Bacchilega - Calvino's Journey Modern Transformations of Folktale, Story, and Myth

Calvino's Journey: Modern Transformations of Folktale, Story, and Myth
Author(s): Cristina Bacchilega

Source: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 26, No. 2 (May - Aug., 1989), pp. 81-98
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814236
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Cristina Bacchilega
Calvino's Journey: Modem Transformations of

Folktale, Story, and Myth
The fairytale, which to this dayis the firsttutorof childrenbecauseit was

once the tutorof mankind,secretlylives on in the story.
- WalterBenjamin
Writtenliteratureis born alreadyladen with the taskof consecration,of

supportingthe establishedorderof things. This is a load that it discards
extremelyslowly, in the courseof millennia, becomingin the processa
privatething, enabling poets and writersto expresstheir own personal
troublesand raisethemto the levelof consciousness.Literaturegets to this
point . . . by means of combinatorial games that at a certain moment
becomechargedwith preconscioussubjectmatter,and at last find a voice
for these.Andit is by this roadto freedomopenedup byliteraturethatmen
achievedthe critical spirit, and transmittedit to collective thought and
culture.
-Italo Calvino
There is nothing new about stating that the relationship between

folklore and literature is as important as it is difficult to articulate and
study. For some time now scholars in both disciplines have addressed the
problems of folklore in literature, folklore as literature, and folklore and
literature, even if with some discomfort and frustration, especially in the
first two cases. On the one hand, the attempt to identify folk items within
a literary text has often rested on the unspoken assumption that
"Literature - Art = Folklore" and, as such, this approach has only
confirmed long-standing prejudices. As Carl Lindahl remarks, folklor-
ists have studied literature to establish "the existence of oral narratives at
certain times and places in the past," while literary scholars have
extended their interest to folklore merely to show how "the artist trans-
forms the content of folklore and transcends the limits of tradition."' On
Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1989
Copyright 1989 by the Folklore Institute, Indiana University 0737-7037
82 Cristina Bacchilega
the other hand, the approach to folklore as literature has privileged in

most instances its textual aspects (almost as if a folktale, for instance,
were a medieval manuscript), thereby ignoring its performative features
and its distinctive social functions.2 In recent years, however, thanks to
the lively interdisciplinary development of studies in the areas of semio-
tics, psychoanalysis, and performance, both folklorists and literary crit-
ics seem to have come to the valuable understanding that, as Richard
Bauman writes: "all texts, oral or written, within a given field of expres-
sion and meaning, are part of a chain or network of texts in dialogue with
each other" (1982:16).Stating that the study of folklore in literature "no
longer is the outdated and outmoded search for cultural debris in literary
documents," Steven Swann Jones writes that it has become "a current
and vital exegesis of the way literary texts adapt and modify folkloric
traditions in order to communicate to other audiences" and that, while
retaining a specific focus (folklore's influence upon a literary text), it also
productively "direct(s) our attention to the larger discipline," the study
of folklore and literature (1985:213,214).
Since the pioneer study "Die Volkskunde als eine besondere Form des
Schaffens" (1929; "Folklore as a Special Form of Creativity," 1982) by
Petr Bogatyrev and Roman Jakobson is an ante litteram argument pre-
cisely along these lines, I will use it in this essay as a starting point to
discuss the complex relationship of folklore and literature, and some of
the specific ways in which the study of folklore in literature can make
valid contributions to the more theoretically oriented study of folklore
and literature. The strength of Bogatyrev's and Jakobson's position lies,
first of all, in its refusal to subordinate either literature or folklore to one
another, out of respect for their functional differences. Secondly, in the
context of their analysis of the dynamic boundary between the two
systems, their comments on the functional transformations marking the
presence of folklore in literature or of literature in folklore point to the
theoretical importance of the study of "borderline and transitional
zones" (1982).1I will, therefore, attempt to provide an example of a study
of folklore in literature which is alert to the above dynamics: my reading
of Italo Calvino's transformations of folkloric traditions and forms, in
fact, aims to make explicit the literary concerns that motivated this
incorporation and to show how Calvino's and his readers'understanding
of the folk material is transformed in turn.
About folklore and literature, Bogatyrev and Jakobson write:
Butevenif literatureandoralpoetryhaveoverlapped,evenif theirrecipro-
cal influence was repeated and intensive, even if folklore has concerned
itself quite often with literary material and vice versa, we are still not
justified in obliterating the fundamental boundary between oral poetry
and literature just for the sake of a genetic approach. (1982:41-42)
MODERNTRANSFORMATIONSOF FOLKTALE 83
Where then should one trace the boundary between folklore and litera-
ture? Bogatyrev and Jakobson focus on collective creativity and censor-
ship to define the birth and function of folk phenomena in contrast to
literary ones: "A literary work is considered born at the moment it is set
down on paper by an author.... But... [when considering the birth of a
work in folklore], the work only becomes a fact of folklore once it has
been accepted by the community" (1982:37). The two scholars object to
the positivistic and the Romantic representation of folklore (deriving
from what they call "the lapse into naive realism which was characteris-
tic of the theoretical turn of mind of the second half of the nineteenth
century"), stating instead in Saussurean terms that folklore essentially
operates as langue while literature functions as parole (1982:34,39).
Though extreme, this position remains a fundamental point of refer-
ence in folklore studies because it insists that folklore functions differ-
ently from literature in a socio-cultural context. It is certainly disconcert-
ing that Bogatyrev and Jakobson write about the folk artist that "any
intention of transforming the milieu is totally alien to him," as it is
surprising that, having rejected a Romantic interpretation of folklore,
they do not equally reject an interpretation of literature which considers
isolated geniuses rather than codes and canons (1982:39).4Yet the logic of
"Die Volkskunde als eine besondere Form des Schaffens" remains, in
spite of these weaknesses, essentially innovative when we interpret the
reference to langue and parole in flexible terms. From the observation
that folklore is tied to tradition, it does not follow that folklore can only
play a traditional role in society; similarly, individual creation and
innovation in literature, of course, do not take place outside specific
traditions. The dominance of parole in literature, for instance, is not one
of its intrinsic qualities; rather, it is related to the perspective of readers
and critics. One finds what one wants to find. In a section of Specifika
fol'klora (1946) devoted to the problem of folklore and literature, starting
from premises very close to Bogatyrev's and Jakobson's, Vladimir Propp
comes to the conclusion that parole plays a much more active-in fact,
vital-role in folklore than it does in literature: "What is important is the
fact of changeability of folklore compared with the stability of literature"
(1984:8). Having made these important qualifications, we can then say
that, as artistic and communicative systems, folklore and literature share
an affinity, but often serve different social functions and operate accord-
ing to distinct, but not mutually exclusive, dialectics of langue and
parole.5
It is, therefore, crucial to differentiate between kindred systems like
folklore and literature, but also essential to recognize (if what matters is
function and not essence) that such distinctions have a precarious and
relative value in a real, social and historical, context. To study the
relationship between folklore and literature then does not mean to estab-
lish and defend the integrity and pure essence of either one; rather it
involves making use of provisional definitions, focusing on those artistic
processes which occur on the borderline of folklore and literature, and,
on the basis of this research, questioning and redefining that very border.
Within this framework Bogatyrev's and Jakobson's contribution is still
extremely valuable; as they argue, when a literary text appears in a folk
context (or, vice versa, when a writer avails himself of an item of folk-
lore), what matters is not the origin of the foreign element, but "the
function of the appropriation, the selection and the transformation of
the appropriated material" (1982:40).Against the back-drop of a different
system, narrative forms become "material which is subject to transforma-
tion," "a switching of functions takes place" (1982:40,41),6and, I want to
add, even if this does not always modify the relationship between the two
systems, nonetheless studying these functional permutations can advance
our understanding of the rules governing such a relationship. The folk
element that finds itself "transferred" to literature is not simply trans-
formed by its new context; it is also perceived by the reader with a new
sense of awareness. And the same thing happens to the literary text which
"hosts" it. The exchange, the transformation, the new awareness are
mutual and lead to the process of redefining both folklore and literature
not in abstract terms, but within the specific ethos of each culture and era.
A collector of tales, a critic, and a highly self-conscious modern writer,

