The Castle of Crossed Destinies
When does a story really become a story? Is it when the seed of an idea for the story takes over a storyteller’s mind? Is it through the process of telling the story? Or does it happen finally when listeners build their own imaginary worlds using the words that are being told to them?
It is said that a reader lives a thousand lives. Storytellers too perhaps live on, if they are lucky, in a thousand rich and varied stories created for themselves by their readers.
Indeed, in “Invisible Cities” Calvino’s Marco Polo says, “It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”
That is to say, a storyteller can only tell a story using words that they have managed to put together, whereas it is the listener really (or the reader) who brings it to life in their mind. That is when a story is created. Numerous stories indeed because each reader creates their own story.
What if the telling and the listening are removed out of the equation? What if there is neither voice nor ear to command a story as it were? Where then does a story reside?
That is exactly the situation we are thrown into in “The Castle of Crossed Destinies”. A bunch of travellers arrive at an ancient castle (or is it a tavern?) through their own distinct untold paths. Once they are there, they realize they have lost the power of speech! Each one is gasping to tell their stories to others, but they can’t. That is until they find an old deck of tarot cards. They seize the opportunity to use the rich imagery of the tarot cards to tell their stories. Constrained within the universe of a deck of tarot cards, how well are they able to construct their stories for their listeners (well, watchers)? To what extent is the audience following the story being told visually, and to what extent are they trying to relive their own experiences? As each one starts telling their stories by adding more cards or replacing them, they all find themselves intertwined in a complex tapestry of images.
Calvino’s experiments with form are truly unparalleled (at least on the basis of my admittedly limited reading). This book has actual images of tarot cards next to the stories. So, as a reader you too can construct your own story if you will! Conceptually this is as fascinating as it can get. However, I was left a bit underwhelmed by the execution. I’m used to reading beautiful passages in his works woven effortlessly. (Lightness and precision are among the qualities he not only highly values in his writing, but practices almost immaculately in most of his own writings.) In this book though I struggled a fair amount as a reader. Perhaps it’s because the writer himself went through a struggle? Calvino has written a detailed note at the end of the book about how this idea caught hold of him, how he started with the tarot cards first and then tried to construct stories around them. He used templates from well known legends and folk tales, as well as created new stories of his own. He apparently obsessed over each one for weeks and months.
While I wouldn’t consider this among the best of Calvino’s works, I can’t help but continue to be amazed by the range of this prolific writer.
