[carletoxtrs]

The Cloven Viscount

During a skirmish with the Turks, Viscount Medardo gets hit with a cannonball right in his chest, splitting him in half from head to foot. After the battle ends, half his body is retrieved and taken care of at the field hospital. He dons a black mantle to hide his disfigured body and returns home. But the viscount is changed: it seems only his evil side has survived, and he starts engaging in countless depravities, from sentencing people to death for petty crimes to compulsorily cuttings animals and plants in half.

This is a pretty straightforward short novel. Italo Calvino wastes no words on characterization or world-building, unlike in the more refined The Baron in the Trees, which I?m now reading (I had some trouble figuring out just when the action takes place). The story accepts without pretensions its fairy-tale nature, as if Calvino only wanted to have some fun.

There?s not much more to say about this novel. In Medardo?s town, everyone slowly adjusts to his new self; there?s the child narrator, nephew of the viscount; there?s his former nanny, Sebastiana, heartbroken about the horrible things he does; there?s a British doctor, Trelawney, who sailed with Captain Cook. There are lepers and Huguenots and a little shepherdess who becomes the evil viscount?s doom in a final nice twist.

And then there?s the good viscount, the other half, which no one thought had survived; which spent years travelling as a bum from the battlefield towards home, practicing goodness on the way. For this is the completely good half, who drives everyone insane with his otherworldly kindness. Calvino is not saying anything new here: complete evil and complete good are both unnatural and pernicious. Thankfully he never takes himself too seriously and the novel remains a nice flight of imagination.