Italo Calvino was aware of the important affinity between folklore and
literature from the very start of his literary career.7In his 1955 essay "II
midollo del leone," published in Paragone, he identifies the structural
and semantic basis that the folktale has in common with all interesting
stories by arguing that the struggle between man and his environment,
metonymically expressed by "the child abandoned in the woods or the
knight who must overcome ferocious beasts and spells, remains the
irreplaceable paradigm of all human stories" (1955:17-31).8 Calvino's
introduction to Fiabe italiane (1956;Italian Folktales, 1980)and his more
recent essay "Cibernetica e fantasmi" (1967 and 1980; "Cybernetics and
Ghosts," 1986) unequivocally confirm his belief that folklore and litera-
ture function according to the same combinatorial processes. A familiar
functional sequence of events energized by invention and stylistic varia-
tion is the essential recipe for storytelling, be it folk or literary. The
power of a story, in other words, lies in "its infinite variety and infinite
repetition"; and, in particular, the retelling of folktales over centuries
and centuries is an expression of that power which, Calvino concludes, is
what makes them "real":
MODERN TRANSFORMATIONS OF FOLKTALE 85
Taken all together, they offer, in their oft-repeated and constantly varying
examinations of human vicissitudes, a general explanation of life pre-
served in the slow ripening of rustic consciences; these folk stories are the
catalog of the potential desires of men and women, especially for that stage
in life when destiny is formed, i.e., youth.... This sketch, although
summary, encompasses everything: the arbitrary divisions of humans,
albeit in essence equal, into kings and poor people; the persecution of the
innocent and their subsequent vindication, which are the terms inherent in
every life; love unrecognized when first encountered and then no sooner
experienced than lost; the common fate of subjection to spells, or having
one's existence predetermined by complex and unknown forces. This
complexity pervades one's entire existence and forces one to struggle to free
oneself, to determine one's own fate; at the same time we can liberate
ourselves only if we liberate other people, for this is the sine qua non of
one's own liberation. There must be fidelity to a goal and purity of heart,
values fundamental to salvation and triumph... and above all, there
must be present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element
in everything: men, beasts, plants, things. (1980:xviii-xix)9
This long quotation clarifies Calvino's modern interpretation of the

folktale as an artifice of a certain structural complexity, a symbolic image
of real political and social struggles whose moral function "is to be
sought not in the subject matter but in the very nature of the folktale, in
the mere fact of telling and listening" (1980:xxx).'0
Within this framework, in Italian Folktales, Calvino shows his aware-
ness of the functional dynamics and precarious nature of the boundary
between folklore and literature, but never for a moment does he ignore it.
He is fully conscious of being an "aloof, detached" twentieth-century
writer (1980:xviii)-not even a Southern one at that-when he deliber-
ately plunges into the mysterious and "submarine world" of the Italian
folktale "totally unequipped, without even a tank full of intellectual
enthusiasms for anything spontaneous and primitive" (1980:xvii). Since
he is extremely attentive to making explicit the criteria for collecting,
selecting, and translating the folktales to be included in the 1956 volume,
Calvino's approach to folklore is closer to that of modern scholars than to
the enthusiasm of the Grimms, to whom he has been often compared.
Diego Carpitella's theoretical reflections on the study of oral traditions
are to the point:
It is now understood that there are no "social" studies ... including
ethnographic, sociological, and anthropological ones ... which are not a
critical comparison of two cultural models .... The critical comparison
in a cultural system can only take place through a differential analysis,
which consists precisely of the individuation and assessment of data dis-
tinguishing the two elements of the system in question. (1976:4)"
Calvino does not forget he is a sophisticated writer and scholar acting on

