Il futuro ha un cuore antico
by Levi, Carlo
In 1955, between October and November, Levi spent one month in the Soviet Union: first he flew to Moscow, then he went to Leningrad, to Kyiv, and finally he visited Armenia and Georgia. An extraordinary travel journal is born from this experience: it closely follows his itineraries and visits with a careful eye that always seizes the humanity of the people he encounters.
“Just like the inhabitants of New England preserved the puritan ways of their homeland, or Canadians retained eighteenth century French, the Soviets remained the guardians of European sentiments and customs from when Europe was united and believed, as a whole, in a few ideal truths and had faith in its own existence”.
This is what Carlo Levi discusses in his second travelogue published in 1956. It is both a report and a poem full of details and descriptions, a snapshot of a world that was simultaneously
old-fashioned and young. The author accompanies us through his days: we find him among the monks of Zagorsk and the churches of Kyiv, in the Chekhovian public bathhouses of Moscow,
at the theater for a performance of Mayakovsky’s play The Bedbug, with the dogs of the Pavlov Institute, among the Rembrandts at the Hermitage or the mediocre paintings of the Tretyakov
Gallery. A constant merry-go-round of characters twirls around him and his breathless (and inseparable) interpreter Stjopa. They meet writers, such as Ehrenburg, Simonov, Fedin, and Nekrasov. But also the hermit Zagorsk, the Armenian vintner Puccinjan, a young man with a fur coat made of tails of pigics (an imaginary animal), girls from Leningrad, and students from Moscow’s university… The Soviet Union is captured in all of its infinite details and attitudes, with a series of very rapid and also all-encompassing images.
- Publishing house Einaudi
- Year of publication 2025
- Number of pages 336
- ISBN 9788806263164
- Foreign Rights Valeria Zito
- Ebook www.einaudi.it
- Price 13.00
Levi, Carlo
Einaudi published the following works by Carlo Levi (Turin 1902 – Rome 1975): Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, Paura della libertà, Le parole sono pietre, L’Orologio, Il futuro ha un cuore antico, Un volto che ci somiglia, Tutto il miele è finito, Quaderno a cancelli, Scritti politici and La doppia notte dei tigli.
