In the context of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Italo Calvino (1923-2023) and of Italy's participation as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023, this project aims to bring into being the first centre of digital documentation dedicated to the author: the Portale Italo Calino.
The Portale Italo Calvino will constitute an enrichment of the section devoted to Calvino on the Portale Spazi900 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, with whom the Dipartimento di Lettere e Culture Moderne of Sapienza envisages setting up an agreement for this purpose, and it intends to stress and disseminate the outcomes of the research carried out from 2015 onwards by the project "Calvino qui e altrove" and later by the Laboratorio Calvino of La Sapienza (active since 2018).
Thanks to its clear structure in different sections and the inclusion of multi-media tools and content, this Portal aims to bring an innovative approach to the study of Calvino's intellectual biography, works, collections of documents and bibliographical resources dedicated to him, and to become the authoritative point of reference for the knowledge and memory of Italo Calvino in the world. The resources of the digital environment that will be made available by the site of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, as well as the interdisciplinary skills and competencies in the study of this author which are possessed by the Research Group of Laboratorio Calvino (including scholars who have a long track-record in Calvino criticism and are directly involved in the curatorship of his works) will allow us to overcome the limitations and dispersion of single scholarly approaches. There will be an overall view offered through innovative and rigorous tools, which will allow us to reconstruct links between Calvino's works, places and experiences, and to supply in-depth analyses, new areas of research and new possibilities in transmitting literary knowledge to a wider public.
This project's objective is to develop research methodologies and technological applications aimed at conserving and publicizing cultural assets, in particular in the library and archives sector.
The impact of the project lies in its ambition to contribute to the treatment and definition of new ways of promoting the work of Calvino in Italy and in the world. Through the creation of a channel for advancing and developing research which can be accredited and immediately useful for the scholarly community and for civil society, we intend to pioneer a new and more open idea of Italian literature in the twentieth century, enabling critical and interpretative approaches that are innovative also from the point of view of methodology and sources.
The lack of a reliable, recognized source for the study and promotion of Calvino's oeuvre is made all the more serious and evident because of the constant dissemination of the writer at all levels of cultural education (from school to university). The Portale Italo Calvino is intended to fill this lacuna by involving not only the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, one of the most important institutes for the conservation and promotion of the legacy of books and documents in Italy, and the Laboratorio Calvino of La Sapienza, but also a group of international scholars and experts.
The use of digital tools on the one hand guarantees the safekeeping of and use of documentary sources, and on the other allows us to integrate in an innovative way the different forms in which the record of twentieth-century literature is transmitted: works, testimonies, archival papers, correspondence, authors' libraries, bibliographical catalogues, etc. In this context, the innovative aspect of the project consists in the systematic application of information technologies which allow one to make use online of the research results. At the same time, the setting up of a documentary centre aims to highlight the places where the materials are conserved, to shed light on the urban and rural landscapes that the author lived through, as well as being a meeting place for the world of research and the world of school, publishing, information and civil society.
Projecting itself towards processes of internationalization, the research pays attention to the comparison between different national traditions through the dissemination of Calvino throughout the world, an approach which involves the author's intellectual biography, and is reflected in the bibliographical tools envisaged, the initiatives that are planned, and in the established links with international interlocutors (translators, scholars of Italian literature abroad, Italian Institutes of Culture).
In particular, the plan is for the project to be developed in the context of already established relationships between il Dipartimento di Lettere e Culture Moderne at La Sapienza and other universities in the world: Universidad de la Habana (Mayerin Bello), Universitat de Barcelona (Francesco Ardolino), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Tadahiko Wada), University of Stockholm (Cecilia Schwartz), University of Tallin (Daniele Monticelli), University of di San Paolo (Mauricio Santana Diaz). Working with cultural agreements that are already up and running, the collaboration and scholarly dialogue that have been set up to construct the Portale Italo Calvino will contribute to the renewing of opportunities for exchange and mobility for teaching staff, researchers, doctoral and undergraduate students.
The Portal will be a point of reference for the valorization of tools and content that are the outcome of long periods of research, and it intends to become in the future a starting point for the launching of new initiatives and perspectives of enquiry, acting as a guide, source of help and compass for new generations of users, students and specialists.