the heterogeneous image of the Italian folktale as it was offered by
anthologies written in dialect and already removed from the oral folk
context. His collection reflects, quite consciously, neither the perspective
of a specialized observer nor that of the subordinate observed world, but
that of an amateur diver-writerwho is open to risking the unexpected in a
submerged, both familiar and mysterious, world.
And it is precisely this vision which transforms the writer's "journey"
among folktales into a challenge, a questioning not only of folklore, but
of literature. Carpitella adds: "It is furthermore clear that a differential
analysis of culture assumes the form of 'self-analysis,' when the compari-
son brings into question, and even brings about the crisis of, both the
'observed' culture and the 'observing' culture" (1976:vi).'2 Calvino
emerges from his journey transformed, and the signs of self-analysis,
achieved through critical comparison, mark his writing. Having selected,
translated, and transformed innumerable tales, Calvino rediscovers his
own vocation as a "storyteller" in Walter Benjamin's sense of the word.
Repetition-whose inevitable counterpoint is the variation that accom-
panies each and every execution-is the measure of the folktale's power
which, Benjamin states in a striking comparison, resembles "the ger-
minative power" of "the seeds of grain which have lain for centuries in
the chambers of the pyramids shut up air-tight." If this is true, it follows
that originality cannot be the writer's trademark,and Calvino realizes, as
Benjamin had already noted, that the folktale "secretly lives on in the
story" (1969:90,102). However, as a twentieth-century writer, Calvino
knows all too well that, while the folktale is an "artisanal" form of
communication (Benjamin), writing is on its way to becoming more and
more of a "literature machine." The nostalgic return to the world of the
folktale is an attractive hypothesis, but an unfeasible one when "writing
consists no longer in narrating but in saying that one is narrating"
(1986:7).
A possible solution-though not a reassuring one-to this conflict lies
in the potential of a new myth emerging from the folktale-like play of
repetition and variation in contemporary literature. In knowing opposi-
tion to most modern folklorists, Calvino states in "Cybernetics and
Ghosts" that "the making of fables precedes the making of myths." [I
would translate this as "fabulation precedes mythopoiesis."] Mythic
significance is something one comes across only if one persists in playing
around with narrative functions" (1986:23). Myth, then, is tied to the
reading and the reception of a story and, as such, it belongs to the world
of future possibilities rather than to the world of the past:
Mythis thehiddenpartof everystory,theburiedpart,theregionthatis still

unexploredbecausethereareas yet no wordsto enableus to get there.The
narrator's[I would translatethis as "storyteller's"]
voicein thedaily tribal
assemblies is not enough to relate the myth.... Myth is nourished by
silenceas well as by words.A silent mythmakesits presencefelt in secular
narrativeandeverydaywords;it is a languagevacuumthatdrawswordsup
into its vortexand bestowsa formon fable.(1986:18-19)
And this "language vacuum" is clearly, Calvino argues, an old interdic-

tion, "a vestige of taboo" (1986:19). It follows that myth forces the
folktale to retrace its own steps and to "[follow] paths ... that lead to
saying what could not be said" (1986:19).
But what is the silent and "new" myth emerging from the narrative of
Calvino, re-creator of folktales? And what does it tell us about the
relationship of folktale and story today, since myth "needs special times
and places" (1986:18)? In order to answer these questions and, thereby,
also interpret the new function of folkloric material as it is transformed
by this writer and by our reading it in a different context, I will explore
the tension between repetition and discovery of the unsaid as it informs
Calvino's "fabulous" narrative, by focusing in particular on his novella
Il cavaliere inesistente (The Nonexistent Knight). Published in 1959
(three years after Italian Folktales) and then in 1960as part of the trilogy I
nostri antenati (Our Ancestors), this text is an early, vigorous, and yet
amused expression of a tension that will remain essential to all of
Calvino's writing, including the recent Palomar and the posthumous,
incomplete Sotto il cielo giaguaro.
Worldconditionswerestill confusedin theerawhen this tookplace.It was

not rarethen to find namesand thoughtsand formsand institutionsthat
correspondedto nothing in existence.But at the sametime the worldwas
polluted with objectsand capacitiesand personswho lackedany nameor
distinguishing mark.It was a periodwhen the will and determinationto
exist, to leave a trace,to rub up against all that existed,was not wholly
used.... (Calvino 1962:33)
The ironic narrator of The Nonexistent Knight tells us that in this world
and from that "diluted will... turned to sediment" (1962:33)Agilulfo dei
Guildiverni emerged. The title character of the novella is quite literally
an empty armor, a knight who does his job solely by "will power" and
faith in Charlemagne's holy cause, "a model soldier," who appears to be
"always right" and "disliked by all" (1962:7-8). Agilulfo's inhuman
perfection attracts Rambaldo and repels Torrismondo, two young men
whose experiences in war and love make up most of the story. Having
joined Charlemagne's army to avenge his father's death, enthusiastic

