Abstract

In the library of Italo Calvino, there are two books published in 1943: the Italiian translation of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology ( Antologia di Spoon River, Turin: Einaudi) and Dino Buzzati's I sette messaggeri (Milan: Mondadori). These texts were annotated by Calvino when he was in his early twenties and they constitute a rare occasion, almost unique in the library of the author, to observe his private reflections on literary texts. Calvino's annotations testify to his early critical skills, to the depth of his investigation, and to his capacity to grasp the nuanced meaning of a literary text. In this paper the author makes available to the public the transcriptions of these unpublished records and analyzes them in the introductory remarks.