Mr Palomar
Italo Calvino
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
* * *
Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in San Remo, Italy. He was an essayist and a journalist, and among his best-known works of fiction are Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s night a traveller, Marcovaldo and Mr Palomar. In 1972 he won the prestigious Premio Feltrinelli. He died in 1985.
ALSO BY ITALO CALVINO
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
Invisible Cities
Our Ancestors
Adam, One Afternoon
If on a winter’s night a traveller
Difficult Loves
Marcovaldo
Cosmicomics
Literature Machine
Six Memos for the Next Millenium
Under the Jaguar Sun
The Road to San Giovanni
Numbers in the Dark
The Path to the Spiders’ Nests
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Epub ISBN: 9781446414309
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 1999
8 10 9 7
Copyright © 1983 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Turin
Translation copyright © 1985 by
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
First published in Great Britain by
Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd 1985
Vintage
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A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099430872
CONTENTS
* * *
PALOMAR’S VACATION
Palomar on the beach
Reading a wave
The naked bosom
The sword of the sun
Palomar in the garden
The loves of the tortoises
The blackbird’s whistle
The infinite lawn
Palomar looks at the sky
Moon in the afternoon
The eye and the planets
The contemplation of the stars
PALOMAR IN THE CITY
Palomar on the terrace
From the terrace
The gecko’s belly
The invasion of the starlings
Palomar does the shopping
Two pounds of goose-fat
The cheese museum
Marble and blood
Palomar at the zoo
The giraffe race
The albino gorilla
The order of scaly creatures
THE SILENCES OF PALOMAR
Palomar’s journeys
The sand garden
Serpents and skulls
The odd slipper
Palomar in society
On biting the tongue
On becoming angry with the young
The model of models
The meditations of Palomar
The world looks at the world
The universe as mirror
Learning to be dead
PALOMAR’S VACATION
* * *
PALOMAR ON THE BEACH
* * *
Reading a wave
The sea is barely wrinkled, and little waves strike the sandy shore. Mr Palomar is standing on the shore, looking at a wave. Not that he is lost in contemplation of the waves. He is not lost, because he is quite aware of what he is doing: he wants to look at a wave and he is looking at it. He is not contemplating, because for contemplation you need the right temperament, the right mood, and the right combination of exterior circumstances; and though Mr Palomar has nothing against contemplation in principle, none of these three conditions applies to him. Finally it is not “the waves” that he means to look at, but just one individual wave: in his desire to avoid vague sensations, he establishes for his every action a limited and precise object.
Mr Palomar sees a wave rise in the distance, grow, approach, change form and color, fold over itself, break, vanish, and flow again. At this point he could convince himself that he has concluded the operation he had set out to achieve, and he could go away. But it is very difficult to isolate one wave, separating it from the wave immediately following it, which seems to push it and at times overtakes it and sweeps it away; just as it is difficult to separate that one wave from the wave that precedes it and seems to drag it towards the shore, unless it turns against its follower as if to arrest it. Then if you consider the breadth of the wave, parallel to the shore, it is hard to decide where the advancing front extends regularly and where it is separated and segmented into independent waves, distinguished by their speed, shape, force, direction.
In other words, you cannot observe a wave without bearing in mind the complex features that concur in shaping it and the other, equally complex ones that the wave itself originates. These aspects vary constantly, so each wave is different from another wave, even if not immediately adjacent or successive; in other words there are some forms and sequences that are repeated, though irregularly distributed in space and time. Since what Mr Palomar means to do at this moment is simply to see a wave, that is, to perceive all its simultaneous components without overlooking any of them, his gaze will dwell on the movement of the wave that strikes the shore, until it can record aspects not previously perceived; as soon as he notices that the images are being repeated, he will know he has seen everything he wanted to see and he will be able to stop.
A nervous man who lives in a frenzied and congested world, Mr Palomar tends to reduce his relations with the outside world; and to defend himself against the general neurasthenia he tries to keep his sensations under control insofar as possible.
The hump of the advancing wave rises more at one point than at any other and it is here that it becomes hemmed in white. If this occurs at some distance from the shore, there is time for the foam to fold over upon itself and vanish again, as if swallowed, and at the same moment invade the whole, but this time emerging again from below, like a white carpet rising from the bank to welcome the wave that is arriving. But just when you expect that wave to roll over the carpet, you realize it is no longer wave but only carpet, and this also rapidly disappears, to become a glinting of wet sand that quickly withdraws, as if driven back by the expansion of the dry, opaque sand that moves its jagged edge forward.
