISTINA DEGLI-ESPOSTI REINERT
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Camon, Ferdinando
b. 14 November 1935, S. Salvaro d’Urbana (Padua)
Poet, critic and novelist
Camon’s childhood in an economically-depressed region near Padova is reflected in his
lifelong project of giving voice to the marginalized and the poor. His early poetry
(Viareggio Prize in 1973) and a trilogy of novels trace the cultural, political and social
isolation of these people while denouncing the conditions giving rise to such economic
misery. The trilogy, called the ciclo degli ultimi (cycle of the last) includes Il quinto stato
(The Fifth State) (1970), La vita eterna (Life Everlasting) (1973), and Un altare per la
madre (An Altar for the Mother) (1978). His later novels examine more contemporary
social issues such as the youth and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s in La
malattia chiamata uomo (The Illness Called Man), drugs in Storia di Sirio (The Story of
Sirio) (1984), and psychoanalysis in La donna dei fili (The Woman of the Threads)
(1986). His critical works include collections of interviews with twentieth-century poets
and novelists.
LAURA A. SALSINI
Campanile, Achille
b. 28 September 1900, Rome; d. 4 January 1977, Velletri
Journalist, playwright and novelist
A renowned journalist, Campanile contributed articles to Il Corriere delta sera, Fiera
letteraria, 900 and Omnibus. He was also editor of La Tribuna and for some years
television critic for L
’
Europeo. Although more widely known for his essays, Campanile
also wrote plays and novels. Among his stage comedies are L’inventore del cavallo (The
Inventor of the Horse) and Centocinquanta la gallina canta (One Hundred and Fifty, the
Chicken Sings) and his novels include Ma che cos’è questo amore? (What Is This
Love?), Se la luna mi porta fortuna (If the Moon Brings Me Luck), and Il diario di Gino
Cornabò (Gino Cornabò’s Diary). In 1933 he was awarded the Viareggio Prize (see
literary prizes) for Cantasilena all’angolo delta strada (Cantasilena on the Side of the
Road), a collection of editorial essays, and in 1973 he received the prize again for
Manuale di conversazione (Conversational Manual).
VIRGINIA PICCHIETTI
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Canale Cinque
Soon to become the cornerstone of the media empire of Silvio Berlusconi, private
television channel Canale Cinque was born in 1980 in Milan by bringing together five
private channels, thus inaugurating the era of commercial television in Italy Its first coup
was in 1981 with the purchase of rights to the football event Mundialito, which was
followed by success in poaching from the RAI some of the national broadcaster’s best-
known faces, amongst them personalities like Mike Bongiorno. Changing all the rules of
television programming, Cinque exploited neglected time bands, like the morning period,
and scheduled its daily programs strategically so as to draw viewers from the RAI.
Presenting itself as a lively channel for the whole family with films, quizzes and variety
shows, Cinque consolidated its success by screening the American serial ‘Dallas’ which
became one of the most-watched shows on Italian television. In 1987, in another victory
in the ‘television wars’, Pippo Baudo also abandoned the RAI for Cinque. With his
flagship thus firmly established, Berlusconi tried—though, as it turned out, in vain—to
export Canale Cinque to France (La Cinq) and to Spain (Telecinco). Following a law
permitting live broadcasts in 1992, Cinque initiated its own national news program, TG5,
thus confirming its status as alternative to the RAI.
Further reading
Doyle, W. (1988) ‘Why Dallas was able to conquer Italy’, Altro Polo, edited I. Grossart and S.
Trambaiolo, Sydney: Frederick May Foundation.
RICCARDO VENTRELLA
Cancogni, Manlio
b. 6 July 1916, Bologna
Novelist and journalist
After contributing short stories to literary journals before the War, Cancogni became a
journalist in the immediate postwar period and wrote for weeklies such as L’Europeo and
l’Espresso. novels and been recipient of several of the most Since the mid-1950s he has
published numerous prestigious literary prizes including the Bagutta prize in 1965 for La
linea del Tomori (The Tomori Line), the Campiello for Il ritorno (The Return) in 1971
and the Strega in 1973 for his Allegri, gioventù (Happy, Youth).
Cancogni’s fiction generally concerns itself with the search for a deeper truth within
the individual, a psychological excavation which is often undertaken in a broader
historical context. In Il ritorno, for example, the life of a group of soldiers is investigated
against the backdrop of the occupation of Croatia by Italian troops during 1943. The
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latent sense of danger hovering around the soldiers assigned to defend an indefensible
position is wellrendered by a nervous, syncopated writing.
