Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino
"Our Ancestors" by Italo Calvino is a collection of three novellas that explore themes of identity, morality, and the human condition through fantastical narratives. The first story, "The Cloven Viscount," follows Viscount Medardo, who returns from war in two halves—his right side consumed by cruelty and his left side imbued with compassion. This duality presents a unique commentary on the complexities of human nature and the struggle between good and evil.
In "The Baron in the Trees," a young baron named Cosimo rebels against societal norms by choosing to live in the treetops, where he embarks on a life of adventure, learning, and personal growth while interacting with various characters from his community. The last story, "The Non-existent Knight," features Agilulf, a knight who exists only as a suit of armor animated by willpower, raising questions about existence, identity, and the essence of knighthood.
Together, these tales blend elements of fantasy and philosophical inquiry, showcasing Calvino’s distinctive style and his ability to weave moral dilemmas with humor and wit. The narratives invite readers to reflect on their own understanding of humanity and the intricate web of relationships that define existence.
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Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino
First published:I nostri antenati, 1960 (English translation, 1980); includes Il visconte dimezzato, 1952 (The Cloven Viscount, 1962); Il barone rampante, 1957 (The Baron in the Trees, 1959); Il cavaliere inesistente, 1959 (The Non-existent Knight, 1962)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Satire
Time of plot: Middle Ages to early nineteenth century
Locale: Europe
Principal characters
The Cloven Viscount:
Viscount Medardo of Terralba , a Christian knightDoctor Trelawney , his nephew’s tutorPamela , a goatherd
The Baron in the Trees:
Cosimo Piovasco Di Rondo , the son of the baron of RondòEnea Silvio Carrega , his father’s illegitimate brotherViolante , daughter of the marchese of OndarivaGian dei Brughi , a banditUrsula , daughter of Don Frederico Alonso Sanchez y Tobasco
The Non-existent Knight:
Agilulf , a nonexistent knight in the army of CharlemagneRaimbaud of Rousillon , a young recruit taken under Agilulf’s wingBradamante , a warrior maidTorrismund of Cornwall , another knightSophronia , the woman whose rescue from brigands qualifies Agilulf for knighthood
The Story:
The Cloven Viscount. The idealistic Viscount Medardo goes to fight for Christendom against the Turks in Bohemia and is awarded the rank of lieutenant by the Holy Roman Emperor. In his first battle, he charges a cannon and is blown apart; the surgeons manage to save the right half of his body and send him home to Terralba, but he soon becomes deeply embittered and increasingly disposed to terrible acts of cruelty. He places traps on his estate that nearly cause the deaths of his nephew (the story’s narrator) and his nephew’s tutor, the amiable Dr. Trelawney. The viscount falls in love with a goatherding girl named Pamela, but she is understandably reluctant to marry him.
The viscount’s other half, which was saved and nursed back to health by monks, reappears in Terralba. Unlike his counterpart, the left side of Medardo has been infused with such sympathy for his fellow human beings that he becomes a virtual saint. The right half will not admit him to the castle, but he sets about undoing much of the evil his other half has done. The left half, too, falls in love with Pamela, and the two halves fight a duel over her. Because neither is properly equipped for combat, they succeed only in ripping open each other’s wounds, and Dr. Trelawney takes advantage of the opportunity to sew them up as a single individual. The resultant whole man combines the characteristics of the two halves, but he has obtained considerable wisdom from his disjunct experience.
The Baron in the Trees. In 1767, when he is twelve years old, Cosimo quarrels with his father, an Italian baron in the province of Ombrosa, at a meal over a basket of snails. After being ordered to leave the table, he climbs a tree in the garden and swears never to set foot on the ground again. He resists all attempts at capture and lives for fifty-three years in the canopy of the heavily wooded estate, which he eventually inherits, occasionally undertaking arboreal journeys much farther afield.
Cosimo is able to strike up an acquaintance with Violante (called Viola for short), the daughter of a neighboring family. He forms a firm friendship with the Cavalier Carrega, his father’s illegitimate brother, until the latter is killed in a fight against Muslim pirates. He also makes friends with the notorious bandit Gian dei Brughi after saving him from pursuing constables, and the two of them collaborate in educating themselves from books until Gian is captured and executed. Cosimo continues his studies alone, constructing an arboreal library in which he accumulates all the volumes of Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia (1751-1752) and many other volumes.
