As defined by Italo Calvino, it is the “book that must be the starting point for any discussion of Carlo Levi as a writer”… “an unusual kind of book in our literature, intended to propose the broad outlines of a conception of the world, a reinterpretation of history”. Even though it was written at the end of 1939, while the beginning of Second World War was raging and Levi was exiled in France, the book was not published until 1946. In the preface to the first edition, Levi wrote that it was “a small book, only meant to be a preface to a much larger book, that uncovers on each page what I thought was the truth of the world”. This essay, full of philosophical and psycho-analytic subjections, concludes stating that “Tomorrow is not prepared with brushes but in the hearts of men: and men who have followed their Gods to the depths of hell, yearn to return to the light and sprout, like buried seeds. From the summit of Fear, a hope is born, a light of agreement for man and things. Gods die, the human person is recreated. Can death and night overturn destiny? The war of man with himself is over, if art really shows us the future, and if we can read it on men’s faces and gestures.”
