Exactitude

When Calvino discussed the principle of exactitude in his text, he focused on the need for a plan when creating a text. It is important to know where you are going with a concept, because it prevents the writer from getting off topic. Exactitude represents the importance of being clear and precise in a text. If a writer is not careful about being exact in his or her arguments, they may lessen the effect that their words have on the reader. Calvino also stressed the importance of using concrete images that would be memorable for the reader to catch their attention and hold onto it.

It is easy as a writer to become sidetracked and end up writing something completely different than you had originally planned. Doing this makes the finished work less effective. Having a plan and sticking to it allows the writer to develop his or her ideas within a set of guidelines. I felt that this was the most important point that Calvino made about exactitude. There are many works of literature out there that seem to jump all over the place, which makes them very hard to read and understand. It is nice to open a book and be able to follow the story without having to turn back to the previous chapter to understand how the chapters are connected. I chose an image of a man deciding which direction to take to represent the principle of exactitude. I think it represents the importance of making a choice about how to approach writing and sticking with your original plan.The man in the image needs to make a choice in which direction to take, which is similar to the way that a writer needs to make a choice about what path they want to take in their writing before they can truly begin writing.

When thinking about an example for this principle, I kept thinking about the book The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. This book takes the path of telling the story of America's first serial killer and sticks to it. There is a lot of information about the other events taking place at the time, but Larson never deviates from his original purpose. He is able to include other information to prove his point, but he is precise in what he includes. This precision makes the book easier and more enjoyable to read because it allows the reader to simply read, while other works may require the reader to sift through information to decide what is essential for understanding the overall concept. I'm sure there are works that demonstrate this principle much better, but this is the one book that stuck out in my mind.

Quickness

Quickness was one of Calvino’s principles that I connected with the most. He talks about how important it is to be economical in the way that information is presented to the reader. I have read many books that go on for pages on a subject that could have been addressed in one paragraph. I don’t think this adds anything to the story, but in most cases causes the reader to become bored and unwilling to finish the text. Calvino stresses in his book that it is important to look at the situation when deciding on appropriate means of expression. There are times when lingering on a subject for a long period of time may be a good idea, but at other times it is more appropriate to use speed in a narrative.

The rhythm of a story is extremely important because it influences the way that the reader interprets the text. By focusing on the principle of quickness we can better understand how getting to the point can make it much easier for the reader to understand a text. It is certainly easier to read a paragraph that gives you all of the information you need while keeping you entertained, as opposed to reading four pages to get the same amount of information. I have chosen an image of an arrow hitting the center of a target to represent quickness. I think that it shows the importance of getting to the point instead of lingering over unimportant details. Another way that the target can be viewed is by representing the understanding of the reader. If a reader is forced to read through a five page description of one event, they are more likely to miss the message being conveyed, and would not hit the center of the target immediately. Hitting the center of the target can represent the directness of the writer, or the reader achieving the intended understanding of the text.

Avoiding wordiness and intense language can help readers be more interested in literature and understand it better. I was thinking about a piece of literature to represent this principle and settled on a negative example to demonstrate what I understood to be quickness. The novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was one of the hardest books that I ever had to endure, and one of the main problems I had with it was getting through pages of meaningless description. I think that the book is so full of description that it lessens the impact of the work. If Defoe had been more direct I think that the reader would be able to understand the book much easier. He winds the reader in circles instead of leading them directly to the desired sense of understanding he is trying to get across.

Lightness

One of the main points that Calvino makes when he talks about the importance of lightness in literature is that lightness involves precision and determination. There is no room for being vague when focusing on lightness. The language used in literature that has the quality of lightness seems to be weightless until the meaning actually seems to become weightless as well. Most readers have experienced literature that seems extremely heavy, which can make it harder to understand and enjoy the material. When the language used in a text is lighter the reader can focus more on the message than on interpreting the overlying language.

The image that Calvino used in the text to describe lightness was that one should try to be light like a bird, but not like a feather. When you think about this concept it becomes easier to understand what Calvino is trying to convey. A feather has no way to control what it does, but a bird is light enough to fly and defy gravity, but it can also determine its own path. I have selected an image of a bird soaring through the sky to represent lightness. I think that the image shows the importance of precision and focus, as well as showing how thought is involved. The bird is not merely floating through the air, but is controlling its movements. I also thought that the sky in the background helped to demonstrate the concept of lightness, because the bird is soaring through the air instead of sitting on a branch. The bird is floating through the air as well as going in a specific direction, which is what I felt that Calvino was encouraging when he talked about lightness.

The same concept can be applied to literature. I think that the area of literature that uses lightness the most is poetry. There are many poets that use light language to evoke a light happy feeling in the reader. I think that it is much easier to do this in poetry than it is in a longer work. Many poems not only read in a way that seems light, but they also appear more sparse and direct than other works. This adds to the overall feeling of lightness in poetry. There are certainly many poems that appear very heavy in nature, but I think that there are more that apply to the principle of lightness than those that rely on heaviness.