Telling tales about 'Impegno': Commitment and hindsight in Vittorini and Calvino

This article considers the assessments made by Elio Vittorini and Italo Calvino of their own early critical and narrative texts, written predominantly during the high period of 'impegno' (political commitment) in Italy, between the 1930s and 1960s. Hindsight and recognition are key concepts used to show the effects of individual and collective experience on each author's response to his past, as manifested in past writing. Encompassing issues including commitment to fascism and communism, self-representation and self-editing, remorse and nostalgia, the 'neoavanguardia,' semiotics, and reader-response, the article exposes the difficult nature of the relationship between writer, text, reader and society in committed writing, from the beginnings of 'impegno' to the 1990s