Italo Calvino’s Into the War is a contemplative look at the summer of 1940 in Italy. It considers different generations caught up in the onset of WWII.

Calvino (1923-1985) is most famous for his prescient, fantastical works which crossed scientific facts with science fiction (the likes of The Cosmicomics short stories from 1965). But in this much shorter work, consisting of less than 100 pages, everything is rather introspective.

First published in 1956, there are three stories: Into the War, The Avanguardisti in Menton, and UNPA Nights. Calvino was too young to fight for Mussolini’s Italian vision, but he did go into the youth brigades. Much of which inspired these works.

Memories of Calvino’s Adolescence From Into The War

“So, with my thoughts following my father’s footsteps through the countryside, I fell asleep; and he never knew that he had had me so close to him.”

The eponymous opener displays what it was like for Italian youth to be conscripted into Mussolini’s army. Whilst Avanguardisti in Menton takes on an unusually plodding nature, with reflections on a visit to the dull French town of Menton.

It was a successful conquest of Italy in the first months of WWII (the only one, we should add, so hardly a glowing triumph).

With the autobiographical tone set, Calvino dips further into his past, revealing a strange time when fascism ruled with a smug grin.

Our favourite from the three works is the closer—UNPA Nights.

This lightens the tone considerably as two friends, on guard in a town during a blackout, abandon their duties and roam around engaging in youthful hedonism. It’s a nostalgic, amusing tale which is sure to remind the reader what it was like to be an idiotic youth with no responsibilities.

There are comedic elements to UNPA Nights.

But overall, we think Into the War is primarily a work about poignancy. It’s a reflection of youth, of young people heading into war, and of observations on how that played out for otherwise day-to-day people.

“I had barely seen it. I was surprised that he was so young: he looked like a young man, with his firm, shaved neck, his taut and tanned skin, his sparkling eyes filled with anxious joy: there was war, the war he had created, and he was in the car with the generals; He was wearing a new uniform, he was spending his most active and breathless days, on those summer evenings he was quickly passing through villages where people knew him. And as if a game was being played, he was just looking for playmates, that’s all.”

Calvino’s other works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959) and Invisible Cities (1972). The latter is a curious novella framed as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo (see Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen).

We mention that as we think that’s where Into the War is so different amongst the Calvino canon of work.

It’s very personal. Rarely so, in fact, with intriguing reflections.

You could draw a comparison to what J. G. Ballard went on to do with Empire of the Sun in 1984. Another writer famous for his high concept ideas, that work was removed from all that. Instead, it was a very personal piece of writing.

As with Ballard, the writer here has great powers of observation.

But it is an almost muted selection. But it’s a fine work with the standard excellent prose you’d expect from one of Italy’s best writers (20th century and beyond).

First-time readers of Calvino may be surprised about this, but it has a kind of melodic quality. And that, we believe, makes it accessible for anyone wanting to experience the great pastiche writer’s works.

A Bit More About Calvino the Writer

Calvino was a forward-thinking writer. As as the ever-brilliant Maria Popova of Brain Pickings has pointed out (see Calvino on photography and the art of presence), he imagined Instagram way before it happened.

Long before Instagram, Italo Calvino wrote beautifully about photography and presence http://t.co/uMIlz0jqNK pic.twitter.com/HO4wcG31Ou

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) October 16, 2015

We highlight that as we think it covers the full reach of Calvino’s creative vision. He was much more than a writer.

A visionary is the somewhat cliched way of putting it.

But it’d be an accurate description, too, as his innovative take on writing marked him out from his peers. His love for episodic storytelling and idiosyncratic stories almost set him on a path alongside the surrealist French Oulipo movement (see Raymond Queneu’s Exercises in Style).

Literary critics could argue he was post-modernistic, others would suggest pre-modern era (due to his love of Ariosto, Boccaccio, Cervantes, and Rabelais). Calvino believed they had the special capacity for this.

“[The] infinite multiplicity of stories handed down from person to person.”

Above all else, Calvino was an exceptional world-builder, one with a focus on entertainment value for his readers.

“I consider that entertaining readers, or at least not boring them, is my first and binding social duty.”

And so, dear reader, there we have it. He did all of this for our entertainment and we must be thankful of his efforts.