Qfwfq goes on to explain how he and his fellows climbed onto the Moon.
Orlando furioso italo calvino full#
We had her on top of us all the time, that enormous Moon: when she was full - nights as bright as day, but with a butter-colored light - it looked as if she were going to crush us when she was new, she rolled around the sky like a black umbrella blown by the wind and when she was waxing, she came forward with her horns so low she seemed about to stick into the peak of a promontory and get caught there. How well I know! - old Qfwfq cried,– the rest of you can’t remember, but I can. Then the tides gradually pushed her far away: the tides that the Moon herself causes in the Earth’s waters, where the Earth slowly loses energy. Darwin, the Moon was very close to the Earth. This is how it begins (I’m quoting the translation by William Weaver):Īt one time, according to Sir George H. The story I am referring to is called “The Distance of the Moon”. In this book, Calvino takes his cues from various cosmological and astronomical theories to piece together a set of extremely fantastic stories narrated by an ancient individual called Qfwfq. I knew that Italo Calvino (1923-1985), one of my favourite Italian authors, had been a great admirer of Ariosto (he wrote a book where he narrated the story of Orlando Furioso in prose with selections of the poem) and I was immediately reminded of a story of his, the first one in the collection entitled The Cosmicomics. When the eponymous hero Orlando goes mad for love, another knight called Astolfo flies to the moon to recover Orlando’s lost wits.īut when I first read this poem I was reminded of something else. (It would have been wonderful if the Apollo missions had come across a cache of odd socks). ( For the original Italian click here) Anybody who knows something about Ariosto, hearing a mention of the moon, will probably think of his wonderful and very funny epic poem, L’Orlando Furioso, where the moon is presented as the place where all lost things end up. This is a section of the 3 rd Satire by Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), which is generally known as “The Fable of the Moon”.
Went chasing after them with hurried strides.īelieve that all is peace, and yet there’s none. Those on the lower hills, viewing them so high,īelieving they could see them touching her, Her and discover how she waxed and waned,īegan, some carrying baskets, others sacks,Įach other in their urge to have her first.Įxhausted they collapsed upon the ground, Thinking that from the summit of the mount Travel her natural course across the skies, Now full now hollow, with or without horns, Who watching oftentimes the changing moon,
Name I do not know, lived on the valley floor That seemed to touch the sky, a people, whose Without the shrewdness of the present day,
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