Lâu Đài Của Những Số Phận Giao Thoa

by Italo Calvino, Hà Vũ Trọng (Translator)

Tiểu thuyết Lâu đài của những số phận giao thoa được nhà văn Italo Calvino cho ra mắt vào năm 1973 với nguyên tác tiếng Ý. Tác phẩm gồm một chuỗi chuyện kể được chia thành hai phần khác nhau: Lâu đài của những số phận giao thoa và Tửu quán của những số phận giao thoa. Xuyên suốt tác phẩm là câu chuyện của hai nhóm lữ khách, một nhóm qua đêm ở lâu đài và nhóm còn lại trú chân ở một tửu quán. Điều kỳ lạ là tát cả lữ khách đều mất đi khả năng nói sau khi băng qua khu rừng đầy ma lực. Dù là ở lâu đài hay tửu quán, các lữ khách đều đang cố gắng kể lại câu chuyện đời mình bằng các lá bài tarot. Họ lựa chọn các lá bài, sắp xếp chúng theo trật tự thời gian và đặt chúng lên bàn ở một vị trí nhất định nào đó. Dẫu người kể đã cố gắng trình bày câu chuyện nhưng sự vô ngôn bất đắc dĩ và việc mỗi lá bài tarot có nhiều cách diễn giải khác nhau đã khiến cho câu chuyện mà người kể đưa ra và người nghe tiếp nhận luôn tồn tại một khoảng cách. Một tác phẩm mang đậm phong cách văn chương Italo Calvino, đưa người đọc vào cõi diệu vơi, biến ảo và thuận khiết của thế giới tưởng tượng.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Italian Literature, Classics, Short Stories, Italy, Literature

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).

His style is not easy to classify; much of his writing has an air reminiscent to that of fantastical fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called postmodern, reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply "modern". He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Castle of Crossed Destinies is a kind of stories that a fortuneteller could tell… Actually tarot cards recount the tales…

I decided to break what I believed a drowsiness of tongues after the trials of the journey, and I was about to burst forth with a loud exclamation such as “Health to all!” or “Well met!” or “It’s an ill wind…”; but no sound came from my lips. The drumming of spoons, the rattle of goblets and crockery were enough to persuade me I had not gone deaf: I could only presume I had been struck dumb. My fellow diners confirmed this supposition, moving their lips silently in a gracefully resigned manner: it was clear that crossing the forest had cost each of us the power of speech.

So tarot cards begin: The Tale of the Ingrate and His Punishment, The Tale of the Alchemist Who Sold His Soul, The Tale of the Doomed Bride, A Grave-Robber’s Tale, The Tale of Roland Crazed with Love…

He set down the figure of the King of Swords, which attempted to render in a single portrait his bellicose past and his melancholy present, at the square’s left edge, beside the Ten of Swords. And our eyes seemed suddenly blinded by the great dust cloud of battles: we heard the blare of trumpets; already the shattered spears were flying; already the clashing horses’ muzzles were drenched in iridescent foam…

The Tavern of Crossed Destinies was added later and it is more abstract…

Rising to his feet on his throne, the regal interlocutor changes and becomes unrecognizable: at his back it is not an angelic plumage that opens, but two bat-wings that darken the sky, the impassive eyes have become crossed, oblique, and the crown has sprouted horn branches, the cloak falls to reveal a naked, hermaphroditic body, hands and feet prolonged into talons.
“Why, were you not an angel?”
“I am the angel who dwells in the point where lines fork. Whoever retraces the way of divided things encounters me, whoever descends to the bottom of contradictions runs into me, whoever mingles again what was separated feels my membraned wing brush his cheek!”

Clubs, cups, coins and swords still rule the world and the wheel of fortune keeps turning.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is a picture worth a thousand words?

And if so, does it tell a story?

Imagine Calvino setting out to create a Boccaccio or Dante situation, a setting in which travellers meet in an obscure forest and have time to spend on a storytelling adventure. Calvino would hardly be Calvino if he didn't give the project his own twist, complicating matters to the point of impossibility. His protagonists, including the narrator, discover that they are mute.

How are you to share if you can't speak? They let Tarot cards speak. In sequence after sequence, the cards are arranged to tell the stories of the characters, showing their passions,their hopes, their dreams and their losses. Is that possible?

Even Leonardo da Vinci needed words and writing to make the statement that he thought painting was a superior art form compared to literature. Since Antiquity, visual art and literature have been compared and evaluated according to their respective expressive power. Ut pictura poesis, claimed Horace in his Ars Poetica, but is it really true? Calvino seems to agree with the idea in the beginning, but his stories crumble and disappear in the artistic arrangements he is imagining while looking at the multiple meanings each card contains.



Different stories are interlinked, and give the cards new potential for interpretation. Literature jumps in to fill the gaps in the visual narratives. We meet Faust, King Lear, Macbeth, Oedipus and many others while the narrator tries to find his own story in the cards.

Literature like painting? Lessing, in his Laokoon, defined literature as a sequence of episodes and painting as one important moment in focus, and in a way, Calvino has managed to merge these two ideas into a sequence of defining moments minus the connecting tissue of narrative context.

This is quite the opposite of what Hofmann did in his literary description of Brueghel's The Parable Of The Blind, turning the description of the painting into a long episode - connecting the brush strokes by adding interpretation and meaning.

Why would Calvino do a thing like that? Is there any meaning in his ambiguous mutation of the functionality of art and literature?

