The Cloven Viscount: Bizarre Magical Realism Fantasy Books for Adults – An Absurdist Classic

The Cloven Viscount: Bizarre Magical Realism Fantasy Books for Adults – An Absurdist Classic

Calvino's delightfully absurd and macabre novella about the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball and the separate paths they forge, exploring the duality of good and evil. What is the relationship between good and evil? Can both exist at once, or is one the absence of the other? In a battle against the Turks, the Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bisected vertically by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears, determined to love an impossibly good existence. Both set out on their own independent adventures, but when the two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, there’s no telling the lengths each will go to win. From a master of magical realism, his bizarre story is Calvino at his most devious and insightful, spinning a powerful parable about the complexities of human morality. "The reason Calvino is such an indispensable writer is precisely that he tells us, joyfully, wickedly, that there are things in the world worth loving as well as hating; and that such things exist in people, too. I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while the world ends." —Salman Rushdie "The reason Calvino is such an indispensable writer is precisely that he tells us, joyfully, wickedly, that there are things in the world worth loving as well as hating; and that such things exist in people, too. I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while the world ends." - Salman Rushdie "Calvino is a wizard." - New York Review of Books "Italo Calvino was, word for word, the most charming writer to put pen to paper in the twentieth century." - The New Yorker ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers. Born in Cuba, he was raised in San Remo, Italy, and later lived in Turin, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. Among his many works are Invisible Cities , If on a winter ’ s night a traveler , The Baron in the Trees , and other novels, as well as numerous collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. His works have been translated into dozens of languages. 1   There was a war on against the Turks. My uncle, the Viscount Medardo of Terralba, was riding towards the Christian camp across the plain of Bohemia, followed by a squire called Kurt. Storks were flying low, in white flocks, through the thick, still air. “Why all the storks?” Medardo asked Kurt. “Where are they flying?” My uncle was a new arrival, just enrolled to please ducal neighbors involved in that war. After fitting himself out with a horse and squire at the last castle in Christian hands, he was now on his way to report at Imperial headquarters. “They’re flying to the battlefields,” said the squire glumly. “They’ll be with us all the way.” The Viscount Medardo had heard that in those parts a flight of storks was thought a good omen, and he wanted to seem pleased at the sight. But in spite of himself he felt worried. “What can draw such birds to a battlefield, Kurt?” he asked. “They eat human flesh too, nowadays,” replied the squire, “since the fields have been stripped by famine and the rivers dried by drought. Vultures and crows have now given way to storks and flamingos and cranes.” My uncle was then in his first youth, the age in which confused feelings, not yet sifted, all rush into good and bad, the age in which every new experience, even macabre and inhuman, is palpitating and warm with love of life. “What about the crows then? And the vultures?” he said. “And the other birds of prey? Where have they gone?” He was pale, but his eyes glittered. The squire, a dark-skinned soldier with a heavy moustache, never raised his eyes. “They ate so many plague-ridden bodies, the plague got ’em too,” and he pointed his lance at some black bushes, which a closer look revealed were not made of branches, but of feathers and dried claws from birds of prey. “One can’t tell which died first, bird or man, or who tore the other to bits,” said Kurt. To escape the plague exterminating the population, entire families had taken to the open country, where death caught them. Over the bare plain were scattered tangled heaps of men’s and women’s corpses, naked, covered with plague boils, and, inexplicably at first, with feathers, as if those skinny legs and ribs had grown black feathers and wings. These were carcasses of vultures mingled with human remains. The ground was now scattered with signs of past battles. Their progress slowed, for the two horses kept jibbing and rearing. “What’s the matter with our horses?” Medardo asked the squire. “Signore,” he replied, “horses hate nothing more than the stink of their own guts.” The patch of plain they were crossing was covered with horses’ carcasses, some supine with hooves to the sky, others prone with muzzles dug into the earth. “Why all these fallen horses round here, Kurt?” asked Medardo. “When a horse fe