Williamsburg Regional Library

Collection of sand, essays, Italo Calvino ; translated by Martin McLaughlin

eng

no index present

essays

Collection of sand

869552437

Italo Calvino ; translated by Martin McLaughlin

essays

Italo Calvino<U+2019>s unbounded curiosity and masterly imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, the last of his works published during his lifetime. Here he applies his graceful intellect to the delights of the visual world, in essays on subjects ranging from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens. Never before translated into English, Collection of Sand is an incisive and often surprising meditation on observation and knowledge, the difference between the world as we perceive it and the world as it is

Collection of sand -- How new the new world was -- The traveller in the map -- The museum of wax monsters -- The dragon tradition -- Before the alphabet -- The wonders of the popular press -- A novel inside a painting -- Say it with knots -- Writers who draw -- In memory of Roland Barthes -- Day-flies in the fortress -- The pig and the archaeologist -- The narrative of Trajan's column -- The written city: inscriptions and graffiti -- Thinking the city: the measure of spaces -- The redemption of objects -- Light in our eyes -- The adventures of three clockmakers and three automata -- Fairy geography -- The archipelago of imaginary places -- Stamps from states of mind -- The encylopedia of a visionary -- Japan -- The old woman in the purple kimono -- The obverse of the sublime -- The wooden temple -- The thousand gardens -- The moon chasing the moon -- The sword and the leaves -- The pinballs of solitude -- Eros and discontinuity -- The ninety-ninth tree -- Mexico -- The shape of the tree -- Time and brances -- The forest and the gods -- Iran -- The mihrab -- The flames within the flames -- The sculptures and the nomads

adult