Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers Italo Calvino's use of colours and landscapes in a relatively neglected part of his oeuvre, the collection of realist short stories entitled Difficult Loves, first published as a group of nine stories in 1958 then expanded to thirteen tales in 1970. It discusses Calvino's use of the myth of Orpheus and Plato's myth of the cave in order to show how they convey the metamorphosis and constant disappearing of essential elements. The book examines very different examples of 'constrained writing' as well as complicated translations — or 'recreations', in both senses of the word — of literary works from one language to another. It describes how the Copenhagen exhibition emerged from a visit to Italo Calvino's flat in Rome, and discusses the processes and problems of the visual rendering of an imaginary space.