El vizconde demediado

Por Italo Calvino

El vizconde demediado es la primera incursión de Italo Calvino en lo fabuloso y lo fantástico. Cuenta Calvino la historia del vizconde de Terralba, quien fue partido en dos por un cañonazo de los turcos y cuyas dos mitades continuaron viviendo por separado. Símbolo de la condición humana dividida, medardo de Terralba sale a caminar por sus tierras. A su paso, las peras que colgaban de los árboles aparecen todas partidas por la mitad. «Cada encuentro de dos seres en el mundo es un desgarrarse», le dice la mitad mala del vizconde a la mujer de quien se ha enamorado. Pero ¿es seguro que se trate de la mitad mala? Esta magnífica fábula plantea la búsqueda del ser humano en su totalidad, quien suele estar hecho de algo más que de la suma de sus mitades.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Siruela
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 16 oct 2012
• ISBN: 9788415723356

Italo Calvino

ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers. Born in Cuba, he was raised in San Remo, Italy, and later lived in Turin, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. Among his many works are Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s night a traveler, The Baron in the Trees, and other novels, as well as numerous collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. His works have been translated into dozens of languages.

Comentarios para El vizconde demediado

[bezoar44 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A fable, told lightly, of the dark consequences of losing psychic integration. I think Calvino is using a Freudian framework here - a viscount is struck by a cannonball, and blown into two halves, one 'good' (the superego, concerned with the greater good and especially following rules) and one 'bad' (concerned only with satisfying its own vicious hungers). Except that both are, by themselves, unbearable. Peace can only be realized, the story implies, when both elements are integrated into a single self. I don't find this fable convincing, because I don't find it helpful to understand people primarily in terms of warring drives and controls, but if you like that premise, the cloven viscount is a grotesque but clever conceit.

[donato_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Another fantabulous fable from a wonderful weaver of tales. Here we have a man cut in half (both literally and figuratively of course). It would be too easy to say, this is a story of man who's not complete. Sure it's that, but it's so much more (as all great art, it has layers). In only 90 pages, it's also about everyone else reacting to this incompleteness. It's about how we do things without realizing it, and it's about how we see and act in the world through our own narrow lenses. But the beauty of it is the way it's told, with that Calvino-esque fluidity that makes it seem natural and real (but it's just a fairy tale...), and just-the-way-it-is. And the thing is, all those layers of meaning, they're there because the story is true...