MLR, 101.4, 2006 II49 on the presence, in Colonna's canzoniere, of themes relating to three famous draw ings prepared for her by Michelangelo; but this issue is far from being exhausted, and Brundin's edition will surely encourage new efforts in this direction. To provide only a first example, Michelangelo's sculpture, too, could shed light on the enigmatic sonnet which concludes Vittoria's collection of religious poems, both in the Vatican manuscript and in the Valgrisi edition. In these verses Vittoria has doubts about the possibility of establishing an authentic form of communication through poetry: 'Di giovar poca, ma di nocer molta I Ragion vi scorgo' (Sonnet I03, p. I39: 'I perceive little reason why they [my verses] should be of use, I but much evidence that they do harm'). In Sonnet 45 (p. 93) earthly forms, even those created by the hand of the holiest of painters, Saint Luke, appear to her as 'partial and imperfect'. So in Sonnet 73 (p. I I5) she concludes: 'Thus I inscribe upon these pages a dark shadow Iinstead of that dazzling sun, and I speak to others here Iof heavenly things with broken and inadequate words.' The artistic metaphor leads quite naturally from these 'voci rotte e frali' (and rotte is preferable to the roche, 'hoarse', of the Valgrisi printing; see Bullock's edition, S i: 65) toMichelangelo's unfinished Prigioni. LICEOCLASSICOSTATALE 'CARLO BOTTA', IVREA MARCOMAGGI Carlo Levi: Narciso e la costruzione della realta. By ROSALBAGALVAGNO. Florence: Olschki. 2004. 22I Pp. ?22. ISBN 88-222-5407-4. This original and important book consists of eight essays, seven of which have been previously published, together with an appendix consisting of three texts by Levi (two of which are previously unpublished) and Calvino's I974 Presentazioneto seven lithographs by Levi on Cristo si efermato a Eboli. The first of these Levian texts is a poem, dated 7May I940, on the nymph Dafne, who appears inRosalba Galvagno's third chapter, an essay on Tolstoy which relates to the eighth chapter, 'La felicita e i romanzi', and a little-known interview first published in the review Scuola viva in I97I. Full details of the original publication of the relevant chapters are given in a 'premessa' (p. io). That it is still possible at this stage to produce unpublished poems by Levi suggests that we urgently need a good critical edition of his poetry. Galvagno refers to her book as 'questo lavoro' and 'otto studi' (p. 7) and states that 'indaga le determinazioni etiche e poetiche che hanno ispirato la "costruzione della realta" nell'opera di Carlo Levi' (p. 7). Do these eight essays, conceived and published separately, constitute a unitary work? I think they do, thanks to their re current themes. Words and images, for Levi, are complementary, used in a process of discovery and self-discovery: as he commented in an interview quoted here, 'Con la pittura, forse, sono andato scoprendo me stesso, con la scrittura ilmondo' (p. 8). This suggests that Levi's writing may be less narcissistic, in the pejorative sense, than some of his more hostile critics have allowed. The Calvino essay reproduced here (pp. 209-I 3) deals very effectively with the issue of Levi's supposed narcissism. One of the merits of Galvagno's work is that she ranges freely over all Levi's work, from his earliest poetry to his last writings, including apparently 'minor' or 'occasional' works such as introductions and prefaces. This means that she offers us a series of closer analyses of Quaderni a cancelli, that strange work written when the author was suffering from a detached retina, than we have elsewhere. Textual analysis is in fact Galvagno's strong point. It is true that she occasionally misses a trick-failing to notice, apparently, that what she describes as 'una lirica' (p. 36) prefacing fourteen lithographs entitled Gli amanti (Turin: Galleria La Bussola, I95 2) not only has fourteen lines but is a sonnet, the rhymes of whose tercets mirror each other (CDE/EDC). Levi ismaking a narcissistic witticism in verse. She also prefers II50 Reviews to stress Freud's influence on Levi and does not give due emphasis to Jung's, failing...