Reading
One of the main themes of If on a winter's night a traveler is reading. The novel probes what kinds of books are best, what ways of reading are best, and what a reader's relationship is to the books they read. The novel opens with Calvino playfully instructing the reader on how to read his book: "Relax. Concentrate...Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room" (3). From the first page, it is communicated that reading should be an act of pleasure rather than obligation.
Throughout the book, dialogue between characters about books and reading is used to expose the reader to different views on reading. The characters Ludmilla and Lotaria are placed in contrast to one another with Ludmilla seeming to represent those who read for pleasure and Lotaria representing those who read to the end of academic critique. Ludmilla is so focused on the pleasure of reading that she does not want to see the process that goes into producing a book. Lotaria, on the other hand, cares greatly about the societal forces that surround book writing and publication; she goes so far as to put books through a computer algorithm rather than read them since she sees actual reading as beside the point. From the way characters, particularly the reader and Silas Flannery, react to Ludmilla and Lotaria, it is suggested that reading for pleasure and with an open mind is the correct way to read.
The penultimate scene in the book underscores the idea that there are many valid ways to read, though personal pleasure still seems to be the goal. The reader visits a library where he seeks to check out full versions of the ten stories he has begun over the course of the novel. While he waits, he gets into a conversation with seven other readers who discuss the different ways they like to read: pausing to think for long periods of time, rereading sections or entire works, with a focus on the beginning or end, etc. From the explanations the readers give for their ways of reading, it becomes clear that people read in a way that suits their personality and desires. From the conversation, the reader realizes that he has been searching for the ends of the stories he has begun because he seeks control and closure in his own life. This realization allows him to pursue this closure in his own life by marrying Ludmilla.
Writing and Authorship
In complement to the theme of reading, writing is a distinct and important theme in If on a winter's night a traveler. As a work of metafiction, Calvino's authorial choices are more in the spotlight than in traditional novels. Calvino underscores the importance of viewing him as a writer early in the novel by having the reader discuss his style; the reader states that the book he begins to read doesn't seem to be Calvino's usual style but that the author "is known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next" (9). The reader is hyper-aware while reading this passage that Calvino is constructing a view of himself as a creative and mysterious author, foreshadowing how innovative the ensuing novel will be.
Calvino not only puts his own stylistic choices on display, but he also deepens the conversation about authorship by including characters such as Silas Flannery, Ermes Marana, and Mr. Cavedagna who are involved in the writing and production of novels. Silas Flannery is a particularly important character to the theme of writing. He is a low-brow fiction writer who has been prolific in the past but has hit a period of writer's block. His writer's block seems to stem largely from internal conflict over the role of an author: should he merely communicate what is present but unwritten in society, or must he acknowledge his impact on the world through the act of writing? His stress is further compounded by guilt over the fact that he has been making money based on product placement in his novels and discomfort with the way academics like Lotaria analyze his works. Flannery's conflict is used to demonstrate the many pressures that go into writing and publishing books, in contrast to the way some readers might assume (as Ludmilla naively does) that books simply spring forth naturally.
Finally, Calvino raises the question of the importance of authorship. Ermes Marana's campaign to falsify the world's literature causes the stories the reader reads to have titles and authors that do not match the stories themselves. The fact that the reader is still able to connect with these stories challenges the traditional notion that an author is intimately connected to their works. Ermes Marana's stories about The Father of Stories further challenges the notion that authors are the originators of their stories, since his existence means there is a "universal source of narrative material" (117).
Gender
The theme of gender in If on a winter's night a traveler is a subject of some controversy, particularly because of opposing viewpoints on Calvino's treatment of females. Some feel that Calvino is misogynistic in his assumption of a male reader and portrayal of female characters, while others argue that these stylistic choices are purposeful and satirical.
First and foremost is the matter of the main character: the reader. The reader is supposed to represent the actual person reading the book If on a winter's night a traveler, but it is also clear that the reader is a character in the story distinct from the actual reader of the book. One of these distinctions is that the reader of the book may very well be a female or non-binary, which would directly conflict with the character of the reader being described explicitly as male (as in the quote, "You can leave the bookshop content, you, a man" (32)). Furthermore, the reader could be male but not heterosexual, causing them not to identify with the reader's obsession and jealousy regarding Ludmilla and other females. Calvino's choice for a representation of the reader to be explicitly male has the effect of making many of the book's readers uncomfortable. The question is whether this had literary purpose for Calvino, or if it was simply a product of his time.
In addition to the matter of the main character is that of male and female characters in the book in general. Every story-within-a-story in If on a winter's night a traveler has a male narrator, and often the female characters in the books serve only as romantic objects. This parallels the frame story in which the male reader is the most important character and women serve almost entirely as romantic objects or fascinations. Depending on one's view of Calvino as misogynistic versus satirical, one could posit that Calvino created this dynamic unthinkingly or did it in a purposeful, methodical way to spotlight the overabundance of literature by and for men in the canon. One key quote in determining Calvino's stance is when he, as the omniscient narrator, tells the reader "You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters?" (219). This quote shows that Calvino is aware of the role of women in the novel, at least in the frame story, and wants to transfer some of the responsibility for the treatment of these women to the reader of the book. This metaliterary moment implicates readers, particularly male readers, in the production and popularity of novels with strong male characters and weak female characters.
Academia
In a 1983 interview published in the New York Times, Calvino told biographer Frank MacShane, "My university work was not central to my education" (The Fantasy World of Italo Calvino). In the same article, the biographer describes Calvino during his time as a professor: "Always courteous and thorough, he was polite about student questions but seemed weary and bored. He would often glance at his watch. Then, when the hour came to a stop, he would rise with evident relief" (The Fantasy World of Italo Calvino). Clearly, Calvino was not a lover of academia, and this antipathy comes across in If on a winter's night a traveler.
