Epic Halves, Epic Doubles: Calvino, Tasso, and the Self-Reflecting Enemy

Abstract

Italo Calvino’s avowed preference for the Orlando furioso does not preclude him from relying on the Gerusalemme liberata to bolster the epic features of his trilogy I nostri antenati , particularly in the novel Il visconte dimezzato (1952). This article does not establish this intertextual relationship with an eye to exploring how the 16th-century author has influenced Calvino, but instead follows Lucia Re’s line of thought in her article “Ariosto and Calvino: the Adventures of a Reader” by looking backward to see what Calvino’s novella reveals about Tasso’s poem. Elements of Il visconte dimezzato can indeed serve as an interpretive key to the question of the early modern author’s politico-religious ideology. Calvino parodies epic conflict in the central narrative of his novel by physically splitting his protagonist’s body into a good half and an evil half. Each becomes an autonomous entity, creating a simultaneous halving and doubling effect. After a long rivalry and duel over a peasant woman, Il Gramo and Il Buono combine again to become one re-unified Medardo. This peculiar construction of self versus self emphasizes the fundamental likeness of all peoples regardless of their camp in a conflict. Calvino’s direct citation of Tasso hints that his predecessor may have shared this universalizing view. Tasso appears in a moment both meta- and metà- literary: attempting to further dismember his adversary, Il Gramo accidentally slices in half the book that Il Buono is reading. This is the Gerusalemme liberata , whose halfway point according to its author falls just after the death of the warrior Clorinda. Like Medardo, Clorinda has a double and conflicting nature. Her dual religious, racial, and gender identities have long been the subject of commentary. By halving the Liberata at this point, Calvino suggests that we reconsider our understanding of this character. Ending the poem here would shift the focus from the final duel of Tancredi and Argante in Canto 19 to that of Clorinda and Tancredi in Canto 12. This change assigns much more value to Clorinda; rather than an anomaly, she becomes the foremost representative of the enemy army. If the principal Muslim character is in fact such a complicated figure as Clorinda, who is ultimately redeemed, then the extent to which Tasso frames the Muslims as morally corrupt becomes problematized. Calvino’s portrait of the universal warrior anticipates aspects of more recent critical approaches to Tasso, pointing out that the Liberata ’s ethical divide between the army of the saved Christians and that of the condemned Muslims may not be as severe as it appears.

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