A review by glenncolerussell
The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino




"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." Vittore Carpaccio's 1510 painting, Young Knight in a Landscape, could have been an illustration for this Italo Calvino quote taken from the first pages of The Cloven Viscount, at a time in the story prior to a Turkish cannon firing a cannonball that split the poor Viscount down the middle, leaving him with a right half and a left half.

Italo Calvino's short novel holds much in common with traditional Italian folktales the great author loved so dearly. Also affinity with the fairy tales from the Brothers Grim. In the spirit of Hansel and Gretel and Iron John, a twelve-page retelling of The Cloven Viscount would make a lovely Grim -style tale for all ages.

Published in 1952 when the author was thirty-years-old, The Cloven Viscount is a 100-page gem of fabulist literature, a macabre fantasy about a young Italian aristocrat, Viscount Medardo of Terralba, made Lieutenant in the war against the Turks and, after the aforementioned cannonball cloves the Viscount in two, his evil half returns to his homeland whereupon he goes on a rampage, murdering or torturing anybody and anything he can put his one hand on. The good half eventually arrives and, following all varieties of drama, there's a climatic duel producing an unanticipated result: the two half-Viscounts are stitched back together into a whole man leading to a happily ever after ending.

The tale is narrated though the eyes of the Viscount's young nephew and addresses a number of highly provocative, philosophical themes. Here's a number I count among my favorites:

Status and Rank: The young Viscount knows nothing of battle or war, yet he is made Lieutenant solely on his being an aristocrat. The consequences are dire: the guy doesn’t have the brains not to stand directly in front of a cannon. Likewise, when his evil half perpetrates atrocities back home in Terralba, men and women still call him the Viscount as if his rank at birth entitles him to act above the law and a basic sense of decency. Italo Calvino lived through the rein of Il Duce and Italian Fascism. Perhaps the author’s novella serves as a warning of what can happen when leaders like Mussolini go unchecked.

The Nature of Good and Evil: Many are the examples of the Viscount committing acts of pure evil: torturing animals, murdering small children, burning homes to derive pleasure from the suffering of others. Yet references and allusions are also given that matters are not quit so simple - in nature there is always a mingling of opposites. Frequently Italo Calvino put me in mind of the Chinese ying-yang: the black half containing a circle of white and the white half containing a circle of black.

To take one vivid example of the interconnectedness and complementariness between human and animal, Italo Calvino describes a horrific scene during the plague: “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 the carcasses of vultures mingled with human remains.”

Knowledge and Expertise: At one point old carpenter Pietrochiodo tells the young narrator about the instruments of torture and death he has constructed with such expertise: “Just forget the purpose for which they’re used and look at them as pieces of mechanism. You see how fine they are?” One can only wonder at how many morally upstanding craftsman and scientists have applied their great knowledge only to see the products of their expertise used by leaders to cause unspeakable suffering on humanity. A number of critics reviewing The Cloven Viscount have referenced the case of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb.

Nature of Artists and Writers: Is the Viscount’s eight-year-old nephew a stand in for artists and writers during a reign of terror – a perceptive observer but someone denied any true power? At the tale’s conclusion, the narrator even misses his chance to leave the country via ship since at the time of the ships’ departure he was deep in the woods telling himself stories. Ah, those artists and writers!

Love, Sweet Love: Beautiful country lass Pamela with her goats and sheep and flowers becomes the object of love first for the Viscount and then for his good other half. But what is the full range of Eros when a man, even as a member of the nobility, is only half a man? By the way, at no point in the tale do we read of the raunchy humor of having a half-penis.

Half-ness and Wholeness: “If you ever become a half of yourself, and I hope you do for your own sake, my boy, you will understand things beyond the common intelligence of brains that are whole.” This as part of a philosophic soliloquy when the Viscount speaks to his nephew. As I was reading, I had to ask myself: When was the last time I encountered a person whole in any way?

As humans not only are we all cut in half as per the speech of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, where Aristophanes recounts how we all were once happy, rollicking, cartwheeling and round, complete with four arms and four legs but the gods became jealous and cut us in half. Thus we move through life forever searching for our other half. Added to this, we humans are cut again into quarters: we are all kicked out of the present moment, forever reflecting back on the past and projecting into the future. And yet again, we suffer a third whack, this time not so much a cut as a squash: modern commercial society squashes us in the sense that we are forever comparing ourselves unfavorably to those men and women or children presented by mass media as the ideal.

So here we are: halved, quartered and squashed. And the Viscount judges us whole? Now that is truly twisted thinking! Good thing for all around the Viscounts were sewed together in the story’s final pages. It might not be a 100% happily ever after ending but as humans it might be as good as it gets.


The maestro's view atop the world, Italo Calvino, 1923-1985