Reading and writing are the two spaces, the former visual and the latter auditory, representing the co-ordinates on which Italo Calvino constructed his universe of signs: the eye and the ear. They are the two sensory and mental functions permitting the transmission of knowledge, of a message, even in absence of the one “speaking”. We may assume that this is the reason why the writer has given such importance to the pretence of listening, obviously in addition to that attributed to sight. In our analysis of the poetics of listening in the work of Italo Calvino, we have attempted to show what made up the specificity of his ear. Just as for sight, Calvino applied a personal method of understanding to hearing: it is always the subject, the “I”, with all his organs of perception, who allows us to approach the external world and probe our own mind. Thus Calvino constructed a universe of very special sounds, as that sound-universe derived f! rom his personal world, from his personal experience, and above all from his way of relating to the external world: all this is never definitive and is also problematic as well. This is the specific method of one who rejects dogmas and schools, but cannot refrain from probing the real and fictional universe [both the one relating to life and that on the written page], even if at the end of the search, the result is always an empty circle, black space on a page. This also explains the various patterns that the listening function has taken on in the personal and literary journey of Italo Calvino.
