Italo Calvino’s “The Silver Nose”: A B2 Italian Reading Activity

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Fairy tales are perfect material for upper-intermediate Italian: clear plots, rich vocabulary and plenty of passato remoto, the tense of storytelling. Today’s B2 activity is based on a tale collected by Italo Calvino: Il naso d’argento (“The Silver Nose”). You will read a short biography of the writer, a teaching summary of the story in Italian, a quick guide to the passato remoto and five exercises with answers. The story and the exercises are in Italian; the explanations are in English.

Who was Italo Calvino (1923-1985)?

Calvino is one of the best-loved Italian writers of the twentieth century. He was born on 15 October 1923 in Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, where his parents, both scientists, were working. The family returned to Italy in 1925 and settled in Sanremo, Liguria, where he grew up among his father’s experimental farms and the nearby woods, an environment that left a deep trace in his imagination. In 1944 he joined the Resistance (the Garibaldi Brigades) and fought in the Maritime Alps, an experience that inspired his first novel, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest of Spiders, 1947).

His writing then opened up to fantasy and allegory. The trilogy I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors), made up of Il visconte dimezzato (1952), Il barone rampante (1957) and Il cavaliere inesistente (1959), features a viscount cut in half, a baron who lives in the trees and a knight who does not exist. In Le città invisibili (1972) Marco Polo describes imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The lectures he was preparing for Harvard University, published after his death as Lezioni americane (Six Memos for the Next Millennium), name the values he wished to hand down to future literature: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility and multiplicity. Calvino died in Siena on 19 September 1985.

The “Italian Folktales” (Fiabe italiane)

In 1956 the publisher Einaudi issued Fiabe italiane (Italian Folktales): two hundred tales chosen from the collections of nineteenth-century folklorists and gathered from every region of Italy. Calvino translated them from the dialects into Italian and rewrote them in a clear, lively style, to give Italy a national collection comparable to the one the Brothers Grimm had given Germany. He also recorded the source of each tale. In his introduction he wrote a famous sentence: «le fiabe sono vere» (fairy tales are true), because, in their own symbolic language, they tell the possible destinies of every human being.

Il naso d’argento comes from the Langhe, in Piedmont. Below is a teaching summary of the story, written for this activity: to read Calvino’s own version, look for the book in a library or bookshop.

The story in brief (in Italian)

C’era una volta una povera donna che aveva tre figlie. Un giorno si presentò un signore molto ricco, con un naso d’argento, e chiese di portare con sé la figlia maggiore. La madre, abbagliata dalle sue ricchezze, acconsentì. Nessuno sapeva che quell’uomo era il Diavolo travestito.

Il Naso d’Argento portò la ragazza nel suo splendido palazzo, le diede tutte le chiavi e le disse: «Puoi aprire tutte le porte, tranne una». Poi le mise un fiore tra i capelli. Appena lui partì, la ragazza, vinta dalla curiosità, aprì la porta proibita: dietro c’erano le fiamme dell’Inferno. Il calore fece appassire il fiore. Al ritorno, il Naso d’Argento vide il fiore appassito, capì tutto e gettò la ragazza tra le fiamme. Con la seconda figlia accadde esattamente la stessa cosa.

Venne il turno della terza figlia, la più scaltra. Prima di aprire la porta proibita, si tolse il fiore dai capelli e lo mise al sicuro. Vide le sorelle tra le fiamme, le tirò fuori di nascosto e poi rimise il fiore fresco tra i capelli. Il Naso d’Argento, vedendo il fiore intatto, credette di avere finalmente una ragazza obbediente.

Allora la ragazza lo ingannò: nascose le sorelle in alcuni sacchi e gli chiese di portarli alla madre, raccomandandogli di non aprirli perché lei lo avrebbe visto da lontano. Alla fine si nascose lei stessa nell’ultimo sacco e lasciò in casa un fantoccio al suo posto. Quando il Diavolo capì l’inganno, era troppo tardi: le tre sorelle erano salve, a casa con la madre.

What makes this tale interesting

• The forbidden door: a motif found in many traditions (it recalls the tale of Bluebeard). Curiosity is both the heroine’s danger and, in the end, her strength.
• The rule of three: three sisters, three attempts. The first two fail in the same way, the third succeeds by using her intelligence (scaltrezza).
• The clever heroine: she does not wait to be rescued; she saves her sisters and tricks the devil.
• The symbolic object: the flower, a simple object that reveals the truth.

Grammar focus: the passato remoto

The passato remoto is the tense of narration about events that are finished and distant from the present: fairy tales, history, novels. In spoken northern Italian it is often replaced by the passato prossimo, while in Tuscany and the south it is still used in conversation. At B2 you need to recognise it easily and to use it in writing.