Cancogni has also published several volumes of critical essays and a work on the
Renaissance painter, Guido Reni.
PAOLO BARTOLONI
Canella, Guido
b. 19 July 1931, Bucharest, Romania
Architect, designer, academic and editor
After graduating from the Milan Politecnico where he studied under Ernesto Rogers,
Canella joined the project for Casabella-Continuità (1957–64). Whilst practising
professionally he also taught architectural composition at the IUAV (replacing Samonà),
and at the Milan Politecnico from 1962 onwards, taking over the chair from Rogers in
1970 and becoming a Director in 1982. During the 1950s and 1960s he published a
number of important studies on national schools in Europe, such as Russian
Constructivism, the Amsterdam School and Milanese Liberty, all of which had been
marginalized by the orthodox Modern movement. Since 1989 he has been editor of the
series Architettura e città (Architecture and the City). The Civic Center of Piave
Emanuele (1971–81) remains the epitome of Canella’s perpetual aspiration to extract a
shape from a landscape that he regards determined more by history than geography.
Further reading
‘Guido Canella’ (1995) Zodiac, 13:216–27 (overview of Canella’s professional work).
GORDANA KOSTICH
Cantafora, Arduino
b. 1945, Milan
Architectural draughtsman and figurative artist
After studying architecture under Aldo Rossi, Cantafora became part of Tendenza, a
group which, in the 1970s, was at the centre of debate on the subject of architecture and
the split between theory and practice. Tendenza, which sought to question the myth of
historical progress, was antimodernist and part of a tradition which pursued architectural
drawings as an end in themselves, independently of construction. For Tendenza the city, a
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discontinuous place, achieves unity in the Monument, which is a synthesis, a focus of
meaning for all its surroundings. Drawn architecture serves to create an imaginary
context for monuments, a cultural place without consumers, deserted stage-sets inhabited
only by architecture with no need of people.
Cantafora’s drawings are full of references ranging from the Renaissance to Sironi,
from de Chirico to mediocre Fascist theatre sets. They show cities crowded with deserted
monuments, like Piranesi’s Fori Imperiali, where eclecticism plunders history, aligning
its masterpieces in a large cemetery-setting.
OLIVIA DAWSON
Cantautori
In the first half of the twentieth century the Italian popular music tradition generally made
a radical distinction between the songwriter and the performer. Great songwriters and
great singers could both be famous although they were seldom the same person and
singers like Alberto Rabagliati tended to be better known than songwriters like Cesare
Bixio. After 1960, however, following the birth of modern pop and rock music, a new
tendency of singer-songwriters developed, inspired in its early phase by the example of
French ‘chansonniers’ like Jacques Brel and Gilbert Becaud.
The most important city in the early phase of this development was Genoa, close to
the French border, and the first two singers to emerge were Luigi Tenco and Gino Paoli.
Tenco, afflicted with a troubled personal life, is generally considered the founder of
this new tradition and melancholic songs like ‘Mi sono innamorato di te’ (I Fell in Love
With You) (1962) and ‘Lontano, lontano’ (So Faraway) accompanied the growing pains
of an entire generation of young Italians. Usually beginning with the theme of love,
Tenco’s songs often developed into deeper reflections on the meaning of life. This
existential depth became all the more poignant following his unexpected (and still
mysterious) suicide after he had been eliminated from the Sanremo Festival in 1967.
Following his tragic death a ‘Club Tenco’ was established at Sanremo which has
continued to host and encourage new songwriters quite outside the glare of the more
commercial official annual festival.
Gino Paoli, on the other hand, with a decidedly romantic touch, was closer to a more
traditional form of love song (‘Il cielo in una stanza’ (The Sky In a Room), or ‘Senza
fine’ (Without an End)), as were Bruno Lauzi and Sergio Endrigo, who won the Sanremo
Festival in 1968 with ‘Canzone per te’ (A Song For You). Also from Genoa emerged the
talent of Fabrizio De Andrè, who gradually overcame the dominant love theme of songs
like ‘La canzone di Marinella’ (The Song of Marinella), by introducing bits of ‘pure’
poetry from sources as different as Edgar Lee Masters and the Four Gospels.
