Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Six Memos for the Next Millennium is a book based on a series of lectures written by Italo Calvino for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, but never delivered as Calvino died before leaving Italy. The lectures were originally written in Italian and translated by Patrick Creagh. The lectures were to be given in the fall of 1985, and Memos was published in 1988. The memos are lectures on the values of literature which Calvino felt were important for the coming millennium. At the time of his death Calvino had finished all but the last lecture.

The Memos

The values which Calvino highlights are:

1. Lightness
2. Quickness
3. Exactitude
4. Visibility
5. Multiplicity

All that is known of the sixth lecture is that it was to be on consistency.