The Nonexistent Knight

Calvino is one of those authors I always come to slightly nervously, knowing he's going to be difficult and experimental, but then have to laugh at myself because I should have remembered from the last five or six times how much fun "difficult and experimental" becomes when he's in charge of it. This particular one is, as we should all know, the missing link between Orlando furioso and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Agilulfo is the most perfect knight in Charlemagne's army. Brave, reliable, immaculately clean, a model of efficiency and a walking encyclopaedia of the rules of chivalry, the only knight in the army who finds inspecting regimental kitchens as interesting and rewarding as smiting the infidel. Oddly enough, he doesn't seem show more to have many friends... And even more oddly, he doesn't appear to exist. When he lifts the visor of his spotless white suit of armour, it turns out that there's no-one inside it.

But then there's the irrepressibly keen young Rambaldo, raised on tales of chivalry (which did not have anything to say about the administration of regimental kitchens and the proper way to make cabbage soup) and out to avenge his father's death at the hands of the Moors; the enigmatic amazon-warrior Bradamante (with the messiest tent in the army) who lusts after the efficient Agilulfo from inside her suit of armour; young Torrismondo who isn't quite who he says he is; and Agilulfo's unusual squire Gurdulú, who isn't quite sure what species he belongs to. And finally, there's Sister Theodora who is writing all this down for us as a penance imposed by the Abbess, and who for all we know may be making some or all of it up. Particularly the bit where she herself is carried off into the action...

Calvino is obviously playing around with ideas of identity and how we define it to ourselves, as well as doing his usual thing of undermining our trust in the narrator, but he's also having fun with our perception of what the Age of Chivalry was like, by reminding us that Charlemagne's army must have been an actual army, with all the practical needs and administrative headaches that armies have in the real world. Roland and the rest wouldn't have been able to do glorious battle without all the farriers and saddlers and armourers and makers of cabbage soup, and somewhere or other there must have been room for boring staff officers with rulebooks to make sure that everyone was in the right place at the right time. Which is probably an insight that has something to do with Calvino's own experience as a communist partisan during the war. His rather less-than-Wagnerian view of the Knights of the Grail also has a distinctly World War II flavour to it... show less

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 show more 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... show less

De tous les paladins qui guerroient avec l'empereur Charlemagne contre les Sarrasins, Agilulfe des Guildivernes est le chevalier à l'armure la mieux fourbie, à la tente la mieux rangée : c'est qu'il a besoin de s'affairer sans repos pour se sentir vivre, faute de corps qui prouve son existence. En effet, son armure blanche n'abrite qu'une énergie invisible dont le zèle perpétuel horripile ses pairs. Ce zèle serait plutôt ce qu'il a de plus sympathique aux yeux du jeune Raimbaut de Roussillon, venu s'engager dans l'armée de Charlemagne pour venger son père tué par l'émir Izoard et que déconcerte le formalisme de la vie militaire. Sans l'amour que lui inspire la belle guerrière Bradamante, il serait fortement tenté de s'en show more aller. Or Bradamante aussi a été conquise par ce zèle. Sur ces entrefaites, Torrismond de Cornouaille conteste au cours d'un festin l'exploit qui a valu son adoubement à Agilulfe. Charlemagne, trop content de s'en débarrasser, envoie ce der-nier chercher la preuve de son haut fait. Il part donc avec son écuyer Gourdoulou et après lui court Bradamante que poursuit Raimbaut. Ainsi commence l'épopée que raconte certaine soeur Theodora de l'ordre de Saint-Colomban dans un récit d'une malicieuse et percutante actualité sous ses dehors fabuleux. show less

Calvino is the man. This little book is a story about story-telling, but really it's about Life and Being. And it's actually fun and funny! I think I'm gonna re-read it right away.
As always, story, structure and theme are one. This is the way it's done Larsson! (sorry, had to get that dig in, even though the poor guy is dead (Larsson I mean), and I just read that all he did was drink coffee and smoke, which explains a lot...)

Anyway if you want a fun little medieval adventure story that will tell you all about modern life, read this!

No melhor estilo de Italo Calvino com humor, ironia e surrealismo o cavaleiro inexistente pode ser considerado uma fábula existencialista. Trata-se de um livro com muitas metáforas sobre nosso tempo, valores, e ideias. O livro tem uma simplicidade aparente que facilita a leitura e ao mesmo tempo permite reflexão e questionamentos. Recomendo para leitores a partir dos 14 anos até os de 140 anos.

Heillandi saga af riddara á miðöldum sem er ekki til. Herklæði hans eru tóm en hann talar við félaga sína og berst með þeim. Heiður hans og hugrekki er óvéfengjanlegt. Þegar vafa er varpað á fortíð hans og afrek sem öfluðu honum riddaratignar verður riddarinn að leggja í hættuför til að sanna afrek sín. Calvino gerir stólpagrín að hugsjónum miðaldariddarans og aðalsins. Unaður aflestrar.

I haven't read any Calvino but If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, and that was many years ago. I've been meaning to read more for a while, and this book looked so charming that I just had to pick it up.

I have to say, I was a little bit disappointed. The knight character didn't exist, so it isn't like you could be drawn into the story by empathy for him, most of the other characters hardly felt original (partly the point, yes, I know), there was a castle filled with sex-starved ladies that felt more like a Monty Python sketch than anything else, the bit with the nun turning out to be one of the characters from the story was obvious from a mile off, and while the whole deal with the Knights of the Round Table was certainly... different, show more I had no idea how to feel about it. Was it supposed to be clever? Satirical? Funny? Ironic? I finished the book with a feeling of "well..."

There were some clever bits, and some ways that it was clear that Calvino was poking some fun at some knights and chivalry tropes, but then the book ends with a rape (I'm sorry, but if the woman you're having sex with thinks you're someone else, and wouldn't have consented if she knew your identity, that's rape.) and then the woman falling in love with her rapist.

Ugh. show less