The Inescapable Importance of the Subject in 'Le Cosmicomiche' and 'Ti con Zero' by Italo Calvino

The study of the dialogue between literature and science has been a subject of increasing interest in recent years. My work addresses this conjunction by exploring Italo Calvino's two collections of short stories, 'Le Cosmicomiche' and 'Ti con Zero.' These two works represent Calvino's first explicit attempt to contribute to the discourse on the negotiation between literature and science. Within this context, this study focuses on the Calvinian representation of the self, conceived as a mental search for any possible concretion of reality. After analyzing in the first chapter the relationship between the world and the self, in the other two chapters I address two ways in which Calvino articulates the preponderance of the subject in the two collections. In this regard, I identify these articulations with Calvino's representation of love, and the discourse on language that emerges from the different accounts.