I would say let the tarot cards speak. The Hanged Man says:

"Lasciatemi così. Ho fatto tutto il giro e ho capito. Il mondo si legge all'incontrario. Tutto è chiaro."

The world clearly makes more sense if it is read from the upside down position. I agree, Calvino! Bravo!

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, to be drunk with a pack of tarot cards.

Or was it speed? Not sure. It could be PCP. But whatever the drug, this collection of short stories surrounding the obvious use of tarot cards to write stories or re-write common tales or to lay down the structure of alchemy or to just have a plain ole good time is a concept I can love in pure concept terms, and do, but just how much did I love this exact work?

Um. Well. Some parts were fun and funny and the deep story concepts were really rather cool, but getting deep into any of it except for the stories we already know by heart was a real pain. I kinda felt like we were playing with little green interchangeable army men one moment and then we were having an intellectual discussion about high alchemical concepts and symbolism and the structure of the soul versus the medium in which we use it and its inversion, as seen with Doctor Faustus. (As in creating philosopher's gold within one's soul as the medium versus using the soul as a coin to create philosopher's gold directly, with the obvious fail associated with it.)

Of course, if that's too complicated to enjoy, then I'd recommend avoiding this book because that was just a tiny, tiny part. The rest seems to be a random shuffle and subsequent interpretation.

Fun, in a way, but oddly dissatisfying.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge Calvino fan. His stories are full of mathematical marvels and ingenious ideas. The Castle of Crossed Destinies has both of these characteristics and is a short but marvelous read.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘I always feel the need to alternate one type of writing with another, completely different, to begin writing again as if I had never written anything before.’

And thus ends Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies. There are times when I forget just how much I love Calvino’s writing. This is a very short book, but one that requires intense concentration to read – in fact, it requires intense concentration right up until the point where you realise that you simply aren’t smart enough to get this book in its full and breathtaking complexity. That moment for me was page 38 in the Picador version that I own – at least, that is the moment I truly knew that there are depths to this book I have no hope of ever being able to plumb. Not unlike trying to read Kant’s various categories in the Critique (and also finding myself lost in a mind infinitely more logical than mine can ever hope to be) I read this book with mouth-gaping awe. As TS Eliot put it, ‘il miglior fabbro’ (the better craftsman).

Now that I’ve probably put you off reading this book, let me see if I can make you want to read it.

A man is lost in the forest after a long, dangerous and arduous journey. In the distance, as it is getting dark, he sees a castle. He makes his way there and is shown into a room where a great number of other people are already seated and eating and drinking. He joins them and is about to begin talking when he discovers that he has no power of speech at all. This surprises him, but in watching the others at the table he soon discovers that they too have lost the ability to speak.

When the food and wine are cleared away all that is left on the table is a pack of tarot cards. One of the ‘guests’ flips through the pack and then selects cards with careful deliberation and sets them down in two rows. These cards (and the manner in which they are placed on the table) tell his story. Another guest then begins his story, also by laying down cards on the table – this time crossing the two rows with two columns. In this way elements of the first story are reused in the second story. In the end there is an enormous spread of cards across the table in which twelve interlaced stories are told. The stories can be read up and down, or down and up, or right to left, or left to right.

Tarot cards have a symbolic meaning, obviously enough, but that meaning depends in these stories on the card’s position it appears within the story itself and on the story that is being told as much as on the image depicted on the face of the card. So that the two of clubs – a card with two wooden clubs crossed on its face, can mean two paths intersecting or it can mean the beginning of a battle.

This is a book that does what poetry does – it weaves meaning out of images while at the same time referring to the history of poetry (or literature) as a way to give those images additional context and content. I don’t know how familiar you might be with TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ – but basically, it does much the same thing, taking lots of lines from European poetry and literature and smashing them so as to play with the shattered pieces scattered across the floor. In that poem there is a fortune-teller ‘with a wicked pack of cards’ called Madame Sosostris. It would be hard to be too surprised that she might make an appearance in this book as well.

My Good Reads friend Paul did this review of this book - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/.... And while I can understand his frustration, this book is much better than he might make you think. I do understand that someone might think it is all a huge wank (or a drunken bet gone horribly wrong) but I can only accept that until you get to ‘I Also Try to Tell My Tale’ – from that moment on this book becomes something completely different from what you might have imagined it was going to be. (I wouldn’t mind betting – if I was a betting man – that Paul stopped out of frustration before this part of the book on the basis that he had worked out where this one was going)

From then on until the very last breath of this book it becomes something else – something that justifies any incomprehension or difficulty that might have troubled you up until this point. Let’s be completely frank here – if you are not about to pull your hair out by the time you get to this point in the book you have completely missed the point of the book and need to cut back on the drugs you are taking (they are, quite obviously, not doing you any favours at all).

But from the moment the King of Clubs from the Ancien Tarot de Marseille is dropped onto the table you will find it virtually impossible to stop reading. The descriptions of St Jerome and St George (which has you saying – oh so that is what that stuff meant) and then the three tales of madness (where Hamlet, MacBeth and King Lear are smashed together) are so mind-blowingly well written and so damn clever and so insightful that it makes you come away thinking you have at least a vague idea of why people waste quite so much time reading this Literature rubbish in the first place.

