Visit the cemetery of Italo Calvino——and a story between him and a young Chinese student
Forward: This article is about my journey to Castiglione della Pescaia and why I like Italo Calvino. I wrote in English since I hope more people can read it. All the pictures used in the article are copyright of myself. If there is any grammar mistake or cultural and semantic confusion, please feel free to point out.
Italo Calvino is my favorite foreign writer. (and I will tell you why later) Therefore, this winter vacation in Italy, my very first thing to do is visiting him. Having been searching information online, I figured out that there is no museum or memorial place for him. Thanks to “Italo Calvino in China”, “Find a Grave”, and a local tourist website, I got to know where his cemetery lies——Castiglione della Pescaia, right on the coast where Mr. Palomar watched and meditated the waves of the sea.
Without anything found in detail, I set the address (Cimitero di Castiglione della Pescaia) on Google Map and hit the road.
On 21st Dec 2018, I took train at 6:57 AM from Roma Termini to Grosseto. The train took around and 1.5 hour and later at 9:30, I got on the Extraurbana bus to Castiglione della Pescaia.
That day had the bluest sky. I, the only passenger on the bus, along with the friendly driver, was free to enjoy the endless grassland and Mediterranean pine trees beside the road. Staring at these trees with wide branches reaching to the others, I suddenly realized what Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò did may not be so difficult.
After bus, I still had a mile to go. I walked on the ancient roads, passed the lovely bars, and wandered through a castle. The public cemetery is located on the mountainside, with a great view of the town on the east side and the sea on the west side. Only few people were there, and I crept silently around looking for where Italo Calvino is.
Finally, a staff approached me. He seemed confused to see a Chinese face in an Italian cemetery, but when I told him who I was looking for, he led me to the tombstone excitingly.
Maybe I am one of the first Chinese readers to ever come here. The tomb looked the same as the picture I found online, only without the bush around it. Calvino’s wife, Esther Judith Singer, was on the left side with him. There were branches and stones placed on it, and a slight layer of dust. The mountains, sky, sea, birds, and the ticking of water drops in the cemetery, created a great harmony of nature.
I silently expressed my respect and admiration, placed a bottle cap and a diamond-shape stone which represent my nickname, and left.
I spent some time pacing on the beach. After people-watching and a so-called meditation, I left.
At 10th grade in high school, my friend and I found a secret ladder tube to the roof of the senior building. We enjoyed climbing through it in day and night, exploring the secret of the top of the building, chatting, and laughing. We even came there on a freezing rainy night, just standing and watching the skyscrapers of Beijing in the distance and the people under our feet, and on a snowy winter day, just playing snowball and yelling. I was sort of addicted to that kind of experience and began to spend lots of time exploring other roofs on my school campus. I called these roofs the “Sacred Land” for my friend and I. The land for adventures, for temporary escape from the reality, for recalling the past, for meditation, for sincere conversation, for people-watching from a different point of view, for sitting in daze and daydreaming.
I regarded what I did as a “run-away” of an individual. It can be simply seen as a rebellious act, or maybe there is some symbolic and metaphysical meaning underneath. I made a documentary movie called “The Sacred Land” to remember all those crazy roof top adventures, and entered my last year of high school.
The 12th grade was when I came across Calvino’s books. At that time, I was curious to look for some famous contemporary and modern Italian writers. I got “if on a winter night a traveler” in bookstore (Douban Bookstore on Chengfu Road, Beijing) and began reading “our ancestors” trilogy later.
I was shocked to encounter the story of Cosimo in “Baron in the trees”. “That’s me!”. My adventures on the roofs was the modern version of Cosimo’s, though I still live on ground and can’t move from a roof to another freely. However, I realized, in some metropolis where skyscrapers are everywhere and linked with overpasses, some people do live a life without touching the ground and forever in the buildings. Their lives could be more physically enriched than Cosimo’s since the modern technology ensures a safer, more convenient, and comfortable environment than in trees, but the interest of leaving your group life and living your life with your human fellows as whole from a perfect distance is the key, to which I believe I experienced thing similar.
Later, I went to another school in south, where trees were denser and greener. I got a great chance to study my previous and recent school lives from a perfect distance. Cosimo’s life can be regard as a process from individual to integrity, and I tried to do the same on me and my surroundings. Anyway, I keep looking for the similarity and difference between me and Cosimo and adding more quotes to our lives.
I have read almost all Calvino’s works in Chinese and English translation, and I am learning Italian to enjoy the original ones. He is not only a great writer to me, he shared his thoughts with me. He has many great works in different styles and today is not the time for me to discuss further. Now, allow me to use his words in “Il Barone Rampante” to remember Italo Calvino: Visse sugli alberi - Amò sempre la terra - Salì in cielo.
2019.01.11 by 元芳 yfq32
2025.01.18 edited