Rambaldo is told to "put in a request to the Superintendency of Duels,
Feuds, and Besmirched Honor" (1962:14).Coughing, dust and language
interpreters unexpectedly play a large role in Rambaldo's first battle,
which, to his even greater surprise, introduces him to the equally dan-
gerous and troubling world of love when a mysterious "woman warrior"
saves his life. In contrast, Torrismondo is the initially disenchanted,
glum youth who questions Agilulfo's right to knighthood and idealizes
the Knights of the Holy Grail as his own collective father. He too learns
from experience: he helps oppressed peasants against the very Knights
who fathered him, then finds instant peace when he encounters love in
an undoubtedly Freudian cave, and ends up living with the peasants not
as their Count, but as their equal. While the two young heroes success-
fully move towards the accomplishment of their different destinies,
Agilulfo's first mistake-an imagined one, born out of miscommunica-
tion, sexual desire and antagonism, all of which are beyond the non-
existent knight's understanding-leads him to self-destruct. Agilulfo
leaves his armor to Rambaldo and his squire (the ever identity-shifting
Gurdului) to Torrismondo.
The nonexistent knight's legacy, however, is more complex and affects
Rambaldo and Torrismondo in the realm of love as well as that of war.
Bradamante, the woman Rambaldo loves, is at first in love with Agilulfo,
the ideal "man"; her trials and tribulations as a soldier, a nun, and our
tongue-in-cheek narrator end when, having gained critical perspective
on the whole story, she chooses to be with Rambaldo, the "real" man
who now fills Agilulfo's armor. Sofronia, the woman on whose virginity
Agilulfo's right to knighthood depends, goes through a life of false
identities (first as Torrismondo's mother-figure and pseudo-half-sister,
then as a reluctant nun, and finally as a virgin wife in the Sultan's harem)
and false starts from which the virtuous knight keeps "saving" her.
When she finally loses her virtue, it is to the right man: the comedy of
errors which follows her encounter with Torrismondo in the cave (a
humorous enactment of Oedipal desire) "kills" Agilulfo but leaves Tor-
rismondo with a damsel no longer in distress.
In his introduction to Italian Folktales, Calvino writes: "I had the
impression that, from the magic box I had opened, the lost logic which
governs the world of the folktale had been unleashed, returning to reign
upon earth" (my translation). This is the premise of The Nonexistent
Knight, a story of initiation and transformation, which enacts the "pre-
cise rhythm" and the "joyous logic" identified by Calvino as fundamen-
tal features of the Italian folktale. Within this context, its quest pattern,
its extreme external projection of inner problems, its world of action
rather than reflection, its one-dimensional characters, and its unhappy

ending all contribute, structurally and stylistically, to the folktale-like
quality of this delightful novella within the logic of which the "exis-
tence"of the nonexistent knight is not implausible, but almost "natu ral."
These observations would seem to confirm Sara Maria Adler's statement
that "the key to a comprehensive perspective of Calvino lies in the fact
that he portrays the world around him in the same way it is portrayed in
the traditional [folktale]" (1979:121).13However, a careful reading of The
Nonexistent Knight will also show the limits of this interpretation and
mark a short-circuit between traditional storytelling and contemporary
writing-what Calvino calls the "literary automaton" and Roland
Barthes calls ecriture. On a structural and semantic level, The Non-
existent Knight successfully embodies the Italian folktale's magic spell,
but on a semiotic level, the narrator's awareness of ecriture and the
reader's intervention break this spell into a self-reflexive movement,
which brings about a disruptive "mythic" discovery Calvino both yearns
for and fears.
The Nonexistent Knight consists of the interlacing of several folktale-
like stories which develop a quest pattern, take place in a world of kings
and peasants, and end happily. With the exception of Agilulfo and
Gurdulu, the other main characters are, quite typically, youths eager to
prove themselves by "making a mark in the world" (1962:48).As Teresa
de Lauretis notes, their stories, in accordance with folktales, express
elementary contents of human experience: "desire, rivalry, guilt, the
impulse to express and communicate, the need for self-affirmation but
also for belonging, the necessity to make ethical and existential choices"
(1975:415).Furthermore, The Nonexistent Knight's stylistic traits paral-
lel those identified by Max Liithi in the European folktale. The descrip-
tion of Agilulfo's armor is just one instance of a Mdrchen-like privileg-
ing of metals, strong colors, precision, and clarity: "the king had reached
a knight entirely in white armor; only a thin black line ran round the
seems [sic]. The rest was light and gleaming, without a scratch, well
finished at every joint, with a helmet surmounted by a plume of some
oriental cock, changing with every color of the rainbow" (1962:5).
The abstract stylization which Max Luthi recognizes in the folktale
pertains to The Nonexistent Knight as well: geometric lines, extreme
contrasts, and one-dimensionality lend this chivalric tale "fixed contours
and sublime weightlessness" (1982:36).Gurdulu has no consciousness of
being, no one name, and no sense of self. His face is a "mingling of
Frankish and Moorish characteristics" (1962:29) and he undergoes con-
tinuous transformations: ". .. every name flows over him without stick-
ing. Whatever he's called it's the same to him. Call him and he thinks
you're calling a goat. Say 'cheese' or 'torrent'and he answers 'Here I am'"

