Castle of Crossed Destinies
From Tarotpedia
Contents |
[edit] The Castle of Crossed Destinies
[edit] Author(s)
- Calvino, Italo
- Weaver, William: translator
[edit] Publication details
[edit] date of publication
- 1997 (reprint)
- 1977 (1st American edition)
- 1973 (1st Italian edition)
[edit] publisher
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich
[edit] Description
Calvino's semiotic, hallucinatory Chaucerian novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies weaves a complicated narrative from the individual strands of two groups of medieval travellers struck dumb upon entering a mysterious castle and tavern, respectively. The characters manage to converse and share their separate narratives using Tarot decks, the castle gathering using a Visconti-Sforza Tarot and the tavern group with a Grimaud Marseilles Tarot. With each story, a narrator reads the cards for our benefit, but it is unclear whether the inerpretations are necessarily what is intended by the travellers intended by the mute storytellers.
The book is something of a meditation on the stories embedded within the images of the Tarot and the multifaceted layers of meaning that can emerge from contextual reading of the cards. By telling a few stories with Tarot, Calvino is also hinting at the impossibility of certainty and the infinite stories hidden within the cards.
[edit] Author's comments
To be added
[edit] Author's website
To be added
