3 More Calvinos

I got very lucky earlier this month and found a nearly-pristine copy of the Vintage edition of Our Ancestors in an Oxfam shop for 99p! It’s a collection of three Calvino novels: The Cloven Viscount, The Baron in the Trees, and The Non-existent Knight. Those of you with excellent memories might recall that I read The Baron in the Trees already this year, back in April, so whence cometh the third of the Calvino books that this post title promises? Well—a few weeks previously I had found a copy of Invisible Cities, also in a charity shop, and read it just before finding Our Ancestors. Herewith, some thoughts.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, transl. William Weaver (1972): I so very much wanted to like this more than I actually did. It is not the kind of book that is best read all the way through at once, and I probably did it a disservice by reading it that way, but it is so short that it’s hard to resist the temptation to do so. Structurally, it’s a collection of very brief vignettes, each describing a single fantastical city and purportedly the report of explorer Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. Italicised sections punctuate the descriptions, depicting the khan’s conversations with Polo and his growing suspicions that these cities shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value. The gag is that Polo is simply describing, and re-describing, Venice, his hometown. But, frankly, it doesn’t work for me. It’s too abstract again, too removed from Venice’s physical historical reality and too happy to play in the realm of figurative truth (what is a city’s true form, how do we define city, etc., etc.) I know that’s the entire point of the book, and for those who like their fiction to be mashed into philosophy like blue and red PlayDoh, the one utterly inextricable from the other, Invisible Cities is a great example. I just prefer a different approach to the fantastical.

Such as…

The Cloven Viscount, by Italo Calvino, transl. Archibald Colquhoun (1952): Narrated, like The Baron in the Trees, by a young relative of the title character, this fairytale-like novella recounts the history of Baron Medardo, who is bisected by a Turkish cannonball and finds that his soul, or personality, has been likewise cut in two. The first to return home is the Bad ‘Un, who hangs peasants indiscriminately, persecutes a local goose girl, chops mushrooms, pears, and trees in half to reflect his own state of being, and repeatedly attempts to murder his little nephew. Confusion ensues when the other half of Medardo—the Good ‘Un—turns up, falling in love with the same goose girl and providing medical care, religious solace, and Good Samaritan-like deeds to the rural populace. These are not met with universal approbation, either; as the narrating nephew tells us, “we felt ourselves lost between an evil and a virtue equally inhuman.” Only when naive Pamela (the goose girl) agrees to marry one of the Medardos, and the two halves end up dueling each other, is the balance of wholeness restored. I absolutely loved this; it feels entirely of a piece with The Baron in the Trees, with whimsy and cruelty held in perfect balance. It takes joint first place as my favourite Calvino so far.

The Nonexistent Knight, by Italo Calvino, transl. Archibald Colquhoun (1959): Generally considered slightly less successful than The Cloven Viscount, an assessment with which I think I agree. Tonally, it’s of a piece with the previous book: Agilulf, a paladin in the service of Charlemagne, is just a suit of impeccable white armour, with no body inside, although that doesn’t stop him from participating in battles, attracting lovers, and defending his honour against impugnment. Structurally, the narrator is far removed from the scene of the action—we find out only late in the novella that she is a nun writing the story as an act of penance (and has a secret identity that is revealed almost on the last page)—and there is a certain diffuseness to the plot: Agilulf ends up embarking on a quest to prove that the woman he saved from rape fifteen years ago was a virgin at the time, but this quest only begins in chapter seven of twelve. Meanwhile, his squire, the madman Gurduloo; his protegé, the young nobleman Raimbaud; and another youthful knight, Torrismund, all have their own quests to execute, for love or parental recognition or (in Gurduloo’s case) simply to follow his deranged instincts, which leave him unable to determine whether he is himself or whatever he interacts with (soup, ducks, a horse, etc.) A lovely satire on the picaresque plot, just a little less concentrated in effect than Viscount and Baron.

It’s incredibly difficult to work out a complete bibliography for Calvino because some of his stories and novellas were republished in multiple different collections, but I’ve now read at least nine works: Viscount, Baron, Knight, Invisible Cities, Marcovaldo, The Complete Cosmicomics, If on a winter’s night a traveler, Collection of Sand, and The Road to San Giovanni. Where to go next? Clearly his short fable-like work is a winner with me, so I’m juggling the ideas of Italian Folktales, Mr. Palomar, possibly Into the War (I’ve enjoyed his nonfictional and autobiographical work a lot too). Thoughts?