You know, you really could see this book as some sort of post-modern wank of meta-fiction, the sort of book one might read at University for forty-five years followed by a PhD thesis explaining the connections between the Oedipus myth and the sorts of fairytales that Calvino himself documents in his Italian Folk Tales and, of course, the ever-present and potent images found in the humble tarot pack. BUT this is a book based on the real obsession of the author, a writer who decided one day to see if he could make patterns out of rows of tarot cards so as to literally use them to tell stories and to then see if he could link those stories together and also somehow write them up in a way that complemented the sting of images he had produced on the table before him. As he said, he finally published the book in the hope of exorcising this obsession which was becoming all-consuming. (Again, I’m not a betting man, but I would put real money on my belief that publishing the book really didn’t help)

And for those of us who have spent a lifetime obsessed with choices:

‘…every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing.’

I would also be prepared to bet that Calvino liked to read Hegel. You know, perhaps I’m more of a gambler than I like to pretend.

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Italo Calvino kitabın başında uzunca bir önsöz ile yazım sürecini anlatmış. Kitapta iki öykü var: “Kesişen Yazgılar Şatosu” ve “Kesişen Yazgılar Meyhanesi”. Her iki öykü de farklı başlıklara sahip sekizer öykü içeriyor.

Birçok hikayede bir kartın tarot kartı olarak gerçek anlamı değil, kartın üzerindeki resmin veya resimlerdeki ayrıntıların yorumlanması esas alınmış, bu nedenle tarot bilgisi olmadan da rahatça okunabiliyor öyküler. Aslında Calvino aklındakileri tarot kağıtlarına yükleyerek hikayeyi istediği gibi şekillendiriyor. Kağıtlar sadece araç, amaç Calvino’nun zekasını ve mizahi gücünü yansıtmak bu öykülerde.

İlk bölümde Ortaçağ’da yolları bir şatoda kesişen bir grup insanın konuşamadıkları farketmeleri üzerine tarot kartları aracılığıyla kendilerine ait öykülerini birbirlerine anlatmalarını görüyoruz. İkinci bölümde ise bu kez mekanın bir meyhane olması ve aynı tarz anlatımların devam etmesi ile kitap iletliyor. Sadece tarotları yanyana dizip onlardan öykü çıkarmayı bırakmış, kafasındaki öyküye göre tarotları yerleştirmeye başlamıştır Calvino. Öyleki bu akıl oyununu müzelerde bulunan ünlü tablolarla da yapmıştır.

Calvino’nun edebiyat yolculuğu gerçekçilikle başlasa da (Hemingway hayranlığı, ilk romanı Patika’nın partizan direnişinin öyküsü olması gibi) kısa sürede kendisini daha iyi ifade edeceğini anladığı gerçeküstü ve fantastik öykülere kaymıştır. Hatta bu kitapta olduğu gibi Oulipo grubunun etkisi ile yazdığı eserler vardır, örneğin “Bir Kış Gecesi Eğer Bir Yolcu”. Tabii gerçeküstücü edebiyat ile ilgilenirse mitoloji gelip baş köşeye kurulur. Basit veya karmaşık alegoriler ortaya dökülür. Metinler arası göndermeler baş döndürür. Tam da bu öykülerde olduğu gibi, Shakespeare, Dante, Freud, Homeros....

Calvino’nun en zor eserlerinden biri hatta en zoru diye düşünüyorum “Kesişen Yazgılar Şatosu”nu. Calvino okumak isteyenler için sonra okunacaklar arasına konulması gerekir. Zaten bu eserini olgunluk çağı eseri olarak nitelendiriyor kendisi de. Tarot kartlarındaki aynı resmi her defasında farklı biçimde yorumladığını bunu da çocukluğunda kurduğu hayallere bağladığını söyler (Amerika Dersleri s.105, YKY).

Sıklıkla belirttiğim gibi Calvino okumaya “Zor Sevdalar” ve “Öyküler: Arjantin Karıncası, Emlak Vurgunu ve diğerleri” ile başlamanın iyi olacağını hatırlatmakta yarar var

[Come Musica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calvino sa stupire.
In questo libro che raccoglie e intreccia storie apparentemente tra loro scollegate, ogni tessera, ogni tarocco trova la sua giusta collocazione.
Racconta tutto e il suo contrario, a seconda delle carte che ha a sé vicine, a seconda del personaggio a cui si riferisce.

[Ajeje Brazov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il libro che ho appena letto, trattasi di un'opera molto curiosa. L'inizio ha incrementato questa curiosità, aggiungendoci poi l'ottima e particolare scrittura di Calvino, ma con l'andare delle pagine l'interessamento è sempre più scemato, non so, forse l'aver utilizzato la carte dei Tarocchi che personalmente non conosco e non m'interessano, od anche perchè poi le storie prendevano vie troppo simili l'una all'altra.
L'edizione che ho letto è arricchita con le illustrazioni delle carte, dove Calvino prende spunto per dipanare le varie disavventure. Arricchiscono sì, ma alla fine mi soffermavo di più sulle immagini, che sono molteplici e mi perdevo il filo, è la prima volta che delle illustrazioni mi distolgono dalla storia invece che farmici immergere di più.
Insomma: nel complesso così così.
Italo, alla prossima!

[Teresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um dia decidi fazer um curso de escrita criativa, tendo em mente dois objectivos: satisfazer a curiosidade sobre o negócio e, quiçá, aprender algumas técnicas que me pudessem facilitar nas tretas que escrevo por aqui. Está-se mesmo a ver que só o primeiro objectivo foi cumprido, pois nem mesmo um Mago pode criar talento onde ele não existe; só por artes do Diabo...
Para meu grande pasmo, de entre os sete alunos, seis sonhavam ser escritores e apenas um — o que não pretendia ser escritor (eu) — tinha hábitos de leitura. Por mais que a Roda da Fortuna gire será muito difícil colher sem semear...
Um dos exercícios foi analisar uns cartões com imagens e elaborar um pequeno conto inspirado no que observávamos. Todos escrevemos umas bacoradas, levadas a Julgamento com leitura em voz alta, as quais foram muito aplaudidas pelo monitor e colegas — como mandam as regras da boa educação, generosidade e hipocrisia, fazendo pouco caso da Justiça.

Ora, os cartões do senhor Calvino para construir estes contos foi um baralho de Tarot. E pouco mais sei pois perdi a Carruagem logo no primeiro. Ainda tentei continuar nos seguintes mas senti-me Dependurada numa Torrente de disparates que fiquei sem Força para continuar. A Temperança recorda-me que o Imperador Tempo é implacável e que tenho um Mundo infinito de livros para conhecer antes que a Morte me visite, não devendo ser Louca e desperdiçar vida com o que não me faz feliz.

Excepto uma vez, não há Sol que me ilumine a ler Calvino... numa noite de Lua cheia, deitarei as minhas cartas de Tarot e saberei se ele e eu alguma vez poderemos ser Amantes. Por agora, uma desistência e uma má Estrela...

Este texto não tem pés nem cabeça, pois não? Pois é o que penso deste livro...


=================================

"Um clássico é um livro que nunca acabou de dizer o que tem a dizer." (Porquê Ler os Clássicos?)
— Italo Calvino



Italo Calvino nasceu em Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, no dia 15 de Outubro de 1923 e morreu em Siena, Itália, no dia 19 de Setembro de 1985.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

People sit around in pubs and get drunk and bandy ridiculous ideas about - hey, what if you wrote a novel but you couldn't use one letter of the alphabet! Wow, great idea. Hey what about a bunch of characters who can only communicate by means of tarot cards? Whoah, that's cool. Hey - what about someone getting in the next round? Well, we've been part of those evenings, and the next day we've got a fat headache and forgotten all that nonsense. Except for Italo Calvino and Georges Perec. They don't. They remember, and then they actually write the damn weird books. (Friends of perec and calvino : "Can you beat that? He actually took that shit seriously!") Now I haven't read Perec yet (since I am crazy enough to want to know how it pans out) but I tried Calvino and he's just never as interesting as the idea that started him off. So that means he's the Brian Eno of literature.

Full disclosure ; a friend of mine once tried to get me to co-write a play based on this book. Perhaps therefore I'm being a little harsh. Anyway, it wasn't one of our best concepts. goodbye avant-post-postism. May all your truths be self-reflexive.

[Murat Dural · Rating 4 out of 5]

İtalo Calvino’dan yine bir başucu eseri. Umberto Eco’yu her okuduğumda ne kadar karmakarışık oluyorsam Calvino okuduğumda bir o kadar hidayete eriyorum. Bir şatoya varan yolcunun hiçbir şekilde konuşamayan konuklarla sadece ama sadece tarot kartları vasıtasıyla anlaşması. Sadece bu şekilde hikayelerini anlatmaları. Kesinlikle yormayan ama çabaya sokan, dünün ve bugünün efsaneleri, mitolojileri ile yoğrulmuş öyküleri. Calvino’nun olmazsa olmaz gülümsemesi tüm cümlelere sinmiş.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calvino è geniale. Il commento potrebbe limitarsi a queste parole.
Un tesoro questo piccolo libro, che raccoglie due racconti (o forse potrei dire due romanzi con mille storie dentro), uno quello che dà il titolo al libro, “il castello dei destini incrociati”, l’altro si intitola “la taverna dei destini incrociati”.
Dico subito che mi è piaciuto tantissimo il primo, un po’ meno il secondo.
Ne “il castello dei destini incrociati”, partendo dai Tarocchi del mazzo visconteo, il più antico che si conosca, un gruppo di commensali capitati per caso in un castello in mezzo a un bosco racconta, senza parlare, solo sfogliando le carte e disponendole sul tavolo, la propria vita, il proprio destino, che si incrocia costantemente con quello degli altri commensali, a causa dell’esiguità del numero di carte del mazzo. Ne “la taverna dei destini incrociati” il mazzo di carte usato è quello popolare dei tarocchi marsigliesi, la struttura è la medesima, cambia l’ubicazione, non più un castello ma una locanda nel bosco.
Ogni carta ha mille volti e mille significati, perché la medesima figura racchiude mille storie: ecco ad esempio che l’Arcano della Temperanza, che rappresenta una donna con delle ampolle sulle braccia, può rappresentare un incontro con una principessa che si è persa nel bosco, come anche un’ostessa o ancella di castello che apparecchia la tavola per i commensali, la quale, prima di arrivare nella taverna o nel castello nel bosco magari era stata sposa felice del Re di Denari, fino a quando non aveva incontrato a corte il Bagatto, altro Arcano, mago alchimista alle prese con i suoi alambicchi, che le fece un incantesimo; il Bagatto, a sua volta, può rappresentare uno scrittore, dal momento che nei tarocchi è raffigurato seduto a un tavolo con una penna d’uccello in mano, ma anche un oste ciarlatano, intessendo così mille storie di uomini e donne diversi. E potrei continuare all’infinito. Ovunque ci sono riferimenti letterari, da Ariosto a Shakespeare, dai tragediografi greci a Goethe. Un po’ come Perec, ne “la vita istruzioni per l’uso”, altro capolavoro cui quest’opera mi ha fatto pensare.
La fantasia e la creatività di Calvino si dimostrano insuperabili, nel castello c’è l’ universo, c’è l’uomo che percorre le strade della vita incontrando pericoli, guerre, amore e follia, in un percorso insidioso e periglioso, al cui termine il significato profondo sta nelle parole di Orlando che ha perso la ragione, rappresentato dall’Arcano dell’Appeso, legato a testa in giù, che dice: “Lasciatemi così. Ho fatto tutto il giro e ho capito. Il mondo si legge all’incontrario. Tutto è chiaro”.

