53 pages • 1 hour read
Italo CalvinoThe Nonexistent Knight
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The End of Eras
The Nonexistent Knight is set during the final years of the reign of Charlemagne, the founder of the Carolingian Empire who united large parts of Western Europe under his rule. By the time the novel takes place, however, Charlemagne is not what he once was. Age has caught up to the ruler, who is disinterred in and bemused by the empire he has founded. In the opening scene, he must be introduced to his own paladins as he marches off to yet another war. Charlemagne, victor of many battles, is more interested in a flock of ducks in a roadside pond than the impending battle. His cognitive decline means that he struggles to remember much, while his vast achievements mean that he has very little motivation to continue his conquering. Charlemagne has won so much and so often, that he has lost any desire to repeat his own unrepeatable glories. He marches into battle on muscle memory, even if he does not know his own commanders. Charlemagne’s decline is suggestive of the end of an era, both the leader and society itself disinterested and perfunctory.
The decline of Charlemagne is indicative of a decline in everything which he represents. The court of Charlemagne was once populated by the most famous and worthy knights. He looks out ruefully on his current court, which is populated by men who are not nearly as heroic or as famous as Roland, Astolf, Rinaldo, or Guidon Selvaggio. Those men are still present but, like Charlemagne, they have grown comfortable, lazy, and dull. They, too, have reached the end of their respective era and the chivalric heroism which they represent is similarly coming to an end. At one time, poets wrote great verses about the knights of Charlemagne’s court. Now, Charlemagne himself cannot be inspired or interested by his own knights. They are unremarkable reverberations of a once great era. The current group of paladins must lie about their achievements to one another because no poet will write about them. The king, the court, and the code they represent are in their dying days.
The Order of the Knights of the Holy Grail also plays on this theme of degradation. At one time, their order sought one of the most holy and glorious relics in all of Christendom. Now, they prey on the goodwill of peasants. They steal from the hungry so they can pursue their own idleness. Torrismund is so appalled by the Order’s fall from grace that he turns on them, even though they are supposedly his collective father. He does battle with the knights on behalf of the peasants and chases the old, once great Order from the small village. Later in the novel, Torrismund is awarded the lordship of these lands. He returns to the village, whereupon the local peasants reveal that they have dealt with the bothersome knights by themselves. Torrismund the knight is not needed, nor is his presence as a ruler. Instead, he is invited to live among them as equals. He may rise to the rank of a duly-elected local leader, he is told, but there is no royal decree or birthright which equips him with a right to rule. The decree of Charlemagne and the era of lordships are cast aside in favor of a decidedly modern, egalitarian form of rule. Torrismund’s fate suggests that, even though many eras are coming to an end, other eras are about to begin—chivalry is dead and democratic ideals may be the future.
Clash of Cultures
Cultures clash throughout The Nonexistent Knight, and this clash takes on various forms in the novel. The story is set during a time of war, when Charlemagne and his army are marching against the Moors in Spain. To the Franks under Charlemagne’s court, this war against the Moors is an existential clash of cultures. The Franks are Christian, while the Moors are Muslim. Spain, under Islamic rule at this point in history, is considered to be a threat to European Christendom by the knights, so their victory carries an extra importance. This clash between cultures is framed as an existential threat but, in reality, the novel illustrates the broad similarities between the cultures. The battles between the two sides often deteriorate into an absurd exchange of insults, rather than violence, with the two sides employing translators to ensure that their most devastating insults are felt by the opposing side. The wars are brief bursts of violence which are used to punctuate a more sedentary lifestyle. If the paladins of Charlemagne’s court truly believed that Christendom was under threat, they would sacrifice more of the time they devote to banqueting and lying. Instead, they would rather swap elaborate stories about war rather than wage war itself. The war between East and West is presented as a perpetual struggle—a looped narrative from which there is no escape.