Around the same time in Milan there was a coming together of the theatre and music
scene. The crazy art of Enzo Jannacci emerged from an aggressive and iconoclastic
approach to the audience as in his ‘Vengo anch’io no tu no!’, (I’ll come too! No, you
won’t). Giorgio Gaber, after a debut as a melodic singer (‘Grazie tante’ (Thank You Very
Much)), proposed his own brand of irony in songs like ‘Torpedo Blu’ (Blue Torpedo) and
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‘Porta Romana’, recalling an older style from the 1920s and 1930s, and, later, a touch of
surrealism in songs like ‘La libertà’ (Freedom) (1972). A new source of inspiration came
from the American folksingers and from the hippy movement. The ‘Summer of Love’
inspired a new freedom in songwriters like Gian Pieretti (‘Il vento dell’Est’ (The Wind of
East)), Riki Maiocchi (‘C’è chi spera’ (There Are Some Who Hope)) and Mauro Lusini,
author of ‘C’era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones’ (There Was
a Boy Who, Like Me, Loved the Beatles and Rolling Stones), a song which later became
a hit for Gianni Morandi. The example of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez was fundamental to
the development of the protest song especially during the 1968 student movement.
Paolo Pietrangeli sang his ‘Contessa’ (Countess) on the barricades and Ivan Della Mea,
in his ‘Cara moglie’ (Dear Wife), celebrated the heartaches of the working-class. As
ballads accompanied the winds of change, strongly under the influence of Bob Dylan and
Leonard Cohen, a new generation of ‘cantautori’—a neologism coined, in fact, in the
early 1970s—was in the wings. In Rome, Francesco De Gregori and Antonello Venditti
emerged from the Folkstudio club and in 1973 recorded an LP together, Theorius
Campus. De Gregori’s approach to lyrics was intimate and poetic as in songs like ‘Alice’
(1973), ‘Rimmel’ (1975), ‘Generale’ (General) (1978) and ‘La donna cannone’
(Cannonball Woman) (1983) and won him a large following. Venditti, a pianist, moved
from a more popular and melodic inspiration, creating fascinating atmospheres in ‘Roma
capoccia’ (Hardheaded Rome) (1974), ‘Lilly’ (1975) and ‘Notte prima degli esami’ (The
Night Before the Exams) (1984).
In Bologna, Francesco Guccini, who had previously written provocative songs like
‘Dio è morto’ (God Is Dead), which was censored by RAI when sung by the rock group I
Nomadi, returned to more traditional values but from an introspective point of view, and
couched his protest in a more refined language. In ‘La locomotiva’ (The Locomotive)
(1972), he created a working-class epic, and in ‘L’avvelenata’ (The Poisoned) (1978)
ironically painted a self-portait. Meanwhile Claudio Baglioni and Riccardo Cocciante
ruled over the love song: romantics, with powerful voices, they conquered their audiences
with ‘Questo piccolo grande amore’ (This Small Great Love) (1972) and ‘Margherita’
(1974). Teacher Roberto Vecchioni sang of the bitter taste of love (‘Stranamore’
(Strangelove)) while Eugenic Finardi rode the 1977 protest wave with angry songs like
‘La musica ribelle’ (Rebel Music). Ivano Fossati, former leader of the group Delirium,
celebrated the more sophisticated dimension of pop music in his ‘Panama’, while Alberto
Fortis (Milano e Vincenzo) indulged in the crazier side. In Naples, the picturesque dialect
came to be freely and creatively mixed with other influences with Edoardo Bennato
choosing the rock idiom and the magic world of fables (the figure of Pinocchio, for
example, in Burattino senza fili (Puppet Without Strings) (1977)), while Pino Daniele
developed a genuinely Neapolitan version of the blues (‘Je so’pazzo’ (I’m Crazy), 1977).
Two cantautori who have occupied a unique place of their own are Paolo Conte and
Rino Gaetano. Conte, a lawyer by profession, has created a very distinctive personal style
by fusing elements from the Italian melodic tradition with the French chansonniers and
South-American influences, achieving a very strong international reputation. Gaetano,
with his humorous ‘Gianna’, was the new discovery of the 1978 Sanremo Festival,
although his death in a car accident in 1981 tragically deprived Italian music of his talent.
The 1980s witnessed the great success of Franco Battiato (from avantgarde
compositions to pop music), the rock ballads of Gianna Nannini and the daredevil life of
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