Antichi naviganti e pastori erranti

Notas sobre el tópico de la contemplación del cielo a partir de algunas trazas leopardianas en "Palomar" de Calvino

Abstract

The reception of Italo Calvino's novel Mr. Palomar in the Spanish-speaking context is mediated by a single translation, used by 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 lost. The present work points out this loss, examining how this is not a somewhat secondary or insignificant reference, but, on the contrary, an allusion that positions Calvino's text 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 man, for whom the contemplation of the stars no longer implies serenity and orientation, but, on the contrary, lack of understanding, insecurity and bewilderment.