(1962:28). In contrast, Agilulfo is nothing but his name and title as they
have been materialized into his white armor. Because of this, he can
afford no uncertainties and needs "to feel himself facing things as if they
were a massive wall against which he could pit the tension of his will, for
only in this way did he manage to keep a sure consciousness of himself"
(1962:20). The geometric line created by this opposition is repeated on a
smaller scale by the contrast between Rambaldo (whose worldview, de
Lauretis convincingly argues, is defined by praxis) and Torrismondo
(whose existence is defined by poiesis). Finally, as Calvino himself states
in his critical introduction to I nostri antenati, Bradamante and Sofronia
are diametrically opposed metaphors respectively of love as conflict and
love as peace; however, because they both function as metaphors of love,
they are clearly closer to one another than the characters in the other
oppositional pairs:
Bradamante 4 - Sofronia
Rambaldo 4 + Torrismondo
Gurdulu 4 , Agilulfo
Reminiscent of the folktale world where development does not occur in
the principal binary opposition (e.g., ogress/fairy), which rather serves
as the uncompromising enunciation of a conflict, Calvino's imaginary
world is also built according to a rigidly schematic architecture. While
the Gurduli/Agilulfo opposition serves a static frame-like function, the
stories of Rambaldo and Torrismondo, Bradamante and Sofronia involve
challenges and tasks pertaining to the process of initiation, which cul-
minates for them either in duels or sexual encounters and, in Brada-
mante's exceptionally "modern" case, also in writing.
Calvino is attentive not simply to the magic of the Mdrchen, but to the
ingredients which comprise the spell of the Italian folktale in particular,
as he has learned to recognize and love it; i.e., its ties with the epic of
chivalry, its Ariostoesque levity, and the "continuous quiver of love"
which he describes as characteristics of the Italian folktale in his 1956
collection. The Nonexistent Knight captures the particular atmosphere,
style, and themes adopted by the folktale in its Italian context at "that
moment of osmosis between folktale and the epic of chivalry, the prob-
able source of which was Gothic France, whence its influence spread into
Italy via the popular epic" (1962:xxviii) and then blended with images of
Oriental origin spreading from Southern Italy, where threats from the
Saracens and Turks were common. Given this historical background, it
is only appropriate for Calvino to introduce knights, nuns, and sultans
in his "fabulous" fictional world.
The Italian osmosis of folktale and epic chivalry, as he understands it,

is also the source of the playful levity that informs The Nonexistent
Knight, and, more specifically, the minuet-like ease with which charac-
ters in it exchange narrative functions. Bradamante is first Rambaldo's
helper and then the object of his quest. Sofronia, whom we suspect is a
false heroine, becomes the innocent persecuted heroine par excellence,
when in Snow White-fashion she is recognized as the victim of yet
another wicked stepmother (1962:130). Torrismondo is a hero when he
saves the peasants from the abuse of the Knights of the Holy Grail, only
to become a villain when it seems he has committed incest with Sofronia.
Rambaldo is introduced as the neophyte for whom enrolling himself
among Charlemagne's soldiers is "a ritual to prevent plunging into the
void" (1962:21);however, when he uses Agilulfo's armor to seduce Brada-
mante, he is momentarily perceived as the false hero. And Agilulfo, after
whom the text is entitled, functions as a donor rather than as a protago-
nist: what really matters is what he leaves to Rambaldo and Torris-
mondo, his spiritual and material gifts enabling these youths to turn into
successful knights and lovers.
Finally, in the spirit of the traditional Italian folktales collected by
Calvino, The Nonexistent Knight tells of "a precarious love that unites
two incompatible worlds, and of a love tested by absence; stories of
unknowable lovers who unite only in the moment in which they are lost
to one another" (1980:xxix). Bradamante, for instance, loves Agilulfo,
who can only deny himself as he "incarnates" absence; naturally, she
believes she "has" him precisely when he is lost forever and has been
substituted by Rambaldo. Rambaldo in turn searches for Bradamante,
not knowing her face, but having fallen in love with her in an episode
which reenacts the light-hearted sensuality of the Italian Mdrchen (e.g.,
"Apple Girl" and "Rosemary"):
. . . therewas the warrior.Headand torso,like a crab's,werestill enclosed

in armorand in the impenetrablehelmet,but . . . the warriorwas naked
from the waist downward and running barefoot over rocks in the
stream.... This half of a girl ... setone foot on one sideandone foot on
theothersideof a trickleof water,bentkneesslightly, leanton the ground,
arms coveredwith iron bands,pushed the head forwardand the behind
backand beganquietly and proudlyto pee. She was a womanof harmon-
ious moons, tenderplumage, and gentle waves.Rambaldofell head over
heels in love with her on the spot. (1962:46)
And a similarly amused tone, yet respectful of love "tested by absence,"

pervades the telling of Priscilla's and Agilulfo's ineffable rendezvous, as
the lustful widow and the nonexistent knight spend the entire night
together in elaborate "preliminary" rituals, which lead to nothing and

yet make Priscilla exclaim, "A man ... a man ... a man ... a contin-
uous ... a paradise .. ." (1962:104).
The Nonexistent Knight then repeats and amplifies the Italian folktale
structurally and semantically, but its self-awareness of the processes of
writing and reading-to the critical examination of which the narrator
initiates her readers-progressively undermines and dismantles this very
same world of magic. The narrator, Sister Teodora/Bradamante incog-
nito, gradually becomes more interested in the process of writing and less
interested in the story she is telling. Her meta-narrative comments then
coalesce to formulate implicitly two questions which are crucial to the
interaction of folk and literary narrative in Calvino's own fiction: what
happens to a tale in the process of its transcription? And what happens to
traditional storytelling in its confrontation with an explicitly self-
reflective literature? Only in addressing these questions with the help of
the narrator can readers find themselves initiated into the silent and
contradictory myth emerging from The Nonexistent Knight, a mythical
discovery about which Calvino as a modern writer who privileges the
folktale is deeply ambivalent himself.
More than once does the narrator Teodora/Bradamante express her
frustration with writing, especially when she realizes that she has filled
pages and pages and yet finds herself still at the very beginning of the
story:
To tell it as I would like, this blankpagewould haveto bristlewith reddish
rocks,flakewith pebblysand,spout sparsejuniper trees ... To help tell
my tales it would be betterif I drew a map .... Then with arrowsand
crossesand numbersI could plot thejourneyof one or otherof our heroes.
(1962:106-107)
The narrator's comments clearly point first to the gap between the
referential world and the world of language and then to the gap between
image and word. While the first sentence increases our awareness of the
inadequate, but inevitable mediation operated by language-be it spo-
ken or written-in our perception of the world, the following ones more
narrowly concern the difference between telling/hearing a story and
writing/reading a story.' Let us focus on the latter first. Attentive as he is
to the mechanisms of folk performance, Calvino perceptively shows
through his narrator'swish that he intuitively knows what Vivian Labrie
notes in her research on oral narratives, i.e., that in an oral context the
basic unit of memorization is the image, rather than the word (of which
we become increasingly aware through writing, and especially alphabet-
ical writing) (1983:219-42).15In his awareness of the impossibility of
bridging this gap between word and image, Calvino chooses to call our
/
attention to it by employing a delightful strategy: Sister Teodora/