On one of his expeditions, Cosimo visits Olivabassa in Spain, where he falls in love with Ursula, the daughter of a grandee exiled by the Inquisition. Ursula joins him in the trees for a while, but she is eventually reclaimed by her family members when they become reconciled with the Church. After that, Cosimo is reputed to have had many brief liaisons before being reunited with Viola; their love affair is soon broken off, however, and Cosimo goes mad for a while.
Cosimo has many adventures during the Napoleonic Wars. At one point he encounters the emperor himself and briefly exchanges words with a Russian nobleman—Prince Bolkonsky, from Leo Tolstoy’s Voyna i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace, 1886). Eventually, Cosimo dies, but even then he refuses to descend to the ground. He is carried out to sea by a hot-air balloon.
The Non-existent Knight. During a roll call of his army, Charlemagne discovers that it includes a knight named Agilulf who does not exist but who, nevertheless, contrives to animate an empty suit of armor by sheer willpower and faith in the king’s holy cause. Although he presents the outward appearance of the ideal knight—noble, brave, and utterly chaste—Agilulf is constantly beset by worries about the way other men see and think of him.
The legendary warrior-maid Bradamante, borrowed, along with the entire background of the story, from Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591), is disdainful of all existing men, but she passionately loves Agilulf. Agilulf’s infallible memory enables him to correct the exaggerations that his fellow knights incorporate into their own accounts of their exploits. This causes such bad feelings that Torrismund of Cornwall is led to challenge the legitimacy of Agilulf’s knighthood, alleging that the supposed virgin whom Agilulf saved from rape was, in fact, Torrismund’s mother. Agilulf sets out to find Sophronia, the lady in question, and he eventually recovers her from the harem of a Moroccan sultan, into which she had been sold as a slave. He hides her in a cave while he fetches Charlemagne to investigate her virginity. By the time they return, Torrismund, recently returned from a grail quest, has found her and—without having any inkling of her identity—has made love to her.
The distraught Torrismund is able to confirm that Sophronia had been a virgin, but it is too late; all that remains of poor Agilulf is his scattered armor. Agilulf’s armor is recovered by his protégé, Raimbaud of Rousillon, who is then fortunate enough to be mistaken for its previous owner by Bradamante. Charlemagne makes Torrismund a count, but Torrismund has difficulty exerting his authority over the serfs he had previously saved from the villainous Knights of the Holy Grail; the serfs are now beginning to absorb the lesson that they, too, are not mere nonentities.
Bibliography
Bolongaro, Eugenio. Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Examines five of Calvino’s early works, including Our Ancestors, demonstrating how they meditate on the role of the intellectual and on the ethical and political dimensions of literature.
Cannon, JoAnn. Italo Calvino: Writer and Critic. Ravenna, Italy: Longo, 1981. Provides a brief but comprehensive survey of Calvino’s work.
Carter, Albert Howard, III. Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. Offers masterful analysis of Calvino as a fantasist. Explores Calvino’s contribution to what is possible in literature by analyzing his use of the contrafactual realms of imagination, speculation, and hypothesis.
Hume, Kathryn. Calvino’s Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. One of the most comprehensive studies of Calvino’s works includes discussion of Our Ancestors in the chapter “Identifying the Labyrinth.”
Jeannet, Angela M. Under the Radiant Sun and the Crescent Moon: Italo Calvino’s Storytelling. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Examines Calvino as both a creative writer and a critical thinker. Traces the events in his life and his creative influences to shed light on their significance in his writing.
McLaughlin, Martin. Italo Calvino. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Detailed study of Calvino’s fiction begins with his early stories and his development of a neorealistic style. Chapter 3, “From Neorealism to Fantasy,” presents an analysis of Our Ancestors. Includes a chronology of Calvino’s fictional works.
Markey, Constance. Italo Calvino: A Journey Toward Postmodernism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. Examines postmodernist literature in Italy, tracing Calvino’s development as a postmodernist writer. Also analyzes the connections between Calvino’s work and that of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, and Mark Twain.
Woodhouse, J. R. “From Italo Calvino to Tonio Cavilla: The First Twenty Years.” In Calvino Revisited, edited by Franco Ricci. Ottawa, Ont.: Dovehouse, 1989. Provides a compact overview of the writer’s earlier work, including a commentary on the trilogy.