Le due tensioni

In 1967, when Le Due Tensioni was first published, Italo Calvino called it "a discourse on the place of literature in culture" or on the "varied role it is to play in the transformation of society." This volume, which appears here in a new edition with an appendix of previously unpublished materials, is a collection of reading notes, philosophical reworkings, ideological considerations, intuitions, citations: an infinity of material in a chaotic, heterogeneous form, collected by Vittorini not necessarily with the goal of publication. Despite its shapeless structure, Le Due Tensioni is an unusual intellectual thesis, reflecting on the 20th century and the paradigms of the modern.