Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino Page B

versification dominates even more at the level of narrative structure and composition of plot. There are, as we all remember, two main themes: the first tells how Orlando from being merely the hapless lover of Angelica went furiously mad, how the Christian armies without the presence of their hero risked losing France to the Saracens, and how the madman’s wits were recovered by Astolfo on the Moon, and then forced back into the body of their rightful owner, thus allowing him to take his place again in the army ranks. Parallel to this runs the second plot, that of the predestined butconstantly deferred love of Ruggiero, champion of the Saracen camp, for the Christian female warrior Bradamante, and of all the obstacles that come between them and their destined marriage, until Ruggiero manages to change sides, be baptised and win the hand of his warrior lover. The Ruggiero-Bradamante plot is no less important than the Orlando-Angelica one, because it is from them that Ariosto (like Boiardo before him) claims that the Este family descends, thus not only justifying the poem in the eyes of his patrons, but above all linking the mythical period of chivalry with the contemporary history of Ferrara and Italy. The two main plots and their countless ramifications thus proceed intertwined, but they also develop in turn around the more strictly epic trunk of the poem, namely the course of the war between the Emperor Charlemagne and Agramante, king of Africa. This epic contest is concentrated particularly in a block of canti which deal with the siege of Paris by the Moors, the Christian counter-offensive, and the discord in Agramante’s camp. The siege of Paris is in a sense the poem’s centre of gravity, just as the city of Paris presents itself as its geographical ‘navel’:
    Siede Parigi in una gran pianura

ne l’ombelico a Francia, anzi nel cuore;

gli passa la riviera entro le mura

e corre et esce in altra parte fuore:

ma fa un’isola prima, e v’asseoira

de la città una parte, e la migliore;

l’altre due (ch’in tre parti è la gran terra)

di fuor la fossa, e dentro il fume serra
.
    Alla città che molte miglia gira

da molte parti si può dar battaglia;

ma perché sol da un canto assalir mira
,
né volentier l’esercito sbarraglia
,
oltre il fiume Agramante si ritira

verso ponente, acciò che quindi assaglia;

però che né cittade né campagna

ha dietro (se non sua) fino alla Spagna. (14.104-105)
(Paris stands in a huge plain, in the navel, or rather in the heart of France. The river passes between its walls, flows and comes out the other side; but before that it forms an island, and there makes safe one part, the best part, of
the city. As for the other two parts (for the great town is divided into three), they are locked in by the moat on the outside and the river within
.
    The city, which extends for many miles, can be attacked on many sides; but since Agramante wants to concentrate his assault on one side, and does not wish to expose his army to any danger, he retreats beyond the river towards the West in order to attack from there, for he has now neither city nor country behind him (except those on his side) all the way to Spain.)
    From what I have said it might be thought that the journeys of all the main protagonists
end
up converging on Paris. But this does not happen: the majority of the most famous champions are absent from this collective epic episode. Only the giant mass of Rodomonte towers above the mêlée here. Where on earth are all the others?
    It has to be said that the poem’s space also contains another centre of gravity, a negative centre though, a trap, a kind of vortex which swallows up the principal characters one by one: the wizard Atlante’s magic castle. Atlante’s magic delights in architectural illusions: already in canto 4 it raises a castle entirely made out of steel in the hilltops of the Pyrenees, only to have it dissolve again into nothing; between canti 12 and 22 we see