Björn recenserade Il cavaliere inesistente av Italo Calvino
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4 stjärnor
What starts out as a straight tale (and yes, there's an in-story storyteller telling us that they're telling us a tale) of a bunch of knights in one of Charlemagne's campaigns against the muslims gets thrown off its track when it turns out that one of the knights, the wisest, fairest, chastest, most analytically-minded of them all, doesn't actually exist; he's just an empty suit of armour held together by the idea of his own existence. So Charlemagne, in his wisdom, gives him a Sancho Panza-style squire in the shape of a madman who exists, but isn't aware of it, expecting them to get on well with each other. And off we go.
As with most of Calvino's books, it's hard to describe it without killing what makes it come alive. We have a group of characters who are really just philosophical concepts dressed up as knights and taken so …
What starts out as a straight tale (and yes, there's an in-story storyteller telling us that they're telling us a tale) of a bunch of knights in one of Charlemagne's campaigns against the muslims gets thrown off its track when it turns out that one of the knights, the wisest, fairest, chastest, most analytically-minded of them all, doesn't actually exist; he's just an empty suit of armour held together by the idea of his own existence. So Charlemagne, in his wisdom, gives him a Sancho Panza-style squire in the shape of a madman who exists, but isn't aware of it, expecting them to get on well with each other. And off we go.
As with most of Calvino's books, it's hard to describe it without killing what makes it come alive. We have a group of characters who are really just philosophical concepts dressed up as knights and taken so far to their respective extremes that they barely work, blundering through the plots of Candide and Monty Python's Holy Grail, trying to work out whether they exist or not. And since they're philosophical concepts, it gets meta as fuck... but it never gets annoyingly, preciously so, partly because at just over 100 pages it never has time to, but also because he knows how to riff on tales we've heard before (and does so far better than in Castle of Crossed Destinies IMO). And somehow, after all these high concept modernist ideas fighting each other, he comes out with a rather beautiful ending in praise of the possibilities of fiction, of everything that doesn't exist.
But now, o future, I'm in the saddle and riding your horse. What new flags do you raise at me from the towers in a city yet to be founded? What fires will you let ravage the castles and gardens I've loved? What unforeseen golden ages do you have lined up for me, you unbending, you bearer of treasures to be dearly paid for, you my country to be conquered, you future...