[Susana · Rating 2 out of 5]

(review in English below)

Não vou perder mais tempo com este livro. Felizmente não o comprei, deve ter vindo de oferta numa encomenda qualquer, já nem me lembro quando.

Trata-se de mini-contos, baseados em conjuntos de cartas de tarot, que são interpretadas pelo narrador duma forma muito forçada, resultando em histórias de estilo medieval sem qualquer interesse.

Ao início ainda me pareceu original, mas rapidamente se tornou cansativo, à conta das repetidas referências às cartas e o mesmo género de histórias.

Ainda fui espreitar mais para a frente, mas era tudo igual, por isso... Próximo!

I'm not wasting more time with this book. Luckily I didn't buy it, I think it came as a bonus with some other books, I can't remember when.

These are mini-stories, based on arrays of tarot cards which are interpreted by the narrator in a far-fetched way, resulting in medieval style stories with little to no interest.

In the beginning it seemed somewhat original but it soon became tiresome because of the repeated references to the cards and the same kind of stories.

I even went and looked further ahead but it was all the same, so... Next!

[Aslı Can]

Kitabı son cümlesi ile anmak ve tanıtmak istiyorum:

Güneş'in gökte dikilip durmasından usandım; artık Dünya'nın sözdizimi bozulsun, oyun kartları, kitabın sayfaları, yıkım aynasının tuzla buz olmuş parçaları birbirine karışsın diye bekliyorum.

Italo zihnimin zerrelerine zamanla git gide daha çok nüfus ediyor. Ben, hiç bitmeyecek bir inşaat için hazırlanan çimento harcı gibi öylece dönüp duruyorum. Durmak da istemiyorum.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one looked like pure candy - stories of knight, hermits, and queens told from Tarot cards! - but that proved to be a mirage. Instead it's an Oulipian experiment in how to generate multiple stories from two Tarot decks which differ only in their illustrations. The stories unfold one card at a time - the selected cards are also shown in the margins - as the narrator struggles to create coherence between each card and an overall narrative thread throughout the course of the reading.

There's a stop-start quality to the storytelling here that can be exhausting and I'm betting it's why this book has garnered some low marks. Along with the narrator, you're toggling back-and-forth between text and cards and weighing various interpretative possibilities. It's a fascinating experience, but narrative momentum is pretty much out of the question. Calvino's *trying* to pull you out of these tales. It's a journey where the point is to hit every single pothole on the road.

My recommendation is to read this slowly - and alongside several other books - to avoid aggravation. These tales are fascinating for how they unravel themselves even as they're told, inviting the reader to question every turn they take. The later tales get juicier - vampires! Amazons! Sade's Justine! - but they're still best experienced one at a time. Taken as a whole, Calvino's exploration of the Tarot decks mainly adds up to a dizzying realization about the range of possibilities within a single shuffle.

****

Side note: Something must have been in water in the early 1970s about medieval tales. Other than Calvino's stories of knights, there's the entire "Electric Eden" movement of British folk, Eric Rohmer's Perceval movie, various Arthurian films, etc.

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know why I keep trying; it’s quite obvious that while there are aspects of Calvino’s writing that I love, even coming blurred through the translations, his structures, styles, plots, characters (or lack thereof) really get on my nerves. The idea is fine, but then telling a whole series of stories via someone guessing at what other people mean by laying out certain patterns of tarot cards… gets wearing.

It’s nice at first to keep your mind on the cards, the symbolism, the way the story happens… And then, for me, it loses its novelty. Maybe it’d have worked as a short story, but the more tortuous it got, the more irritated I got.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be my friend here in Goodreads, my question is: "What is your favorite literary genre?" In response to that, I received several answers ranging from classics, noir, thrillers (very few), mystery and suspense and romance (every now and then) but mostly YA and "none in particular" or as "I read anything" (that sometimes makes me ask myself what's the use of asking the question). Well, I now have 200+ friends and more than half of those I guess wanted me to be their friend instead of the other way around.

But there was one answer I will always remember: "I read everything including tarot cards!"

Come on, you can't be real, I said to myself. I readily accepted his offer of friendship. You see, I normally click on Compare Books and check on the person's profile first (if not set on private) before I accept. But I never had a friend, GR or non-GR, who knows how to read tarot cards.

