Chivalry Unhorsed

THE NONEXISTENT KNIGHT & THE CLOVEN VISCOUNT (246 pp.) -Italo Calvino -Random House ($3.95).

Knights have been a favorite target of parodists ever since they first stepped into their armor. But not even Don Quixote is quite so grotesque as the heroes of these two short novels. One has only half a body; the other has none at all. It is Italian Novelist Calvino's way of saying how empty are the ideals of chivalry, whether medieval or modern.

Agilulf, the Nonexistent Knight, is so perfect a knight that his body has turned entirely to armor. He cannot be wounded in battle, scorns his fellow knights who must care for their flesh. But he often longs for a mortal body. His armor is "pierced through every chink by gusts of wind, flights of mosquitoes, and the rays of the moon." For other knights love is spiritual by choice; Agilulf has no choice. When a maiden he has rescued invites him to bed, poor metallic Agilulf hems and haws, makes and remakes the bed, finally finds a knightly excuse not to disrobe: "Naked ladies are advised that the most sublime of sensual emotions is embracing a knight in full armor."

In medieval romances, knights grow nobler from suffering. The Cloven Viscount, Medardo of Terralba, grows worse. He is cut cleanly in two from head to crotch by a Turkish cannon ball, and one half of him is saved by doctors. This half returns home with a maniacal urge to slice everything else in two: flowers, mushrooms, small animals. "If only I could halve every whole thing like this," the viscount philosophizes, "so that everyone would escape from his obtuse and ignorant wholeness. Beauty and knowledge and justice only exists in what has been cut to shreds."

Calvino's macabre heroes have the potential of powerful allegory, but Calvino weakens his stories by cluttering them with too many other symbolic characters, e.g., the good half of the viscount eventually shows up, and a pat ending is achieved when the two halves are rejoined. Still, there are passages almost worthy of Cervantes. A nun bemoans her sheltered life: "Apart from religious ceremonies, triduums, novenas, gardening, harvesting, vintaging, whippings, slavery, incest, fires, hangings, invasion, sacking, rape and pestilence, we have had no experience. What can a poor nun know of the world?" When two feudal armies clash, the impact knocks all their knightly paraphernalia to the ground. Instead of fighting, the knights scramble for loot, then make swaps. "What is war, after all," writes Calvino, "but the passing of more and more dented objects from hand to hand?"

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