Antichi naviganti epastori erranti

Notes on the topic of contemplating the sky based on some Leopardian traces in Calvino's Palomar

Abstract

The reception of Italo Calvino’s novel Mr. Palomar in the Spanish-speaking context is mediated by a single translation, used across all editions, in which a reference to Giacomo Leopardi’s Night Song Of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia, originally included in the chapter The Contemplation of the Stars, is omitted. The present work highlights this loss, examining how this is not a minor or insignificant reference but rather a key allusion that positions Calvino’s work within a literary tradition concerning the topos of the contemplation of the celestial vault. The reference to the “ancient navigators” and to the “wandering shepherds” presumes two different ways of relating to the observation of the sky, in a sort of tripartite movement of which Palomar occupies the last step, that of the contemporary urban individual, for whom the contemplation of the stars no longer implies serenity and guidance but instead lack of understanding, insecurity and bewilderment.