The Nonexistent Knight (Italo Calvino)

The Nonexistent Knight
The Our Ancestors series, Book 3
Italo Calvino, translated by Archibald Calhoun
Mariner Books
Fiction, Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In her abbey cell, the nun Theodora writes the extraordinary story of the most chivalrous knight who never existed. Sir Agilulf, paladin under King Charlemagne in his campaigns against the Moors, is an empty suit of armor - literally. Though he knows every aspect of knighthood to the letter and performs his every duty perfectly (far moreso than his flesh-and-blood peers, as he does not hesitate to let them know), he has no physical form, seeming to exist by sheer will alone. When he encounters a young man new to the field of battle, bent on exacting vengeance for his fallen father, it sets in motion a chain of events that will see his reputation - and, thus, his very existence - called into question, demanding a quest of great daring and skill to determine that the act for which he was knighted, namely saving the virtue of a fair maiden, was legitimate.

REVIEW: This allegorical work of satire takes on the emptiness and lies behind the idealized concepts of knighthood and chivalry, and indeed the often-ugly truths beneath the shining legends; the paladins are slovenly and almost animalistic at mealtimes, even the lauded King Charlemagne, and a later encounter with the remnants of the Round Table reveals something far less noble than imagined. The war in which Agilulf is engaged is run with bureaucratic regularity on both sides, a grisly yet entirely performative conflict in which even a young man's thirst for vengeance against the Moor who killed his father must go through the proper channels, with negotiations about whether killing three or four lesser-ranked enemies would be equal to the one high-ranked man he wishes to slay (but whose death would throw all the battle calculations out of kilter). Through it all, the empty suit of armor that is Agilulf performs with clockwork efficiency and propriety, incapable of the grandiosity or embellishment or just plain humanity of relaxation that the other knights engage in, and if he is vaguely aware of any deficiency in not having a body or actually existing, he manages to keep his mind occupied to avoid dwelling on his condition. His presence and personality cause resentment and uneasiness all around, but one does not simply dismiss a man of his rank just because he's not really there; that's just not how things are done, especially not when he's so good at his job.
On his journeys, he encounters his counterpart, a madman who doesn't seem to believe he himself exists, prone to flights of fancy and confusion; King Charlemagne decides that this would be the perfect squire for the pompous empty suit. Meanwhile, a vengeance-driven boy becomes disillusioned by his first taste of war, another young man challenges Agilulf's legitimacy by questioning whether the "maiden" he rescued fifteen years ago was actually a virgin (because only rescuing a virgin from ravishment is worthy of instant knighthood; rescuing a non-virgin only earns extra pay and a small note of achievement), and a warrior princess falls for the ideal man who literally does not exist. Nobody here is entirely laudable or blameless in their motivations or actions, deliberate caricatures styled on chivalrous archetypes, but they all work within their context. There is some indication that the narrator, Theodora, isn't entirely reliable or objective as a chronicler, as Agilulf and the others go through journeys with all the convoluted and unlikely encounters as any old tale of knightly derring-do, down to the ending that doesn't make a lick of sense but resolves most everything to everyone's satisfaction, mostly through out-of-the-blue plot twists and revelations. All taken, it's a reasonably amusing tale that successfully killed some time at work. (And, yes, though it's called Book 3 of a series, it's basically a standalone. It's what was available on Overdrive when I was looking for something to listen to.)

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