The tarot cards, considered as prophetic to some and are themselves open to many symbolic interpretations, are used by Calvino (author of the essay Why Read the Classics) to tell different stories, based on real life or imagined by himself. What he did was: he laid down all the 78 tarot cards and composed short independent stories either based on existing ones like those of Roland, St. George, St. Jerome, Faust, Oedipus and Hamlet or from his imagination like the story of an alchemist who sold his soul. The book is divided into two parts: (1) The Castle of Crossed Destinies, published in 1969, that used The Viscondi Pack and (2) The Tavern of Crossed Destinies that featured The Tarot of Marseilles. Each book follows the same plot. The characters find themselves in a castle (Book 1) or tavern (Book 2) unable to talk or dumb after a long journey in the forest. Then sitting on the dinner table, they tell their stories by opening and laying down their own series of cards. The "crossed" destinies happen when the stories share a common tarot card which can be interpreted differently. Very clever storytelling. It is reason enough for this to be included in the 1001 You Must Read Before You Die. I supposed that this kind of storytelling is something that only a gifted novelist can do.

Fabulist Italo Calvino (1923-1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories, essays and novels. In one of his earlier essays, he said that the qualities of literature that future generations should cherish include: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility and multiplicity. All of these qualities are in this book especially visibility because all the tarot cards appear alongside the narratives. For somebody like me who are not familiar, I think I have not hold a deck in all my life, with tarot cards, I was able to follow the stories.

That tarot-reader guy is now one of my close friends here in Goodreads. He even told me that he will read my future using his tarot cards. Well, without consulting any of his card. I can already predict one: that he sure will be clicking "Yes" for this review. See? I do not need any tarot card to tell what will happen.

[Medisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

داستان جالب شروع شد! آدم‌هایی که به گرد هم دراومدن و با استفاده کارت‌های تاروت که برای گفتن آینده استفاده میشه از گذشتشون گفتن که اکثراً افسانه‌ای بودن اما در ادامه اصلاً نتونستم داستان‌ها رو خوب بفهمم، حالا هم نمی‌دونم مشکل از ترجمه بود یا خودم.

[Amy (Other Amy) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I publish this book to be free of it: it has obsessed me for years. I began by trying to line up the tarots at random, to see if I could read the story in them. "The Waverer's Tale" emerged; I started writing it down; I looked for other combinations of the same cards; I realized the tarots were a machine for constructing stories; I thought of a book, and I imagined its frame: the mute narrators, the forest, the inn; I was tempted by the diabolical idea of conjuring up all the stories that could be contained in a tarot deck.


The Hanged Man and The Magician from the Bembo Tarot used for The Castle

Aren't those interesting? Those are the cards used for the first section of this book. Yet here I am, handing a nice, shining single star to Italo Calvino. What the hell happened there?

Really, this should have worked for me. I love symbolic, self-referential books on books. I love the idea of Tarot as a story machine, of the search for an All-Story. This even has a fantastic The Wasteland reference! And ends by making Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, and King Leer into the same story! So what gives?

Mainly, what gives is that this particular experiment in fiction failed. In seeking to tell the stories of the mute narrators and keep his self imposed rules, Calvino ends up with the narrator within the story interpreting the cards for the reader as they are laid down. This ends with a lot of 'he must mean,' and 'surely what happened was' going on. He is also using the minor arcana, which makes the story visually boring. As cards are reused, the story becomes confused and even more visually boring. The first part, the castle, is unmitigated crap, largely because the rules of that section require the cards to be reused in the order they are laid on the table when tales intersect. After a while, even Calvino is just glossing.

The tavern stories in the second part are considerably better, as Calvino allows his characters to grab cards from each other. He seems to have put more heart into this section. His usual sly remarks and cheerful asides are much more prominent here. He goes into an extended meditation on writing when he tells his own tale. But there are none of the wry revelations that I found so charming in If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, and this book does nothing that that book did not do better.

Final verdict: It's more crap than not. Skip it. Maybe it would be best if authors didn't publish works just to be free of them themselves. (Here, have a nice picture of a Tarot card used in the second part of the book. Call it a consolation prize.)


The Magician from the Marseilles Tarot used for The Tavern

[La mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

L’opinione comune è che le storie siano create dagli uomini. Poi a volte leggiamo di qualche scrittore che ci racconta di una storia “che voleva essere raccontata”, e ci fermiamo a pensare se non sia vero che le storie sono già tutte presenti, e attendono solo qualcuno che le voglia raccontare. Con questo libro Calvino fa un altro passo, per portarci a riflettere sul rapporto tra scrittura e narrazione, tra significato e forma. La storia emerge dalle carte dei tarocchi, quasi che il mazzo fosse una macchina generatrice di storie. Ogni carta però acquisisce un senso dalla posizione che occupa, e quindi modifica il significato in funzione della carta che la precede. Ma non solo, in un mondo di muti ogni carta acquisisce un significato diverso per ogni spettatore che ne interpreta diversamente i segni, ognuno secondo la “propria” storia e secondo la propria sensibilità. Un mazzo di poche carte riesce in questo modo a creare tutte le storie del mondo, e a tenerle tutte contemporaneamente insieme. Lo scrittore è forse solo un traduttore, un addomesticatore di parole, che ci aiuta a vedere meglio il filo di una storia, in mezzo al gomitolo aggrovigliato che le racchiude tutte.
Un libro che si potrebbe leggere dieci volte, per ritrovarci 10 volte la propria storia di quell’istante della propria vita, per capire cosa significa creare storie, per meditare sul perché le storie significano così tanto per noi uomini. Una specie di preziosa gemma da tenere in libreria e tirare fuori ogni tanto per soddisfare lo spirito.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

[26th book of 2021. No artist for this review, instead, the tarot cards that illustrate the novel throughout.]