Bradamante writes that she is drawing:
All this part I am now scoring with wavy lines in the sea, or ratherthe
ocean. Now I draw the ship on which Agilulfo makeshis journey, and
furtheron I drawan enormouswhale, with an ornamentalscroll and the
words "OceanSea." This arrow indicates the ship's route. I do another
arrowshowing the whale'scourse:there,they meet. (1962:109)
If she were actually drawing, the whole of chapter nine of The Nonexis-
tent Knight would look quite different and might resemble the map in
figure 1.
KKr
cII
-"4-.
FIGURE 1.
As Sister Teodora/Bradamante's meta-narrational comments accumu-

late, the difference between image and world becomes part of the already
mentioned larger and problematic relationship between the real and
language, or between experience and narration in general. In her insight-
ful essay on Calvino's trilogy, JoAnn Cannon views this narrator's
obsessive attention to writing precisely in these terms, as expressing

"literature's inability to represent an external reality, in its abortive
attempts to transcend its status as writing" (1980:11).As Cannon argues
along Barthesian lines, the narrator comes face to face with the "un-
reality" of literature: literature can evoke the real only through language
which, in turn, has not a natural, but an institutional relationship with
the real.16 Teodora/Bradamante's tales self-consciously enact the "unreal
reality of language," and make Calvino's readersaware of it. And within
this context, Calvino's belief that folktales are "real" can only turn
against itself since all narrative-whatever its dialectics of langue and
parole may be-is exposed as having an institutional relationship with
the real. The Nonexistent Knight's questioning of the very narrative
codes of which it is a repetition and variation brings about a modern
"mythical" discovery: the paradox implicit in the belief that any story-
folk or literary-can be "a general explanation of life" (1980:xviii).
In its structural and thematic repetition of the Italian folktale, then,
The Nonexistent Knight nevertheless "exhausts" it in its reflection on its
own artifice. In other words, the repetition of the folktale's narrative
logic in the context of self-conscious writing gradually empties out that
same logic which the writer would have wished to rediscover. As an
expert storyteller, Calvino stays within the boundaries set by narrative
combinatorial rules so as to resist the collapse of the magic world of the
folktale into a blank page;'7 but, as a modern writer, he also shows his
awareness of "the announcement of an earthquake" hovering "within
the interior space" of narrative codes, as he writes in II castello dei destini
incrociati (1973; The Castle of Crossed Destinies, 1976). In this perspec-
tive, The Nonexistent Knight becomes the lucid and schizophrenic
expression of Calvino's nostalgia for the folktale and, at the same time,
his desire to explode it in his awareness of the limitations of traditional-
folk and literary-combinatorial narrative rules. At the heart of this
narrative tension, it may be possible to glimpse the unexpected "premo-
nition of an unconscious meaning," "the hidden element of fear of the
unknown, of the wish to set limits to [his] world and crawl back into [his]
shell," of what Calvino recognizes in himself as "intellectual agorapho-
bia" in his self-reflexive, later essay "Cyberneticsand Ghosts" (p. 17). But
it may also be possible to perceive the emergence of a new challenge and
the possibility of new permutations, more precisely those which the
postmodern interrogation of folk and literary narrative is pursuing today
and of which Calvino's more recent fiction-but also Robert Coover's,
Thomas Pynchon's, and many others'-is a more mature example.'1
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Honolulu
NOTES
An earlier version of this essay was published in Italian in La ricerca folklorica

12(1985):27-32.
1. This thought-provoking essay challenges the assumption that "folklore