Through her narration, Sister Theodora hints at the clash between genders in her society. She is both Sister Theodora and Bradamante, a cloistered nun and a skilled warrior in Charlemagne’s court. As a nun, she is expected to sit and pay penance to God through her writing. As a warrior, she is mocked by the other knights and, eventually, taken advantage of by Raimbaut. Bradamante struggles to find an identity for herself in a society which is still shaped by the lingering principles of chivalry. Women are thought to be damsels in need of saving, rather than skilled warriors in their own right. Both Bradamante and Priscilla show that they have the capacity to outfight and outthink (respectively) their male equivalents, which suggests that the clash between men and women is not founded on the fundamental truths which the men of the world believe it to be. For men, the patriarchal society they have created is an immutable structure which cannot be questioned. Through their depravity and through the notable accomplishments of women, the gendered delineation of society is revealed to be as much as an absurdity as the translators who wander the battlefield. As a nun and a warrior, Bradamante always finds a way to assert her agency in defiance of a culture which demands that she acquiesce to male dominance.
A key dichotomy in The Nonexistent Knight is between Agilulf and every other knight. This clash is between existence and nonexistence. The nonexistence the knight (ironically) embodies are the ideals which supposedly govern society. He knows every part of the chivalric code and lives his life according to these principles. The other knights find him to be petty and bothersome. They ignore the nonexistent knight, as though his assertions about chivalry are as nonexistent as his body. The two sides represent two cultures: the chivalry of the past and the decadence of the present. When Agilulf argues with the knights or corrects their boasts, he is instituting a culture clash between past and present. He is demanding that the chivalric principle be upheld, only to be met by a barrier of self-interested indifference.
Duty as an Idealistic Standard
The Nonexistent Knight explores the idea of duty, often through the use of negative space. The eponymous knight does not exist, yet Agilulf is the character most beholden to the chivalric idea of duty which the novel builds upon. This elevated sense of duty is a reference to the chivalric romances of the Middle Ages (and in their reimagining several centuries later). Knights acted according to the chivalric principles, which called on them to do their duty at all times. In the novel, however, these principles have faded into the recent past. Charlemagne can remember when his paladins were worthy of the heroic verses which they inspired, but their great deeds are now long behind them. A vacuum of duty has been created, in which the entire society is exhaustedly slouching forward to an uncertain and unimportant future. In the meantime, the knights’ sense of duty has been replaced by indulgence and decadence. Agilulf has emerged into this void; he has been brought into the world by an abundance of ambient duty and glory which have gone to waste.
Agilulf acts according to the code of chivalry. In fact, his fussy, particular policing of the chivalric code annoys the knights, as Agilulf’s presence reminds them of just how much they are failing to adhere to their sense of duty. Since the novel is a modern reappraisal of chivalric ideas of honor and duty, however, Agilulf’s certainty is undermined. Torrismund challenges Agilulf honor by suggesting that Sophronia was not a virgin when Agilulf saved her. Agilulf is so appalled by this challenge to his honor that he feels dutybound to seek out Sophronia and secure evidence in his favor. Ultimately, Agilulf is proved correct in that Sophronia was a virgin at the time of her rescue. However, she did not want to be rescued. She talks about the time she spent living in a cave with the young Torrismund as the best time in her life. Agilulf supposedly saved her, but all he did was take her away and leave her to languish in a convent. He performed his duty according to the code of chivalry, but he only made her life more miserable; the duty of a knight does not account for nuances of opinion or desire, especially with regards to women.
Agilulf’s unflinching desire to do his duty also causes additional miscommunications and conflicts. For example, he takes Charlemagne’s joking suggestion with unflinching literalism and makes Gurduloo his squire. Agilulf is so completely committed to duty, so rigidly and fanatically bound to his code, that he has no room for nuance. The novel deconstructs the idea of duty as the ultimate standard by showing how Agilulf’s compromising commitment to duty can be undone by subjective experience. At the end of the novel, Agilulf believes that his duty has been compromised because of the suggestion of incest between Sophronia and Torrismund. He wanders away and ceases to exist as a result. Agilulf embraces nonexistence entirely rather than live in a world with a nuanced understanding of duty.
Agilulf’s fatal dedication to duty is contrasted with the opposing actions of other characters, who abandon their false sense of duty for a more realistic outcome. Notably, Bradamante/Sister Theodora once valued duty to the highest standard, but she abandoned her sense of duty to Charlemagne in favor of the convent. Then, at the end of the story, she quickly abandons her sacred vows to be with Raimbaut. Throughout the story, social progression is depicted as positive progress, where the lack of romanticized ideals leads to a better future.
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By Italo Calvino
