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calvino_heuristics [2014-05-21 18:45] – [Calvino Heuristics] maja | calvino_heuristics [2019-12-20 06:20] (current) – nik | ||
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====Calvino Heuristics==== | ====Calvino Heuristics==== | ||
- | In 'six memos for the next millenium' [[Italo Calvino]] explores six principles, which can be adapted for use as flexible heuristics | + | In 'six memos for the next millennium' [[Italo Calvino]] explores six principles, which can be adapted for use as flexible heuristics |
- | * Lightness | + | |
- | * Quickness | + | |
- | * Exactitude | + | |
- | * Visibility | + | |
- | * Multiplicity | + | |
* Consistency | * Consistency | ||
- | Full text: http://www.stanford.edu/ | + | [[https:// |
- | < | + | {{>http:// |
- | == Lightness == | ||
+ | ==== Lightness ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
“…my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.” | “…my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.” | ||
+ | </ | ||
- | * writing is a search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living. Too often writers look to include every detail in their stories, and it bogs them down. But we can choose to remove the unnecessary ties and worldly weight. Doing this liberates your writing, thus allowing you access to the realm of the combined consciousness, | + | writing is a search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living. Too often writers look to include every detail in their stories, and it bogs them down. But we can choose to remove the unnecessary ties and worldly weight. Doing this liberates your writing, thus allowing you access to the realm of the combined consciousness, |
- | == Quickness == | + | ==== Quickness |
+ | < | ||
“Quickness of style and thought means above all agility, mobility, and ease, all qualities that go with writing where it is natural to digress, to jump from one subject to another, to lose the thread a hundred times and find it again after a hundred more twists and turns.” | “Quickness of style and thought means above all agility, mobility, and ease, all qualities that go with writing where it is natural to digress, to jump from one subject to another, to lose the thread a hundred times and find it again after a hundred more twists and turns.” | ||
+ | </ | ||
- | * When Calvino speaks of quickness, he is referring to the ability of a writer to control the speed of a story. A writer is a manipulator of time, and must wrangle and wrestle it, delay it, cycle it or render it motionless using rhythms, patterns and formulas. | + | When Calvino speaks of quickness, he is referring to the ability of a writer to control the speed of a story. A writer is a manipulator of time, and must wrangle and wrestle it, delay it, cycle it or render it motionless using rhythms, patterns and formulas. |
- | * Success can come from quick flashes of inspiration, | + | Success can come from quick flashes of inspiration, |
- | == Exactitude == | + | ==== Exactitude |
- | * “To my mind exactitude means three things above all: | + | < |
+ | “To my mind exactitude means three things above all: | ||
(1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; | (1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; | ||
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(3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination” | (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination” | ||
+ | </ | ||
* Being concise is different to being precise. The best writers and editors don’t simply revise down – they edit for clarity. | * Being concise is different to being precise. The best writers and editors don’t simply revise down – they edit for clarity. | ||
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* before a word is placed onto the page, preparations are made. Calvino alludes to an old Chinese parable whereby a king asks an artist to draw a crab. The artist replies that he needs five years, a country house and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing has not began. “I need another five years,” says the artist, and the king grants them. At the end of these ten years, the artist picks up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he draws a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen. (see also [[flower_arranging]] by Thich Nhat Hanh) | * before a word is placed onto the page, preparations are made. Calvino alludes to an old Chinese parable whereby a king asks an artist to draw a crab. The artist replies that he needs five years, a country house and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing has not began. “I need another five years,” says the artist, and the king grants them. At the end of these ten years, the artist picks up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he draws a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen. (see also [[flower_arranging]] by Thich Nhat Hanh) | ||
- | == Visibility == | + | ==== Visibility |
+ | < | ||
“If I have included visibility in my list of values to be saved, it is to give warning of the danger we run in losing a basic human faculty: the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut, of bringing forth forms and colours from the lines of black letters on a white page, and in fact of thinking in terms of images.” | “If I have included visibility in my list of values to be saved, it is to give warning of the danger we run in losing a basic human faculty: the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut, of bringing forth forms and colours from the lines of black letters on a white page, and in fact of thinking in terms of images.” | ||
+ | </ | ||
- | * For successful imagery, writers must do two things: convert the visuals of the mind into words, and at the same time make sure that the words are so well-crafted that when read, the reader can instantly visualise every setting, every character, every chosen detail as if they were looking at it directly, and not at a page. It’s a deliberate process, this transmogrifying from image to text and back to image. And often it all starts with a single spark, a solitary image that for some reason is charged with meaning. Calvino describes the progression as something that is painstaking but not necessarily painful, from the moment you grasp the significance of a single image and then associate it with other images, forming a field of analogies, symmetries and confrontations, | + | For successful imagery, writers must do two things: convert the visuals of the mind into words, and at the same time make sure that the words are so well-crafted that when read, the reader can instantly visualise every setting, every character, every chosen detail as if they were looking at it directly, and not at a page. It’s a deliberate process, this transmogrifying from image to text and back to image. And often it all starts with a single spark, a solitary image that for some reason is charged with meaning. Calvino describes the progression as something that is painstaking but not necessarily painful, from the moment you grasp the significance of a single image and then associate it with other images, forming a field of analogies, symmetries and confrontations, |
- | == Multiplicity == | + | === Multiplicity |
+ | < | ||
“Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement…the grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various “codes” into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world.” | “Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement…the grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various “codes” into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world.” | ||
+ | </ | ||
+ | |||
+ | Such ambition – or overambition – is central to literature, if we are to believe that writing is an attempt to represent the multiplicity of connections in the universe: in short, everything. Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in writing. | ||
- | * Such ambition – or overambition – is central to literature, if we are to believe that writing is an attempt to represent the multiplicity of connections in the universe: in short, everything. Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in writing. | ||
* Writing has to aim high. It seeks to represent any and every area of knowledge – science, philosophy, politics, you name it – intertwining them all into narrative and setting. And not only must it include the past and current thinking of these fields, but it must go further, higher and over. This is multiplicity: | * Writing has to aim high. It seeks to represent any and every area of knowledge – science, philosophy, politics, you name it – intertwining them all into narrative and setting. And not only must it include the past and current thinking of these fields, but it must go further, higher and over. This is multiplicity: | ||
* Multiplicity works through the abiding of rules. | * Multiplicity works through the abiding of rules. | ||
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* if we are mindful of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency in our writing, if we respect that ‘the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different’, | * if we are mindful of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency in our writing, if we respect that ‘the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different’, | ||
- | </ | ||
From Sam Cooney: http:// | From Sam Cooney: http:// | ||
< | < | ||
- | The title Consistency appears at the bottom of the list of Six Memos. His wife Esther notes that Italo planned to write it when he arrived in Cambridge to give the lectures. Since many of Calvino' | + | The title Consistency appears at the bottom of the list of Six Memos. His wife Esther notes that Italo planned to write it when he arrived in Cambridge to give the lectures. Since many of Calvino' |
+ | </ | ||
From: http:// | From: http:// |