At the same time the indentations in the brow of the wave must be considered, where it splits into two wings, one stretching towards the shore from right to left and the other from left to right, and the departure-point or the destination of their divergence or convergence is this negative tip, which follows the advance of the wings but is always held back, subject to their alternate overlapping until another wave, a stronger wave, overtakes it, with the same problem of divergence-convergence, and then a wave stronger still, which resolves the knot by shattering it.
Taking the pattern of the waves as model, the beach thrusts into the water some faintly-hinted points, prolonged in submerged sandy shoals, shaped and destroyed by the currents at every tide. Mr Palomar has chosen one of these low tongues of sand as his observation-point, because the waves strike it on either side, obliquely, and overrunning the half-submerged surface, they meet their opposites. So to understand the comp
osition of a wave, you have to consider these opposing thrusts, which to some extent are counterbalanced and to some extent are added together, to produce a general shattering of thrusts and counter-thrusts in the usual spreading of foam.
Mr Palomar now tries to limit his field of observation; if he bears in mind a square zone of, say, ten meters of shore by ten meters of sea, he can carry out an inventory of all the wave-movements that are repeated with varying frequency within a given time-interval. The hard thing is to fix the boundaries of this zone, because if, for example, he considers as the side farthest from him the outstanding line of an advancing wave, as this line approaches him and rises it hides from his eyes everything behind it; and thus the space under examination is overturned and at the same time crushed.
In any case Mr Palomar does not lose heart and at each moment he thinks he has managed to see everything to be seen from his observation-point, but then something always crops up that he had not borne in mind. If it were not for his impatience to reach a complete, definitive conclusion of his visual operation, looking at waves would be a very restful exercise for him and could save him from neurasthenia, heart attack, and gastric ulcer. And it could perhaps be the key to mastering the world’s complexity by reducing it to the simplest mechanism.
But every attempt to define this model must take into account a long wave that is arriving in a direction perpendicular to the breakers and parallel to the shore, creating the flow of a constant, barely-surfacing crest. The shifts of the waves that ruffle towards the shore do not disturb the steady impulse of this compact crest that slices them at a right angle; and there is no knowing where it comes from or where it then goes. Perhaps it is a breath of east wind that stirs the sea’s surface against the deep drive that comes from the mass of water far out at sea, but this wave born of air, in passing, receives also the oblique thrusts from the water’s depth and redirects them, straightening them in its own direction and bearing them along. And so the wave continues to grow and gain strength until the clash with contrary waves gradually dulls it and makes it disappear, or else twists it until it is confused in one of the many dynasties of oblique waves slammed, with them, against the shore.
Concentrating the attention on one aspect makes it leap into the foreground and occupy the square, just as, with certain drawings, you have only to close your eyes and when you open them the perspective has changed. Now in the overlapping of crests moving in various directions the general pattern seems broken down into sections that rise and vanish. In addition, the reflux of every wave also has a power of its own that hinders the oncoming waves. And if you concentrate your attention on these backward thrusts it seems that the true movement is the one that begins from the shore and goes out to sea.
Is this perhaps the real result that Mr Palomar is about to achieve? To make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits? No, he feels a slight dizziness, but it goes no farther than that. The stubbornness that drives the waves towards the shore wins the match: in fact, the waves have swelled considerably. Is the wind about to change? It would be disastrous if the image that Mr Palomar has succeeded painstakingly in putting together were to shatter and be lost. Only if he manages to bear all the aspects in mind at once can he begin the second phase of the operation: extending this knowledge to the entire universe.
It would suffice not to lose patience, as he soon does. Mr Palomar goes off along the beach, tense and nervous as when he came, and even more unsure about everything.
The naked bosom
Mr Palomar is walking along a lonely beach. He encounters few bathers. One young woman is lying on the sand taking the sun, her bosom bared. Palomar, discreet by nature, looks away at the horizon of the sea. He knows that in such circumstances, at the approach of a strange man, women often cover themselves hastily, and this does not seem right to him: because it is a nuisance for the woman peacefully sun-bathing, and because the passing man feels he is an intruder, and because the taboo against nudity is implicitly confirmed; because half-respected conventions spread insecurity and incoherence of behavior rather than freedom and frankness.
And so, as soon as he sees in the distance the outline of the bronze-pink cloud of a naked female torso, he quickly turns his head in such a way that the trajectory of his gaze remains suspended in the void and guarantees his civil respect for the invisible frontier that surrounds people.