and literature are so distinct that they can be clearly separated in a single text" (95)
and critically examines "eight criteria most often used to build walls between
oral and written art" (97). Of the eight, Lindahl finds the fixity of the written/
printed text and the role of the audience (i.e., the necessary social consensus in
folklore) to be the only valid ones. Important articles on the study of folklore in
literature are: Richard Dorson, "The Identification of Folklore in American
Literature," Journal of American Folklore 70(1957):1-8; Daniel Hoffman, "Folk-
lore in Literature: Notes Towards a Theory of Interpretation," Journal of Amer-
ican Folklore 70(1957):15-24; Alan Dundes, "The Study of Folklore in Literature
and Culture: Identification and Interpretation," Journal of American Folklore
78(1965):136-42; Mary Ellen B. Lewis, "The Study of Folklore in Literature: An
Expanded View," Southern Folklore Quarterly40( 1976):343-51;and, more recent-
ly, Sandra K. Dolby Stahl, "Studying Folklore and American Literature," in
Handbook of American Folklore, edited by Richard Dorson, 422-33 (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1983).
2. Critiques of the obliteration of differences between folklore and literature
have been articulated by folklorists across the spectrum: Linda Degh, Folktales
and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969); Alan Dundes,
"Structuralism and Folklore," in Folk Narrative Research (Studia Fennica 20),
edited by Juha Pentikainen and Tuula Juurikka, 75-93 (Helsinki: Finnish
Literature Society, 1976);Robert Georges, "Towards an Understanding of Story-
telling Events," Journal of American Folklore 82(1968):313-28; Heda Jason,
"Precursors of Propp: Formalist Theories of Narrative in Early Russian Ethno-
poetics," PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory 2(1977):471-516;
and Aurora Milillo, Narrativa di tradizione orale: studi e ricerche (Roma: Bul-
zoni, 1977).
3. This essay is a translation of "Die Folklore als eine besondere Form des
Schaffens," Donum Natalicium Schrijnen (Nijmegen-Utrecht):900-13; re-
printed in Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings, IV: Slavic Epic Studies (The
Hague, 1966), 1-15. It is richer and more useful than "On the Boundary between
Studies of Folklore and Literature," in Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist
and Structuralist Views, edited by Ladislov Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska,
91-3 (Cambridge: Massachusetts University Press, 1971), the translation of its
shorter and somewhat dogmatic 1931 version.
4. Richard Bauman's "Conceptions of Folklore" examines Propp's, Boga-
tyrev's, Jakobson's, and Bakhtin's works on folklore to suggest "the strong
continuities ... between the folkloristic concerns of these founders of modern
literary semiotics and those contemporary folklorists working under the stimu-
lus of the ethnography of speaking" (13). Bauman provides an excellent reading
of Bogatyrev's and Jakobson's 1929 essay, evaluating its limits (the conservative
and tradition-bound role of folklore, in particular) and its potential: the "lack of
clarity" in their "extension of the langue/parole distinction to folklore" (4),
which allows me to interpret their definitions more flexibly; their modern
extended view of "folk groups"; and their conception of folklore as "a unified
expressive system," the study of which necessitates the examination of "the
relationship of forms within the system, their hierarchy, and the degree of
productivity of each" (5). In his comments on Jakobson's and Bogatyrev's non-
collaborative subsequent works, Bauman sees more promise in the latter's inter-
est in a folkloric parole than in the former's insistence on folkloric langue. While
I agree with his assessment, I do believe that the langue/parole dynamics can be
employed precisely to bring about both that understanding of folklore as "the
synthesis of the dialectical interplay of tradition and innovation" (14) which
Bauman advocates, and the productive questioning of the boundaries "erected"
between folklore and literature.
5. One does not have to turn to Bogatyriv and Jakobson to argue in this
direction, of course. In a recent essay, Jonathan D. Evans writes: "Censorship
operates similarly then in both oral and written narrative to suppress idiolect and
promote koine in the dialogue that comprises verbal art; both oral and written
texts are relevant to the analysis of folk traditions as they are encoded in narra-
tives" ("Semiotics and the Medieval Dragon Tradition," Journal of Folklore
Research 22(1985):88. In "The Performance and Perception of Folklore and
Literature," Fabula 20(1979):256-64, Donald Wardalso makes use of the langue
parole dynamics to study folk and literary narrative.
6. The second quotation is their paraphrase of Tynjanov.
7. See Gregory Lucente, Beautiful Fables (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1986), pp. 267-76 for a careful analysis of Calvino's first novel,
II sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947; The Path to the Nest of Spiders), and "the
narrative self-consciousness of its borrowings from the folktale tradition" (267).
In a review of that 1947 novel, Casare Pavese was the first to note Calvino's
interest in the folktale.
8. This essay clarifies Calvino's approach to the literature of the fantastic: like
Jorge Borges and the critic Jack Zipes, he refuses to read it as escapist literature
and reflects on its historical and political implications.
9. The Italian term fiaba translates Mdrchen more accurately than "folktale"
or "fairy tale," since it can refer to Volksmirchen, on the one hand, and Buch-
mdrchen and Kunstmdrchen, on the other. My own argument concerns the
Buchmdrchen and indirectly (through Calvino's reading of it) the Volksmirchen;
thus, I will be using the terms "folktale" and "Mdrchen" interchangeably
throughout. For a recent discussion of the term Mdrchen, see Barry W. Rosen,
"Metamarchen:Reevaluating and Defining the Romantic Kunstmdrchen," Folk-
lore Forum 18(1985):15-31.
10. Calvino is not alone in proposing this interpretation of the form and
politics of the Mdrchen. See, for different perspectives on the matter, the work of
Linda Degh, Andre Jolles, Aurora Milillo, Rudolf Schenda, and Jack Zipes.
11. My translation. For a similar approach, see Writing Culture: The Poetics
and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
12. My translation.
13. There is a long bibliography of works focusing on the "fabulous" elements
of Calvino's fiction: Riccardo Buscaglia, "Autobiografia (perplessa) di Italo
Calvino," Paragone 366( 1980):82-87;Contardo Calligaris, Italo Calvino (Milano:
Mursia, 1973);JoAnn Cannon, "Literary Signification: An Analysis of Calvino's
Trilogy," Symposium 34(1980):3-12; Maria Corti, "Testo o macrotesto? I rac-
conti di Marcovaldo di Italo Calvino," Strumenti critici 9 (1975):182-97;Teresa de
Lauretis, "Narrative Discourse in Calvino: Praxis or Poiesis?," PMLA
90(1975):414-25; John Gatt-Rutter, "Calvino Ludens," Journal of European
Studies 5( 176):320-39; Gore Vidal, "Fabulous Calvino," The New YorkReview
of Books (May 30, 1974):13-21;J. R. Woodhouse, "Italo Calvino and the Redis-
covery of a Genre," Italian Quarterly 12(1968):45-66 and Italo Calvino: A
Reappraisal and an Appreciation of the Trilogy (Hull: University of Hull, 1968).
Contardo Calligaris devotes his entire book to the analysis of Calvino's gradual
disenchantment with the folktale as a genre that would reconcile man with
history. More recent contributions to Calvino criticism include Albert Howard
Carter, III, Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy (Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1987) and in a special Calvino issue, Jack Byrne "Calvino's Fantastic
Ancestors: The Viscount, the Baron and the Knight," The Review of Contem-
porary Fiction 6(Summer 1986).
14. In With Pleated Eye and Garnet Wing: Symmetries of Italo Calvino (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1984), I. T. Olken remarks that "the
entire first three pages of chapter nine... are the aesthetic core of the novel," and
that in them "Calvino forces Suor Teodora to the limits of her abilities and
beyond" (72).
15. Labrie argues that a transcribed tale differs from its oral rendition not only
because its performance elements are reduced, but because the transcriber'sand
the reader's alphabetical conditioning informs the experience of the tale as text.
What matters to the storyteller and the audience in an oral context is the picture,
"not the sound of the word, but the subsequent conversion of the word after its
first semantic treatment into a substance of the listener's imagination" (225). In
contrast, "the use of alphabetical writing makes us aware of the phonetic,
graphic, morphological, and syntactic structure of language.. ." (221).
16. To this effect, Cannon quotes Roland Barthes, Essais Critiques (Paris: Ed.
du Seuil, 1964), p. 264.
17. This is how Marcovaldo, Calvino's 1963 collection of stories for children,
ends.
18. For a discussion of Calvino's theory of language and narrative in Palomar,
see JoAnn Cannon, "Calvino's Latest Challenge to the Labyrinth: A Reading of
Palomar," Italica 62(1985):189-200; for a postmodern incorporation of folkloric
material into literature, see David C. Estes, "American Folk Laughter in Robert
Coover's Public Burning," Contemporary Literature 28(1987):239-56; Mark
Workman, "Proverbs for the Pious and the Paranoid: The Social Use of Meta-
phor" (forthcoming in Proverb); and my "Cracking. the Mirror: Three Re-
Visions of 'Snow White'," boundary 2 15/3 and 16/1(Spring/Fall 1988):1-23.
REFERENCES CITED
Adler, Sara Maria. 1979. Calvino: The Writer as Fablemaker. Potomak: Studia
Humanitatis.
Bauman, Richard. 1982. "Conceptions of Folklore in the Development of Liter-
ary Semiotics." Semiotica 39:1-20.
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. "The Storyteller." In Illuminations, edited by Hannah
Arendt and translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Bogatyriv, Petr and Roman Jakobson. 1982. "Folklore as a Special Form of
Creativity." In The Prague School: Selected Writings, 1929-1946. Edited by
Peter Steiner. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Calvino, Italo. 1955. "I1midollo del leone." Paragone 66:17-31.
. 1962. The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount; Two Short
Novels. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun. New York:Random House.
. 1976. The Castle of Crossed Destinies. Translated by William Weaver.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
___ . 1980. Italian Folktales. Translated by George Martin. New York: Har-
court Brace Jovanovich.
. 1986. "Cybernetics and Ghosts," In The Uses of Literature, translated by
Peter Creagh. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Cannon, JoAnn. 1980. "Literary Signification: An Analysis of Calvino's Tril-
ogy," Symposium 34:3-12.
Carpitella, Diego. 1976. Folklore e analisi differenziale di cultura: Materiali per
lo studio delle tradizioni popolari. Roma: Bulzoni.
de Lauretis, Teresa. 1975. "Narrative Discourse in Calvino: Praxis or Poiesis?
PMLA 90:414-25.
Jones, Steven Swann. 1985. "Conceptualizing the Study of Folklore and Liter-
ature," Folklore Forum 18/2:211-18.
Labrie, Vivian. 1983. "Cartography and Graphic Analysis of the Physical Uni-
verse of the Odyssey Story." Journal of Folklore Research 20:219-42.
Lindahl, Carl. 1978. "On the Borders of Oral and Written Art." Folklore Forum
11:94-123.
Liithi, Max. 1982. The European Folktale. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Propp, Vladimir. 1984. Theory and History of Folklore. Edited by Anatoly
Liberman and translated by Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Calvino's Journey: Modern Transformations of Folktale, Story, and Myth