I'm a big Calvino fan and I'd like to say I've read a lot of him now. My favourites remain firmly as Invisible Cities and The Baron in the Trees, the former being the novel I think is a must-read for any fans of literary fiction—it's one of the books I recommend the most in that sense. This is one I've had my eye on for a long time. In an interview with "The Paris Review", Calvino talks a little about this novel, he calls it "the most calculated of all I have written. Nothing in it is left to chance. I don’t believe chance can play a role in my literature" and that "the architecture is the book itself. By then I had reached a level of obsession with structure such that I almost became crazy about it." He speaks fondly.



I've never used tarot cards, nor have I ever had the burning desire to do so. I remember my friend I. (I'll just call him Lan) once told me his soon-to-be-wife was a fan of tarot cards, and that her and her mother used to sit at their kitchen table with them. Lan would leave the house. It surprised me because Lan is a strong atheist, a man of serious black-and-white, of Occam's Razor, of general disbelief in most walks of life. And Lan is a talker; he used to drive me back to my uni house every week (a half an hour drive or so) from A. to C. In these journeys, in his Honda Jazz, bumping along in the pitch black (save his headlights) he would talk on a great many subjects: fighting, mutual friends, marketing (his personal interest), religion, ghosts and other spectres and his then-girlfriend's views on them, his time as a man my age (he is ten years older), etc. I would rarely say more than ten words, I would just sit with my hands in my lap watching the white lines disappearing under the Honda's bonnet and listening to him speak.

But—the novel. For all Calvino talks about the structure, which is no doubt highly plotted, it appears fairly simple in the beginning. A number of travellers converge in a castle and find themselves mute somehow by their entering. They do not know each other. There is a deck of tarot cards and slowly, one by one, the travellers tell their stories using them. It's an interesting concept. The tarot cards that are being used are lined in the margin, so one can look at the card that is being held forwards by the speaking traveller and then "hear" the related tale. It is a tale of gold, devils, swords, kings, and in the end, a number of characters arise too, Hamlet, Macbeth, Doctor Faust. The end of the novel descends a little into madness, and is just as intriguing as the rest of it. But for all it is intriguing, I did find my attention wandering. The repetitiveness of each traveller telling their story slowly began to wear me out. It is beautifully written, at least.



And what does it all mean? Their stories become mixed, tarot cards are used more than once so suddenly there become crossovers... meanings are lost, interpretations are changed. The whole novel seems to be a commentary on how we tell stories, how are stories relate to all other stories, how they can be lost in "translation", and how every story for every person isn't the same. The themes that arise are brilliant. It had me wondering, of all the stories Lan told me on those car journeys home, what would someone else have heard if they were in that passenger seat and not me?

[cherelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

quaint little story with an intriguing premise, left a lot of food for thought...

but yah was a disappointment... about a group of travellers who have been stripped of their ability to communicate through tarot cards... i was hoping for an exploration of transcendental understanding and shared human consciousness but no??? not sure what actually happened here LOL

[erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'unico punto fermo in questo va e vieni di pensieri è che può fare a meno sia dell'una che dell'altra, perché ogni scelta ha un rovescio cioè una rinuncia, e così non c'è differenza tra l'atto di scegliere e l'atto di rinunciare.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tam bir Calvino manyaklığı bu kitap, onun kadar iyi olmasa da yer yer Görünmez Kentler’i anımsattı. Konuşma yetisini yitirmiş bir grup insan ıssız bir ormanın içindeki şatoda bir gece bir masanın etrafına oturup birbirlerine öykülerini Tarot kartlarıyla anlatıyorlar. Hepsi öyküsünü anlattıkça masadaki kartlar bir başka biçem oluşturup bir başka büyük öykü anlatır oluyor, hepsinin yolu birbirine bağlanıyor, aynı kartlar her öyküde farklı bir şey söylüyor. Tarot destelerini didik didik ederek yazmış Calvino bu öyküleri, boşuna “manyaklık” demiyorum. Yine edebiyatı eğip büken, okuru anlatıya şekil vermeye davet eden, son derece özgün bir deneme. Vallahi seviyoruz. “Kenti yaşamanın suçlu bir biçimi vardır: Yırtıcı hayvanın koşullarını kabul edip yesin diye çocuklarımızı önüne atmak. Yalnızlığı yaşamanın suçlu bir biçimi vardır: Pençesine diken battığı için vahşi hayvanın zararsız hale geldiğini sanıp keyfine bakmak.”

[Shaimaa Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

حسناً .. كانت هذه أفضل خاتمة لهذا العام - الغير موفق معي بالمرة - وقراءتى للرواية العبقرية لكالڤينو ( قلعة المصائر المتقاطعة)
فكرة عبقرية حقاً ربط فيها كالڤينو قصص متنوعة بأوراق التاروت -على إختلاف نوعيه- وبينما يشدك الأسلوب السردي فى البدء وتتعود على غرابته (من متابعة رسومات كل ورقة وما تحمله من معنى يناسب القصة) .. حتى يتكشف لك شيئاً مذهلاً فى النهاية وهو تداخل مصائر القصص بشكل طولى وعرضى - كمؤلف كلمات متقاطعة ماهر- ويتصاعد هذا البناء القصصي ويصل إلى ذروته فى آخر قصة وهى التى حوت تمازجاً بين روائع شكسبير المشهورة (هاملت ، الملك لير ، ماكبث) فى قصته : ثلاث حكايات عن الجنون والدمار ..

