Libri in forma di arca. L’influenza della «Commedia» sul «Castello dei destini incrociati» di Italo Calvino

[Autom. eng. transl.] The title of the intervention is inspired by a formula coined by Domenico Scarpa, that of «ark-books», ie texts of an encyclopedic and eschatological nature, which take care of transporting the culture from which they come to subsequent generations. So is the Dante comedy, understood by Calvino as a "map of the world and of the knowledge" and elected as the primary source of inspiration for The castle of crossed destinies, a novel that tries to bring order to the babel of modernity, in order to reconstruct, thanks to the geometric severity of the formal composition, the ancient harmony of man in the cosmos. Through the reading of the Comedy given by the historian of science Giorgio de Santillana, Calvino re-launches its own challenge to the labyrinthine world, erecting a sort of "castle of the great spirits" in the company of which to re-establish the dispersed threads of the literary tradition, in a dialogue by the ethical and cognitive implications.