Volume 11, Number 9 · November 21, 1968
Effrontery & Charm
By D.J. Enright
Cosmicomics
by Italo Calvino, Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
Harcourt, Brace & World, 153 pp., $3.95
Antonio in Love
by Giuseppe Berto, Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
Knopf, 303 pp., $5.95
Italo Calvino's novel, The Baron in the Trees (Random House, 1959), concerned an Italian nobleman who took to the trees as a boy and never came down to earth again. Within the story's charming premises there was space for Calvino's highly developed and humanistic imagination to accomplish quite a lot. In the interests of credibility, we were shown how eminently possible it was for Cosimo to lead 'a normal life,' all the way from performing his daily duties in a decent, hygienic manner to performing the act of love in a comfortable as well as sometimes a rather acrobatic fashion. (The blurbwriter was inspired to an unusual wittiness on this occasion, remarking that women were quite ready to go out on a limb for Cosimo.) Our hero studied the Encyclopédistes, fought a duel with a Spanish Jesuit, led successful campaigns against wolves, forest fires, and Mohammedan pirates, acquired a press and printed pamphlets composed by himself (such as The Magpie's Gazette), became Master of an unorthodox Lodge of Freemasons ('he who had never wanted nor built nor inhabited any house with walls'), was visited by Napoleon ('Were I not the Emperor Napoleon, I would like to be the citizen Cosimo Rondò'), etc., etc. Cosimo forswore the earth as an act of rebellion against his family, and even when he dies, he does not return. The old dying man is swept out of the branches by the anchor of a balloon belonging to some English aeronauts and his body is never seen again. Between these two eccentric events, Cosimo has led a reasonably full life, it occurs to us, and a more than usually satisfying one. He has lived according to his lights, he has never compromised, yet neither has he renounced his species.
Review, 1920 words
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