The Distance Of The Moon

I had to do a semester long project based off one of Italo Calvino’s works, Invisible Cities, so I was excited to read another one of his pieces. He did not let me down at all. I love how he describes his worlds. They are incredibly rich with content but at the same time, they are so whimsical and obscure that it’s almost hard to picture them. In this story, we have our protagonist who is also our narrator describing his adventures when the moon used to be close enough to Earth that humans were able to climb onto it and collect it’s ‘milk’. The imagery is fantastic, Calvino describes how the moon still has its own gravitational pull that will pull in the ocean and it’s creatures and suspend them in the air. I cannot even imagine going on a boat to see the moon and also experiencing floating octopuses and fish being pulled toward it. Our narrator also includes his tragic endeavor in love, when a married woman who’s attracted his eye eventually realizes her own love for the narrator’s deaf cousin will never be returned because he is truly in love with the moon. This causes her to ‘become’ the moon when she finds herself stuck on its surface and as the satellite eventually drifts away from our planet, she does nothing to pull herself back to her home planet. It’s a very beautiful story (although tragic for our protagonist). I definitely think that this story was written with the intention of creating literature. I wouldn’t think of this so much as a genre piece, but it could be put into some category if you looked at it hard enough. I think Sci-Fi is appropriate, but I one hundred percent do not think Italo Calvino wrote this while thinking “I’m going to write a sci-fi, romance piece. Yes. That is specifically what I am going to write.” I don’t think it’s a necessary distinction, but I do think it’s something to keep in mind when reading any piece of literature. It’s kind of like when people don’t understand a movie; if they would’ve known the director’s intentions behind creating it, maybe the movie would’ve made a little more sense. I’ll be honest, I did not understand what writing literature for the sake of creating literature meant when I initially read it. But then when I rad this story, I understood it. I change my mind, I do think it’s an important distinction. Especially if you’re an artist (that includes writing) you should be able to create just for the sake of it without having to worry about what you’ll make or what category it will fit under, just get in there and get your hands dirty. Isn’t that what the spirit of creativity is all about? I loved this short story, just for that. I wasn’t thinking about genre at all while reading it, I was just engaged and having a good time being immersed into the work.