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“ ”When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.
About Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Lionized in Britain and America, he was, at the time of his death, the most-translated contemporary Italian writer.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Italo Calvino
...sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old postcards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.
إنه ينبغي علينا أن نخصص في فترة النضج وقتًا لإعادة اكتشاف أهم قراءاتنا التي قمنا بها في الصبا. فإذا كانت الكتب لا تتغير -وهي في الواقع تتغير علي ضوء منظور تاريخي مختلف- فنحن أنفسنا تغيرنا ولقاؤنا الجديد يشكل أحداثًا جديدة.ولهذا فإن كل قراءة جديدة لعمل كلاسيكي هي اكتشاف، مثلها مثل القراءة الأولي. وكل قراءة أولى لعمل كلاسيكي هي في الحقيقة قراءة جديدة.
"Among Chuang-tzu's many skills, he was an expert draftsman. The king asked him to draw a crab. Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country house, and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing was still not begun. "I need another five years," said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them. At the end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen. [Calvino retells this Chinese story]"