	-are (portare)	-ere (vendere)	-ire (partire)
io	portai	vendei (vendetti)	partii
tu	portasti	vendesti	partisti
lui/lei	portò	vendé (vendette)	partì
noi	portammo	vendemmo	partimmo
voi	portaste	vendeste	partiste
loro	portarono	venderono (vendettero)	partirono

Many of the most common verbs are irregular, especially in the first and third person singular and the third plural: essere (fui, fosti, fu, fummo, foste, furono), avere (ebbi), fare (feci), dire (dissi), venire (venni), vedere (vidi), mettere (misi), chiedere (chiesi), prendere (presi), dare (diedi). In a story, the passato remoto tells the events (aprì la porta), while the imperfetto describes the background (c’era una volta una povera donna).

Exercise 1: true or false (vero o falso)?

1. Il Naso d’Argento è il Diavolo travestito.
2. La madre delle ragazze è molto ricca.
3. Il fiore rivela se la ragazza ha aperto la porta proibita.
4. La terza sorella non apre mai la porta proibita.
5. La terza sorella salva le sorelle grazie a un inganno.

Answers: 1. T – 2. F (she is poor) – 3. T – 4. F (she opens it, but first puts the flower somewhere safe) – 5. T.

Exercise 2: words from the story

Match each word to its definition.

Word	Definition
1. scaltro	a. seccarsi e perdere freschezza (di un fiore)
2. abbagliato	b. un trucco per far credere qualcosa di falso
3. appassire	c. furbo, capace di trovare soluzioni intelligenti
4. il fantoccio	d. colpito da qualcosa di così brillante da non vedere più bene
5. l’inganno	e. una figura che imita una persona

Answers: 1-c (shrewd), 2-d (dazzled), 3-a (to wilt), 4-e (dummy), 5-b (deception).

Exercise 3: the passato remoto

Find the infinitive of these passato remoto verbs from the story.

si presentò – chiese – diede – disse – mise – aprì – fece – vide – capì – venne

Answers: presentarsi – chiedere – dare – dire – mettere – aprire – fare – vedere – capire – venire.

Exercise 4: passato remoto or imperfetto?

Complete with the correct form of the verb in brackets.

1. C’______ (essere) una volta tre sorelle che ______ (vivere) con la madre.
2. Un giorno un signore ______ (bussare) alla porta.
3. La ragazza ______ (avere) molta paura, ma ______ (decidere) di agire.
4. Il Diavolo ______ (capire) l’inganno troppo tardi.

Answers: 1. era / vivevano – 2. bussò – 3. aveva / decise – 4. capì.

Exercise 5: your turn to write

Retell the story from the third sister’s point of view (120-150 words), using the passato remoto and the imperfetto. Or answer this question in Italian: is curiosity a flaw or a quality we need in order to grow?

Common mistakes with the passato remoto

• Regularising irregular verbs. Learners often say vedé or mettò instead of vide and mise. Learn the irregular verbs from the list above as whole forms, not as rules.
• Forgetting the written accent. The third person singular carries it: portò, partì, capì. Without it the word becomes a different form (porto is “I carry”).
• Using the passato remoto for the background. Descriptions and habits belong to the imperfetto (aveva tre figlie); single events belong to the passato remoto (si presentò un signore).
• Mixing it with the passato prossimo in a written story. In a tale, choose one narrating tense and keep it consistent.

Questions to reflect on

• Why do you think the first two sisters fail in exactly the same way? What does the repetition do for the reader?
• Is the third sister clever, brave, or both? Which actions in the story support your opinion?
• Do you know a fairy tale from your own culture with a forbidden door, room or object? Compare it with this one in a short paragraph in Italian.

Teacher’s tip: after reading, ask students to retell the story aloud in the passato remoto in pairs, one sentence each, without looking at the text. It is a quick way to move the tense from recognition to production.

Keep reading

• Learn Italian with podcasts: Giovanni Boccaccio
• Dante’s Vita Nuova
• Learning Italian as an adult

Let’s read Italian literature together

Fairy tales, short stories and novels are the most enjoyable way to reach B2 and beyond. Book a free trial lesson or take the free level test. My structured courses are coming soon: join the waiting list to be the first to know.

Sources

• Università di Padova – Italo Calvino: potere e fascinazione della fiaba (exhibition materials; Fiabe italiane, Einaudi 1956, 200 tales)
• Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná (journal article) – “Il naso d’argento” in Calvino’s Fiabe italiane (origin of the tale: Langhe, Piedmont)
• Treccani – Italo Calvino
• Treccani – Calvino, Italo (biographical entry: birth, Sanremo, Resistance, death)

The summary of the tale is my own teaching summary; the exercises and the advice come from my experience teaching Italian to foreigners.