In 1946 he began to gravitate around the Einaudi publishing house in Turin, selling books on instalments and simultaneously publishing articles on "Unità". In the first post-war period he also became a friend of Cesare Pavese and began to collaborate with the magazine "Il Politecnico" by Elio Vittorini. Cascione" Assault Division.Īfter completing his partisan experience, in September 1945 he enrolled in the third year of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Turin, where he moved permanently.Īs activist of the PCI in the province of Imperia, he wrote in various local periodicals including "La Voce della Democrazia" (organ of the CLN of Sanremo), "La nostra lotta" (organ of the Matuziana section of the PCI) and "Il Garibaldino" (organ of the "Felice Cascione" Division). In January 1943 he then moved to the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry of the University of Florence, where he passed three exams.Īfter the 8th September 1943, reluctant to use the lever of the Republic of Salò and spent a few months in hiding until he heard the news of the death in combat of the young communist doctor Felice Cascione, decided to join the organisation of the PCI by participating in the Resistance in the Maritime Alps under the 2nd Garibaldi "F. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Turin, passing four exams in the first year. He had the future founder of the newspaper, "La Repubblica" Eugenio Scalfari, as a fellow student, with whom, during his university years, he intertwined a dense intellectual-goliardic correspondence.
Cassini", where he obtained his high school diploma in 1941.
In 1934, having passed the entrance exam, he enrolled at the Liceo-Ginnasio "G.D. also becoming a balilla in the last years of primary schools.
George College in 1927, and later, between 19, the Valdensian Schools in Via Roma, grew up with the precocious awareness of a difference from his peers and with the imperative to live up to this nonconformity. Italo, who attended nursery school at St. The Calvin brothers did not receive religious education. More intransigent appeared, in the eyes of his son Italo, « the unadorned anti-fascist or pre-fascist rigour, impersonated by his mother's moralistic laic scientific humanitarian anti-bellicist zoophile moralistic severity » (see Autobiografia politica giovanile in Saggi, 1995, II, p. In 1927 he was born in Sanremo Floriano, Italo's only brother.Ĭalvino's parents, who came from families of republican and Mazzinian tradition, were anti-monarchical and anticlerical. Italo was destined to be the only man of letters in a family of scientists: as such he always considered himself, not entirely jokingly, the 'black sheep' of his lineage. They were responsible for the transformation of Sanremo into the "city of flowers". His father had been appointed director of the experimental floriculture station 'Orazio Raimondo' and, following the bankruptcy of Banca Garibaldi, made the park of his villa available for the continuation of his institute's research and teaching activities. 553), which had no memories of Cuba: his parents already returned to San Remo in the autumn of 1925 and settled in Villa Meridiana, a building in a dominant position over the city, introducing exotic plants such as avocado, papaya, guayaba, pink grapefruit, and managing the ancestral countryside of San Giovanni. « I am Ligurian, my mother is Sardinian: I have the laconicity of many Ligurians and the mutism of Sardinians, I am the crossroads of two silent races », the writer would have confessed ("L'occhio e il silenzio" then in "Sono nato in America.", 2012, p. He was born in Santiago de las Vegas, near Havana, on 15 October 1923 from the Sanremo agronomist Mario and the scientist Giuliana Eva Mameli from Sassari.