Character and existentialism in Calvino's Nonexistent Knight

¶ … Nonexistent Knight is a character driven narrative and, therefore, should be summarized within the framework of those characters and their exploits throughout the novella. The titular character, the nonexistent knight, Agilulf, who exists not in the flesh but in a suit of armor, seeks to restore his honor by confirming that his good deed that earned him his knighthood, saving the virginity of a young royal woman from the lecherous ways of two brutes, did indeed happen per his recollection. The youth, Raimbaut, is a young knight in the making who falls in love with a dastardly lady knight. The lady knight, Bradamante, falls in love with the chivalric and impeccably noble ways of the nonexistent knight and sets up a love triangle of sorts. Then there's Torrismund, another knight, who ends up falling in love with a woman that was at one point thought to be his mother. Lastly, there's the nihilistic narrator, a nun, who is full of vim and verve and a dolt called Gurduloo who exists, but does not know he exists. In short, the Nonexistent Knight is a satiric rendering of a medieval tale that aims to explore, among other things, the existential underpinnings of life.

Historical and Aesthetic Content

To know something about Italo Calvino is to know something about magic realism and post-modernism. While both tropes are manifested in the pages of the Nonexistent Knight, perhaps it would be better to understand the book as an extension of a special genre of parody novels, novellas, essays, that are at once both serious and silly. Serious in terms of the philosophical questions they investigate and silly in terms of plot and character.

To find books of this ilk, a reader should examine Voltaire's Candide, Heller's Catch-22, and essay's like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." While the Nonexistent Knight opts to avoid the black humor and cynicism of the aforementioned works, it embraces the same trenchant use of satire and allegory to explore the social, political, and philosophical issues that have puzzled man throughout the ages.

Calvino's prose and aesthetic sensibility is not on par with the belletristic scribblings of Nabokov or Joyce, but then again it doesn't aim to be. Instead it is a humorous tale told from the perspective of a nun, in a language brimming with aphorisms and philosophical complexities (Markey 76).

Significant Passages with Analysis & Interpretation

One passage worthy of analysis and interpretation is scene in which Torrismund is invited to stay among the citizens of Koowalden, "They can all become citizens of Koowalden, replied the inhabitants, and to each will be given according to his worth. Am I consider myself an equal to this squire of mine, Gurduloo, who doesn't even know if he exists or not? He will learn to… We ourselves did not know we existed… One can also learn to be

What is fascinating about this passage is not only the distinction Calvino draws between "existing" and "being," but the allusion to the Marxist slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" (Marx 27). Calvino was a known communist for some years, so a subtle line to extol virtues of egalitarianism should come as no surprise. Note Torrismund's shock and initial reluctance to equate himself with the doltish squire who exists, but does not know he exists. Calvino is suggesting that living in a society free of hierarchy (and monarchy) is integral to really living, or "being." To sum it up, he is saying, one merely exists under a monarchy, but one can learn to be something in a free society.

The nihilistic narrating nun is a very fascinating character. While it's easy to prove she's both the narrator and a nun, it's difficult to prove she's a nihilist. But one has to admit there's something stirring and unsettling about her comments, consider this, "The art of writing tales consists in an ability to draw the rest of life from the nothing one has understood of it, but life begins again at the end of the page when one realizes that on knew nothing whatsoever" (Calvino 61).

This passage has the tenor of a nihilist, does it not? If that is not convincing enough, the narrator adds this toward the end of the book, "A page is good only when we turn it and find life urging along, confusing every page in the book (Calvino 140). Is she contending that confusion and complete lack of understanding is what living life is about? That life is pointless? Maybe. Or maybe she is saying that knowing life is pointless and confusing and impossible to understand allows one to live a more fulfilling life.