The Daughters of the Moon by Italo Calvino
READING FICTION BLOG
Tuesday’s Tale of Magical Realism, June 25, 2019
Nude women, New York City, and the moon. If you love magical realism that holds deep edges of fantasy folk tales, this is your story. Author Italo Calvino asks the question, can the moon die? What if the moon orbited close to Earth? What if the moon was full of eyes and shimmering colors? This 1968 short story is unusual and unforgettable. Calvino was a passionate believer that art could unite the self and heal. His writing just explodes in this rather vigorous and imaginative ride.
“The moon is old, Qfwfq agreed, pitted with holes, worn out. Rolling naked through the skies, it erodes and loses its flesh like a bone that’s been gnawed. This is not the first time that such a thing has happened. I remember moons that were even older and more battered than this one; I’ve seen loads of these moons, seen them being born and running across the sky and dying out, one punctured by hail from shooting stars, another exploding from all its craters, and yet another oozing drops of topaz-colored sweat that evaporated immediately, then being covered by greenish clouds and reduced to a dried-up, spongy shell.”
The ending, what happens in time, will grab and hold a long time. A beauty!
Read the story at the New Yorker Magazine:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/02/23/the-daughters-of-the-moon
Listen to the audio here: https://www.wnyc.org/story/adee7d1df5ac724bab592aa2/
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy, the Cosmicomics collection of short stories, and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter’s night a traveler.
“It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear.”
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