How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Crowding behind Lotaria is the vanguard of a phalanx of young girls with limpid, serene eyes, slightly alarming eyes, perhaps because they are too limpid and serene. Among them a pale man forces his way, bearded, with a sarcastic gaze and a systematically disillusioned curl to his lips." (7.25)
The descriptive language of this passage can almost tell you everything you need to know about what Calvino thinks of academic readers. The female students "with limpid, serene eyes" sound like they're under some sort of brain-numbing spell; the pale man who forces his way through them is Professor Galligani, the professional rival of Uzzi-Tuzii. But before you even know anything about the man, Calvino gives Galligani "a sarcastic gaze and a systematically disillusioned curl to his lips." There are several loaded words in this description: for starters, "sarcastic" suggests that the professor prefers to approach the world from an ironic distance that is pretty much the opposite of the innocence that Calvino celebrates in Ludmilla. And the "disillusioned curl to his lips" suggests that the pleasure and wonder of life has been "systematically" bled out of Galligan. What's the system that's done this? Most likely the university.
Quote #5
You are impatient […] but you must wait until the girls and the young men of the study group have been handed out their assignments: during the reading there must be some who underline the reflections of production methods, others the processes of reification, others the sublimation of repression […] others the transgression of roles, in politics and in private life. (7.35)
In order to get a look at a book that interests you, you and Ludmilla sit down with a university study group. You're desperate to get on with the reading, but you have to wait for the students to figure out their personal agendas before listening to the story. All of these agendas are annoyingly intellectual and pointless; the students use them to carve up the book like a dead turkey.
According to Calvino, this desire to dissect and analyze a book completely destroys the pleasure of reading and even leads the students to tear up the book and scatter it over several departments. This physical mutilation is basically just an expression of the symbolic mutilation they commit on the book by the way they read. In other words, Calvino's not the biggest fan of this crew.
Quote #6
"Excuse me, I was looking for the other pages, the rest," you say […]
"Listen, there are so many study groups, and the Erulo-Altaic Department had only one copy, so we've divided it up; the division caused some argument, the book came to pieces, but I really believe I captured the best part." (9.9, 9.12)
After Lotaria stops reading Without fear of wind or vertigo, you ask her if you can see the manuscript so you can continue reading. The class, though, is only interested in discussing the book in academic terms. They care so little about the story and so much about the "ideas" they can discuss through it that they've even allowed the original manuscript to be torn up and scattered over various departments. They feel absolutely nothing of the desire that makes you and Ludmilla want to continue reading. And in Calvino's world, there's no worse perversion that education could produce.