Author(s): Cristina Bacchilega

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Calvino's Journey: Modem Transformations of

The fairytale, which to this dayis the firsttutorof childrenbecauseit was

Writtenliteratureis born alreadyladen with the taskof consecration,of

There is nothing new about stating that the relationship between

the other hand, the approach to folklore as literature has privileged in

A collector of tales, a critic, and a highly self-conscious modern writer,

This long quotation clarifies Calvino's modern interpretation of the

Calvino does not forget he is a sophisticated writer and scholar acting on

Mythis thehiddenpartof everystory,theburiedpart,theregionthatis still

And this "language vacuum" is clearly, Calvino argues, an old interdic-

Worldconditionswerestill confusedin theerawhen this tookplace.It was

joined Charlemagne's army to avenge his father's death, enthusiastic

rather than reflection, its one-dimensional characters, and its unhappy

you're calling a goat. Say 'cheese' or 'torrent'and he answers 'Here I am'"

The Italian osmosis of folktale and epic chivalry, as he understands it,

. . . therewas the warrior.Headand torso,like a crab's,werestill enclosed

And a similarly amused tone, yet respectful of love "tested by absence,"

together in elaborate "preliminary" rituals, which lead to nothing and

attention to it by employing a delightful strategy: Sister Teodora/

As Sister Teodora/Bradamante's meta-narrational comments accumu-

obsessive attention to writing precisely in these terms, as expressing

University of Hawaii at Manoa

An earlier version of this essay was published in Italian in La ricerca folklorica

1. This thought-provoking essay challenges the assumption that "folklore

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