The characters of Professor Uzzi-Tuzii and Lotaria are central to Calvino's depiction of academia in If on a winter's night a traveler. Professor Uzzi-Tuzii represents the older academic's disconnect from reality. He himself states that his department should be abolished since it is "a dead department of a dead literature in a dead language" (52). At the same time, when provoked by another professor, unnamed but described as "a pale man...bearded, with a sarcastic gaze and a systematically disillusions curl to his lips" (73), he jumps into an argument about Cimmerian history with great emotion. He is clearly so wrapped up in his subject of study that, even knowing that few else in the world care, he is not able to redirect his energy into anything else.
While Professor Uzzi-Tuzii is an exaggeration of a disconnected old professor, Lotaria's character represents contemporary students and new academics at the time of Calvino's writing. When Lotaria and her classmates hold a seminar to discuss a literary work, they pull out interpretations before even reading it. Calvino writes, "During the reading there must be some who underline the reflections of production methods, others the process of reification, others the sublimation of repression, others the sexual semantic codes..." (75). After the story has been read, Calvino shows how pointless he feels these kinds of academic discussions of literature are by not even including the content of the students' comments:
"'The polymorphic perverse sexuality...'
'The laws of a market economy...'
'The homologies of the signifying structures...'
'Deviation and institutions...'
'Castration...'" (91)
This scene shows academics as prioritizing analysis and criticism over actual reading and enjoyment of literature. This theme is furthered in Chapter 8 when Lotaria meets Silas Flannery. She tells him that she can analyze books without reading them by simply feeding their text into a computer and then reading a list of the words that appear most frequently in a book. In this scene, Lotaria is a parody of new academics and their methods of dissecting texts, which is completely antithetical to Calvino's traditional methods of reading, writing, and translation.
Love
The biographer Frank MacShane wrote of If on a winter's night a traveler, "Because Calvino does not complete the stories he has begun - refusing, for example, to confront and develop the complexity of human love which is his real theme - Calvino is thought by some critics to be cynical and cold" (The Fantasy World of Italo Calvino). It is difficult to see love as the main theme of If on a winter's night a traveler since, as MacShane writes, Calvino skirts the topic throughout the novel, focusing instead on lust and obsession. However, the final two chapters of the novel do show that love, particularly the culmination of love in marriage, has been the reader's goal throughout the novel.
In Chapter 11, the reader discusses different kinds of books with a number of men at a library. After the other men have shared their views on how it is best to read, the reader gives his point of view, saying that he likes books "to be read from beginning to end" (257). Later in the chapter, the insightful seventh reader asks him, "Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died" (259). This comment helps the reader realize that in his search for the endings of stories, he has actually been seeking closure in his own life. Rather than continue seeking the ends of books, he decides to end his own story in the traditional way: he will marry Ludmilla. In Chapter 12, we find that he has done just that. And, through finding closure in his own story, he is now able to finish the book he first started, If on a winter's night a traveler. These two chapters show that people seek what they desire in their own lives in literature, and in the case of this novel's main character, that desire was love and stability.
Falsehood
In If on a winter's night a traveler, Calvino demonstrates how the falsification of part of something can call into question the integrity of a whole. The theme of falsification is most present through the actions of Ermes Marana. Marana is supposedly a translator, but he actually makes it his quest to switch around authors, titles, stories, and sometimes even characters and locations so that the entire literature industry becomes falsified. It is hinted that he does this because of Ludmilla's positive and trusting relationship with literature, of which Marana is jealous. When the reader realizes after a couple stories-within-a-story that the authors and titles of books cannot be trusted, one must assume throughout the rest of the novel that none of the titles and authors given will necessarily be correct. This leads to an emotion of wariness while reading, which was Marana's goal in the text.
Calvino also inspires wariness through including both real and false countries and languages in the novel. For example, Ataguitania, the country the reader visits in Chapter 9, is completely fictional. However, Ircania, the country the reader visits in Chapter 9 on assignment by the Ataguitanian government is actually the ancient name of a region near the Caspian Sea. Ircania, then, is not entirely fictional but still could be considered false since the novel is set in the 20th century. Other locations such as Switzerland are both real and contemporary to the setting of the story. This intermixing of fiction and truth means the reader must read with a critical eye, else they might confuse falsehood with reality.
Translation
While Italo Calvino was first and foremost an author, he also did some translation work in Italian, and he worked closely with translators to have his books published in other languages. In fact, it is likely that you are reading If on a winter's night a traveler in translation, making
this theme even more resonant.
If on a winter's night a traveler shows the power and difficulty of translation. Ermes Marana uses his profession as a translator to sow discord throughout the worldwide publishing industry. Because we put our trust in translators to translate accurately, there is a large impact when they accidentally mistranslate and an even larger potential for them to purposefully mislead. Chapter 8, which is made up of diary entries by Silas Flannery, also shows the power of any writer to translate the world into words. The description of the writing of the Koran shows that even divine messages must be put into words by a writer, which gives them immense power over people's beliefs and actions.
Chapters 3 and 4 show how the difficulty of translation can also have an impact on the experience of a reader or listener. When the reader visits Professor Uzzi-Tuzii's office, Calvino writes that the professor was "going back over every sentence to iron out the syntactical creases, manipulating the phrases until they were not completely rumpled, smoothing them, clipping them, stopping at every word to illustrate its idiomatic uses and its commutations..." (68). Calvino, having tried his hand at translation himself, shows that there are always pieces of context that would be necessary to fully understand a work in another language. However, giving all of the context, rules, and explanations takes away from the flow of the story itself. A translator must be satisfied with the reader getting the best idea of the author's meaning and style while still immersing themselves in the story. A reader must also acknowledge that something will be lost between what the author intended and what they understand.
