Abstract
Agostini analyzes the cultural relation between Pliny the Elder and the twentieth-century Italian writers. The Latin author of the Naturalis Historia proved to be an inspiration for Primo Levi’s poem “Plinio” in 1978 and Italo Calvino’s essay “Il cielo, l’uomo, l’elefante” in 1982. Pliny seems to have responded to questions and doubts of post-war writers in Italy. In addition, he served as a model for intellectual communication and authorial image in the post-war Italian society. Levi and Calvino delineated personal experience into collective memory through the character of Pliny. The chapter includes textual and critical inquiries in communication, translation, and assimilation between ancient Latin culture and Italian culture.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cacciola, Giuliana. 2014. Generi della memoria e memoria di genere: Primo Levi, Ruth Klüger e la Shoah. Acireale: Bonanno editore.
Calvino, Italo. 1947. Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Torino: Einaudi.
———. 1957. The Path to the Nest of Spiders. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1988a. Lezioni americane: sei proposte per il prossimo millennio. Milano: Garzanti.
———. 1988b. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Translated by Patrick Creagh. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 1991. Perché leggere i classici. Milano: A. Mondadori.
———. 1999. Why Read the Classics? Translated by Martin McLaughlin. New York: Pantheon Books.
Levi, Primo. 1947. Se questo è un uomo. Torino: De Silva.
———. 1981. La ricerca delle radici. Antologia personale. Torino: Einaudi.
———. 1984. Ad ora incerta. Milano: Garzanti.
———. 1988. Primo Levi: Collected Poems. Translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. Boston, MA: Faber and Faber.
———. 1996. Survival in Auschwitz. Translated by Stuart Woolf. New York: Touchstone.
Levi, Primo, and Peter Forbes, eds. 2002. The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Magavern, Sam. 2009. Primo Levi’s Universe: A Writer’s Journey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pilz, Kerstin. 2005. Mapping Complexity: Literature and Science in the Works of Italo Calvino. Leicester: Troubador.
Pliny the Elder. 1855. The Natural History. London: Taylor and Francis.
Pliny, and Gian Biagio Conte. 1982. Storia Naturale. Torino: Einaudi.
Pugliese, Stanislao G. 2005. The Legacy of Primo Levi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sodi, Risa, and Millicent Marcus, eds. 2011. New Reflections on Primo Levi: Before and After Auschwitz. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thomson, Ian. 2002. Primo Levi: A Life. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Zim, Rivkah. 2014. The Consolations of Writing: Literary Strategies of Resistance from Boethius to Primo Levi. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Agostini, C. (2018). Communicating Across Cultures: The Case of Primo Levi, Italo Calvino, and Pliny the Elder. In: Godev, C. (eds) Translation, Globalization and Translocation. Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61818-0_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61818-0_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61817-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61818-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)