اكتشاف مذهل كان كالڤينو فى آخر أسبوع من عام 2015!!
بينما توقعت منذ عدة أشهر أن يكون اكتشاف هذا العام بالنسبة لى (هنري ميللر ، وأناييس نن ) .. إلا أن كالڤينو وفى خلال بضعة أيام فقط كان اكتشاف هذا العام ..
كل عام وأنتم بخير .. ولنبدأ تحدي العام القادم :-)

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il mio amore per Calvino è immenso.. La scrittura è super scorrevole nonostante la trama richieda una certa attenzione da parte del lettore.. I tarocchi sono stupendi.. Consiglio vivamente una lettura di questo gioiellino..

"Cosa dice? Dice: - Lasciatemi così. Ho fatto tutto il giro e ho capito. Il mondo si legge all'incontrario. Tutto è chiaro."

[Marica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taroccare un libro
Quest'opera di Calvino ha due origini: un convegno internazionale sulle strutture del racconto e in particolare una conferenza su “La cartomanzia come sistema semiotico”; la scrittura di un testo per l'editore Franco Maria Ricci che illustrasse i Tarocchi del mazzo Visconteo. Sono andata a cercarli in Internet, quelli della Beinecke Library sono opere d'arte degne di una chiesa toscana.
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/coll...
Il libro di Calvino sviluppa l'idea che il mazzo di carte possa descrivere la vita di chiunque, a seconda della sequenza: seguono cavalieri, selve, principesse e contadinelle, soli, lune, ruote della fortuna e tutto un armamentario. Si potrebbe sperare che l'autore che ha curato una famosa raccolta di fiabe italiane abbia scritto una favola. No. Ha creato una specie di cruciverba fra vari personaggi, poiché il sole, il carro, l'amore, la morte eccetera possono essere attribuiti a tutti.
L'idea non è per niente originale, come dire che qualunque romanzo o poesia è contenuto nel dizionario della lingua italiana. La lettura è straordinariamente noiosa. L'unica cosa che si salva è la scrittura, che è sempre di qualità eccellente.
Devo dire che mi stupisce che Calvino, autore che mi piace molto, abbia ritenuto pubblicabile una cosa del genere. Forse a quei tempi una scrittura “combinatoria” poteva sembrare innovativa. Attualmente ha la piacevolezza e l'utilità di ZANG TUMB TUMB, per non parlare del messaggio. Spero di dimenticarmene presto.

[Andrea Iginio Cirillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro che volevo recuperare da tempo, ma che non mi ha lasciato del tutto soddisfatto e non mi ha convinto del tutto. Ho trovato geniale e meravigliosa l'idea di Calvino di utilizzare mazzi di tarocchi per raccontare storie, per esprimere, come suo solito, le possibilità combinatorie di una storia con tante storie, della biforcazione dei sentieri (Borges!) delle vite degli uomini e l'inserimento di storie, come quelle di Amleto o Orlando, provenienti dai classici. Tuttavia, molto spesso, nell'insieme la narrazione si riduceva a mero divertissement letterario, forse un po' troppo astratto e alla lunga stancante, perché appunto mi pareva che si trascinasse oltre il punto in cui avrebbe dovuto terminare. Alcune storie, come quella dello scrittore, sono veri e propri manifesti di poetica che chi ha letto la maggior parte dell'opera di Calvino non può non intuire, e tuttavia quella rapidità che lo scrittore espone nelle sue Lezioni Americane non è quasi mai presente. Un esperimento postmoderno, insomma, suggestivo e inimitabile che, però, in vari passaggi, si arenava nelle sabbie basse del racconto su commissione e della eccessiva artificiosità.

[Andrea Fiore · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Non c'è miglior luogo per custodire un segreto che un romanzo incompiuto."

[Shuhan Rizwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/ 5

ঢাকার রাস্তায় এককালে টিয়াপাখির মাধ্যমে ভাগ্যগণনা করতে দেখতাম। পাখি এগিয়ে গিয়ে কোনো খামে ভরা চিঠি থেকে বের করে আনতো মানুষের ভবিষ্যৎ জীবন। কালভিনো, এই উপন্যাসে সেই কাজ করেছেন ট্যারট কার্ড দিয়ে – জিপসিরা আজও ইউরোপের নানা জায়গায় মানুষের ভাগ্য বলতে যে সব ছবি আঁকা কার্ড ব্যবহার করে। গল্পের চরিত্ররা সবাই বোবা, ফলে তাদের গল্প আমরা জানি ( নাকি অনুমান করি?) তাদের হাতে উঠে আসা ট্যারট কার্ডের ছবি দেখে। সকলের হাতের কার্ড টেবিলে সাজালে সেটা আবার হয়ে ওঠে ছবিতে ছবিতে আরেকটা বড় গল্প। ...

বোর্হেসের কিছু গল্পে উদ্ভট সব উপন্যাসের চিন্তাবীজ (idea) পাওয়া যায়। কালভিনোর এই উপন্যাসকে মনে হলো তেমন পাগলাটে কোনো চিন্তাবীজকে খুব গুরুত্বের সাথে নিয়ে লিখে ফেলা। তুমুল প্রতিভাবান কারো খেয়ালের ছলে তৈরি করা শব্দ -আর ছবির- জট!