Thus, where Marcovaldo represents the hope of nature co-existing with an urban environment, Amadigi represents the absolute destruction of nature by the city. It is interesting to note that Marcovaldo dislikes Amadigi “perhaps because of those eyeglasses that examined the pavement of the streets, seeking any trace of nature, to be eradicated by his broom” (3). He is particularly worried that Amadigi, the street-cleaner, will get the mushrooms first. Marcovaldo worries that someone else will find the mushrooms, and he will not even tell his family where they are for fear that someone will harvest them before he can. His children, who have lived in the city all their lives, do not even know what mushrooms are. He dreams of eating fresh mushrooms, and tells his family about them. Finding the mushrooms excites his imagination, making him feel that “the gray and wretched world surrounding him seemed suddenly generous with hidden riches something could still be expected of life, beyond the hourly wage of his stipulated salary, with inflation index, family grant, and cost-of-living allowance” (2). The story tells of how Marcovaldo spots a clump of mushrooms growing under the trees at his tram stop. The first story, “Mushrooms in the city,” which takes place in the Spring, is a good example of how Marcovaldo’s misguided perceptions of nature put him at odds with urban life. The stories about Marcovaldo and his family all have a humorous irony about them, which often concerns his attempts to merge his perceptions of nature into his urban life. Where Marcovaldo himself is thrilled by nature, his children, who are thoroughly urban, seem to misunderstand any references to natural things.
Although it is never stated whether or not Marcovaldo himself ever lived in the countryside, his fixation with nature in the midst of the city makes him a transitional figure who represents the results of urban migration on people who a few generations ago belonged to an agricultural peasant class. Although he is a factory worker in an urban area, Marcovaldo “possessed an eye ill-suited to city life,” and is always noticing the signs of nature in his environment, “discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence” (1). Marcovaldo is a poor workman living in an industrial city in northern Italy during the 1950’s and ’60’s. This gives the effect of the reader experiencing a span of several years duration in the life of Marcovaldo. The stories are placed within the book in a seasonal order in other words, the first story takes place in Spring, the second in Summer, and so on, consecutively. This book is a collection of twenty short stories, all of which depict events in the life of the title character, Marcovaldo. This paper will discuss Italo Calvino’s book Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City.
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