[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.

[RussellPG]

I read this book last december and I think it's an amazing novuelle. I would catalogue it as a Philosophical Fable. I have to disagree in some way with Heteronym's comment

The actual plot is about Agilulf and his deranged squire, Gurduloo, going on a quest to reaffirm his Knighthood.

As I see it, the Knighthood is only a path, a way for Agilulfo to make himself exist. It's similar to Cosimo's attitude, that with a strict code of discipline he is trying to become someone. If Agilulfo is not a knight, then he's no one. Then he makes an amazing couple with Gurdul? who is EVERYTHING, a dog, a tree, a chicken. An amazing way for Calvino to depict the nonsense of existante in modern world.

This story is much more than a mockery of knighthood, it is a search to find individualism and question existance in this modern days.

[Guaranano]

Like I said, I don't ignore the reflection about existence in the modern world. I just regret the obviousness of it.

[gennickO]

As I see it, the Knighthood is only a path, a way for Agilulfo to make himself exist. It's similar to Cosimo's attitude, that with a strict code of discipline he is trying to become someone. If Agilulfo is not a knight, then he's no one. Then he makes an amazing couple with Gurdul? who is EVERYTHING, a dog, a tree, a chicken. An amazing way for Calvino to depict the nonsense of existante in modern world.

This story is much more than a mockery of knighthood, it is a search to find individualism and question existance in this modern days.

You're not the first person I've heard who says that Gurdul? is everything, but I have to disagree, he is nothing just as much as Agilulfo is. In their own way, all the characters are unsure of their existence - in the sixth chapter when Rambaldo courts Bradamante, the narrator says (I've read the book in Romanian so I'm translating roughly): "or could it be especially vanity, the search for the ceritude of existence, one which only a woman could give?" What's more, Torrismondo says that chivalry and the war they all bear are made of paper and you can't be sure of them/their existence. The existence of the whole world is unsure at dawn. I think, to some extent, the charm of the books lies much more in the characters themselves and in the whole context of the story than in the whole "the question of existence in the modern era" talk- there are enough stories about existence/existentialism out there and Calvino's cunning and original way to treat the problem makes this one so delicious to read.

Also something that's been bugging me ever since I finished the book three days ago is the fact that Agilulfo did exist before he was a knight. Sofronia says a knight in a white armor saved her, so he could have survived even if he wasn't named Agilulfo of the Guildiverns. But maybe it's just my simplistic approach.