But – he thinks as he proceeds and resumes, the moment the horizon is clear, the free movement of his eyeballs – in acting like this, I display a refusal to see; or, in other words, I am finally reinforcing the convention that declares illicit any sight of the breast; that is to say, I create a kind of mental brassière suspended between my eyes and that bosom that, from the flash that reached the edge of my visual field, seemed to me fresh and pleasant to the eye. In other words, my not looking presupposes that I am thinking of that nakedness, worrying about it; and this is basically an indiscreet and reactionary attitude.
Returning from his stroll, Palomar again passes that bather, and this time he keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, so that his gaze touches with impartial uniformity the foam of the retreating waves, the boats pulled up on shore, the great bath-towel spread out on the sand, the swelling moon of lighter skin with the dark halo of the nipple, the outline of the coast in the haze, gray against the sky.
There – he reflects, pleased with himself, as he continues on his way – I have succeeded in having the bosom completely absorbed by the landscape, so that my gaze counted no more than the gaze of a seagull or a hake.
But is this really the right way to act, he reflects further. Or does it not mean flattening the human person to the level of things, considering it an object, and, worse still, considering as object that which in the person is the specific attribute of the female sex? Am I not perhaps perpetuating the old habit of male superiority, hardened over the years into a habitual insolence?
He turns and retraces his steps. Now, in allowing his gaze to run over the beach with neutral objectivity, he arranges it so that, once the woman’s bosom enters his field of vision, a break is noticeable, a shift, almost a darting glance. That glance goes on to graze the taut skin, withdraws, as if appreciating with a slight start the different consistency of the view and the special value it acquires, and for a moment the glance hovers in mid-air, making a curve that accompanies the swell of the breast from a certain distance, elusively but also protectively, to then continue its course as if nothing had happened.
In this way I believe my position is made quite clear, Palomar thinks, with no possible misunderstandings. But couldn’t this grazing of his eyes be finally taken for an attitude of superiority, an underestimation of what a breast is and means, a somehow putting it aside, on the margin, or in parenthesis? So, I am relegating the bosom again to the semi-darkness where centuries of sexomaniac puritanism and desire considered as sin have kept it . . .
This interpretation runs counter to Palomar’s best intentions, for though he belongs to a human generation for whom nudity of the female bosom was associated with the idea of amorous intimacy, still he hails approvingly this change in customs, both for what it signifies as the reflection of a more broad-minded society and because this sight in particular is pleasing to him. It is this detached encouragement that he would like to be able to express with his gaze.
He does an about-face. With firm steps he walks again towards the woman lying in the sun. Now his gaze, giving the landscape a fickle glance, will linger on the breast with special consideration, but will quickly include it in an impulse of good-will and gratitude for the whole, for the sun and the sky, for the bent pines and the dune and the beach and the rocks and the clouds and the seaweed, for the cosmos that rotates around those haloed cusps.
This should be enough to reassure once and for all the solitary sun-bather and clear away all perverse assumptions. But the moment he approaches again, she suddenly springs
up, covers herself with an impatient huff, and goes off, shrugging in irritation, as if she were avoiding the tiresome insistence of a satyr.
The dead weight of an intolerant tradition prevents anyone’s understanding, as they deserve, the most enlightened intentions, Palomar bitterly concludes.
The sword of the sun
When the sun begins to go down, its reflection takes form on the sea: from the horizon all the way to the shore a dazzling patch extends composed of countless, swaying glints; between one glint and the next, the opaque blue of the sea makes a dark network. The white boats, seen against the light, turn black, lose substance and bulk, as if they were consumed by that splendid speckling.
This is the hour when Mr Palomar, belated by nature, takes his evening swim. He enters the sea, moves away from the shore, and the sun’s reflection becomes a shining sword in the water stretching from the shore to him. Mr Palomar swims in that sword or, more precisely, that sword remains always before him; at every stroke of his, it retreats, and never allows him to overtake it. Wherever he stretches out his arms, the sea takes on its opaque evening color, which extends to the shore behind him.
As the sun sinks towards sunset, the incandescent-white reflection acquires gold and copper tones. And wherever Mr Palomar moves, he remains the vertex of that sharp, gilded triangle; the sword follows him, pointing him out like the hand of a watch whose pivot is the sun.
“This is a special homage the sun pays to me personally,” Mr Palomar is tempted to think, or rather the egocentric, megalomaniac ego that dwells in him is tempted to think. But the depressive and self-wounding ego, who dwells with the other in the same container, rebuts: “Everyone with eyes sees the reflection that follows him; illusion of the senses and of the mind holds us all prisoners always.” A third tenant, a more even-handed ego, speaks up: “This means that, no matter what, I am part of the feeling and thinking subjects, capable of establishing a relationship with the sun’s rays, and of interpreting and evaluating perceptions and illusions.”
