The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.
Italo CalvinoRead
...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life involves exchanges that often reflect deeper truths, as symbolized by the scents in this quote.
Italo Calvino's quote highlights the transactional nature of life, suggesting that our experiences are shaped by the exchanges we make with others. The imagery of smells represents the essence of these interactions, where the young lady and the convict trade scents—her perfume and his jail's odor—symbolizing the complex and often messy relationships we navigate, and how we too are left with our own singular experiences, like the beer in the narrator's case.
Themes
LifeTradingSmellsRelationshipsExperiences
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a discussion about the nature of human relationships at a philosophy seminar.
More from Italo Calvino
All quotes →Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.
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Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
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The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
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Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can’t make anything.
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Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.
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