“The nonexistent knight” by Italo Calvino and the postwar European humanism

The article is devoted to the history of European intellectual culture of the second half of the XX century. At the core is the creative legacy of the Italian writer and publicist Italo Calvino (1923-1985), which is considered as a source of the history of ideas that prevailed in European culture after the end of World War II. The subject of the article is a set of ideas reflected in Calvino’s novel “The Nonexistent Knight” (1959). The author reconstructs the ideological context for the creation of this philosophical tale, examines the context of philosophical thought, the controversy around existentialism and its role in postwar intellectual culture. As a result, the author reveals the nature of the influence of Marxist and existentialist thought, and also shows the complex of philosophical, humanistic and anti-fascist ideas embedded in the novel. The features of the humanism inherent in Calvino as a representative of the “war-born generation” are clarified.