ABSTRACT
The different genres to which they belong and the temporal distance between them are such that it would not really make sense to bring them together under any other similarity, were it not for their special treatment of the landscape as an image/symbol. From January 1950 until July 1951 Italo Calvino worked on a novel which he published only many years later, in serial form, in a specialist review rather than as an independent book. Indeed, in the introductory note he claims to have published it as material for discussion and analysis. In the layerings of memory, the recollection of the landscape seen along the road to San Giovanni is apparently innocent, but conceals an unresolved infantile and juvenile hostility towards the father. The inner dimension is a map which is superimposed upon other maps, the desire which drives Faria to escape from prison-fortress has its centripetal reverse in the search for treasure at centre of the island of Montecristo.
