[Guaranano]

The Nonexistent Knight completes Italo Calvino?s Our Ancestors trilogy which I read throughout January. Unfortunately this novella has more similarities with the mediocre The Cloven Viscount than with the magical The Baron in the Trees.

The story concerns a knight in Charlemagne?s army, the perfect Agilulf. He?s the best fighter on the battlefield and knows all protocols by heart. His armor is constantly clean and he obeys the Emperor without hesitation. Everyone hates him for his righteousness. But Agilulf doesn?t really exist: he?s just an empty armor with a voice.

The actual plot is about Agilulf and his deranged squire, Gurduloo, going on a quest to reaffirm his Knighthood. You see, Agilulf became a knight because he once saved a virgin from the fate worse than death. This apparently allowed anyone to immediately join the ranks of knights. But some talk arises that the woman he saved wasn?t really a virgin, so Agilulf goes after her.

As I see it, Calvino is making fun of chivalric romances. He borrows a lot from Ludovico Ariosto?s Orlando Furioso, a mock epic poem about chivalry. I also see echoes of Don Quixote. But the roles are inverted: Agilulf is the epitome of the knight, whereas Don Quixote makes a mockery of everything. And instead of the clear-minded Sancho Panza, there is the crazy Gurduloo.

But if the point is just to make fun of chivalric romances, Calvino is late by five centuries. I?ve also read that Agilulf is an allegory for the modern man: hollow, going through the motions without awareness, just a collection of mores, routines, behaviors and rules. But this seems so obvious. It?s like the moral at the end of The Cloven Viscount: people need both good and evil in their lives. What an epiphany?

As I continue reading his novels, I hope I?ll enjoy them more.