The Distance of the Moon

The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The collection begins with a snippet or fact about the universe taken from scientific or astrological texts. Calvino takes the inherent wonder and awe of a world beyond comprehension, a world unmistakably different to our own and infuses it with a human sentimentality - he spins myth out of these grand, swirling hypotheses and conjectures.

They work / function the same way as myths essentially do as well - they take a seemingly impossible premise i.e. medusa could turn people to stone, you can venture into the underworld and back out again unscathed etc. - and then against the dramatic backdrop of the novel and invented, Calvino conveys narratives that consist of universal struggles, emotions, unrequited love, fear of death etc.

Reading through it there seems to be a carefully calibrated balance between realism, poetic license and whimsy. Simple constructions conjures imagery of emotional weight and resonance, scenes that seem to allude to more than the scene itself. There is an efficiency and economy and subtlety here usually reserved for poetry. Some of the shorter sentences remind me of Pablo Neruda verses.

For example: 'and already my climb up the swaying pole had reached the point where I no longer had to make any effort but could just allow myself to slide, head first, attracted by the earth, until in my haste the pole broke into a thousand pieces and I fell into the sea, among the boats.' He details the mechanical process of climbing and falling in dry, precise terms - a sentence that seems bloated and unnecessary, until you see how it transitions quickly / leads seamlessly to end in an unexpected burst of lyricism 'And I fell into the sea, among the boats.'

Another example: 'And I saw her. She was there where I had left her, lying on the beach directly over our heads, and she said nothing. She was the colour of the moon;' There is an immediacy to it, a whispered urgency - a stop-start musicality in the rhythm of his storytelling.

The last story is Calvino's most abstract in this collection - it is also the most difficult to relate to or understand, personally. Ironically it shows him at his most exuberant, he shows little to no restraint with language or metaphor here, he reiterates the concept, explores every crevice of possibility, examines it from every angle with flowery, idiomatic language. It can seem a little saturated or indulgent after a while. But close to the end it pays off: He does what he does best - he finds the link / the common thread between the universal, the cosmic, the eternal and our small, fragile, human reality and he elaborates it for us to understand. "See? this is like this." He seems to be saying. "The history of the universe and the history of ourselves - they are not so different. Do you see it now?" He makes the unthinkable leap with agility, with grace. It feels as though you are witnessing a magic trick - literary sleight of hand. He reminds us that our inner worlds are every bit as vast and inscrutable and wonderful and terrible as that of the galaxies, the stars, the universe and time itself.

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. The artist’s job is not to be clear, to be heard fully and understood, or to even be liked. The job of an artist is to deepen the mystery within each person that crosses their path so much that they have no choice but to give up shallowness."

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