462853

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Italo Calvino in Mexico: Food and Lovers, Tourists and CannibalsAuthor(s): Gian-Paolo BiasinSource: PMLA, Vol. 108, No. 1, (Jan., 1993), pp. 72-88Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/462853Accessed: 31/05/2008 07:24

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Gian-Paolo Biasin

Italo Calvino in Mexico: Food and

Lovers, Tourists and Cannibals

GIAN-PAOLO BIASIN, pro-

fessor of modern and contem-

porary Italian literature at the

University of California,

Berkeley, is the author of The

Smile of the Gods: A Thematic

Study of Cesare Pavese's

Works (Cornell UP, 1968),

Literary Diseases: Theme and

Metaphor in the Italian Novel

(U of Texas P, 1975), Italian

Literary Icons (Princeton UP,

1985), and Montale, Debussy, and Modernism (Princeton UP, 1989). This essay derives

from his forthcoming book The

Flavors of Modernity (Prince- ton UP), the English version of I sapori della modernita: Cibo

e romanzo (Mulino, 1991).

ITALO CALVINO (1923-85) is perhaps the writer whose works most significantly reflect the development of contemporary Ital-

ian fiction, for they exhibit a keen perception of literary and cultural phenomena, from the ideological engagement and neorealism of the late forties to the critical self-awareness and self-reflexivity of the early eighties. In 1982 he published "Sapore sapere" in the elegant, luxurious review FMR, where his text accompanies the stupendous, disquieting images reproduced from the Florentine codex, in the Bi- blioteca Medicea Laurenziana, of the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaha, a sixteenth-century treatise on the life and customs of the Aztecs written by Bernardino da Sahagun in the Nahuatl language.

Retitled "Sotto il sole giaguaro" ("Under the Jaguar Sun"), the story now appears in the book that bears its name. While the new title has lost the trajectory, in fact the cognitive short circuit, of the words sapore 'flavor' and sapere 'knowledge' (as well as the related linguistic plays of the change of vowel and assonance), it has acquired an iconic figurality, which is also entirely literary; it is connected with the climax of the narrated story-inquiry, in which the sense of taste is transcended, becoming encompassed within a truly cosmic vision. According to a project interrupted by the author's death, the book should have been called I cinque sensi 'The Five Senses'; and a French work of the same period, Michel Serres's Les cinq sens. Philosophie des corps meles, may further indicate the effort made by contemporary culture to enlist the senses in the cognitive inquiry of reason.

The main characters of Calvino's story are an Italian couple touring in Mexico. This fact is interesting in itself: that they are a couple points to the core of Calvino's oeuvre, from the "difficult" idylls and loves of the earliest short stories on; that they are tourists signals

The reproductions on pages 73, 74, and 75 are taken from the Florentine codex of the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espafia, a sixteenth-century treatise by Bernardino da Sahagun, in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.

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Gian-Paolo Biasin

their distinction from explorers or travelers abroad (according to the typology Paul Fussell proposes for English literature, the tourist figures modern human experience); as Italians they reflect, not even too indirectly, the country's recent economic growth, which has led to cosmopoli- tanism more than to nationalism; and finally, the locale, Mexico, is the land that, maybe more than any other, unites anthropology and art and that, perhaps for the same reason, appears singularly privileged in the imaginary of Calvino's late works. In fact, Calvino wrote both the introduc- tion to the Italian edition of C. A. Burland's Montezuma. Lord of the Aztecs and the preface to the new edition of Emilio Cecchi's 1932 trav- elogue Messico, an influential book and an indispensable antecedent for Calvino's own experience as a tourist in Mexico in 1976.

But what is most unusual and original in "Sotto il sole giaguaro," Calvino's modern version of the ancient topos of the journey, is that the male narrator and his female companion are intent on an "esplorazione gustativa" 'gustatory exploration' based on a novel conviction they share:

[I]l vero viaggio, in quanto introiezione d'un "fuori" diverso dal nostro abituale, implica un cambiamento totale dell'alimentazione, un inghiottire il paese vi- sitato, nella sua fauna e flora e nella sua cultura (non solo le diverse pratiche della cucina e del condimento ma l'uso dei diversi strumenti con cui si schiaccia la farina o si rimescola il paiolo), facendolo passare per le labbra e l'esofago. (38-39)

The true journey, as the introjection of an "outside" different from our normal one, implies a complete change of nutrition, a digesting of the visited country-its fauna and flora and its culture (not only the different culinary practices and condiments but the different implements used to grind the flour or stir the pot)-making it pass between the lips and down the esophagus. (12)

Furthermore, the couple are united by an even more intimate and personal complicity, the desire to communicate "attraverso i sapori, o . . . coi sapori attraverso un doppio corredo di papille" 'through flavors, or. . . with flavors through a double set of taste buds' (36; 9), a desire made

more intense and urgent because "l'intesa fisica" 'the physical bond' between the two companions "stava attraversando una fase di rarefazione se non d'eclisse" 'was going through a phase of rar- efaction, if not eclipse,' and hence, as the narrator specifies, its stage was no longer "il letto dei nostri abbracci ma una tavola apparecchiata" 'the bed of our embraces but a dinner table' (36-37; 10). The couple have all the complementary qualities to carry out the double cognitive exploration:

Olivia piu sensibile alle sfumature percettive e do- tata d'una memoria piu analitica dove ogni ricordo restava distinto e inconfondibile; io piu portato a definire verbalmente e concettualmente le espe- rienze, a tracciare la linea ideale del viaggio compiuto dentro di noi contemporaneamente al viaggio geografico. (38)

Olivia more sensitive to perceptive nuances and en- dowed with a more analytical memory, where every recollection remained distinct and unmistakable, I

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Italo Calvino in Mexico: Food and Lovers, Tourists and Cannibals

tending more to define experiences verbally and conceptually, to mark the ideal line of journey within ourselves contemporaneously with our geographical journey. (11)

Clearly, food is such a central and capillary subject in "Sotto il sole giaguaro" that the narrative cannot be separated from it. In the following pages I focus on all the primary functions of food that the story analyzes, from the satisfaction of desire to the possibility of transgression, from the narrative sign to the cognitive tool used to outline the problematic relations among self, others, and the world (or among subject, nature, and history). Using Louis Marin's terms in a broad sense, I can state that "Sotto il sole giaguaro" deals with the dialectics of logos, sitos, and eros in an extremely original manner: gastronomy fuses anthropology and eroticism within

itself, while the underlying discourse probes the nature of literature. But though Calvino's interest in food asserts itself most strongly in this story, gustatory images and topoi are significantly present throughout his oeuvre, even in the early texts, to some of which I now turn attention.

The most significant of Calvino's early racconti 'short stories' (collected in Racconti [Difficult Loves]) is "Furto in una pasticceria" ("Theft in a Pastry Shop"). Recounting a triumph (albeit a temporary one) of abundance over the scarcity of World War II, it is rich with succulent descrip- tions like the following one, which is based entirely on military metaphors: "paste allineate . . . e batterie schierate di panettoni e muniti castelli di torroni" 'rows of lined up cakes . . . and deployed batteries of panettoni and fortified castles of almond cakes' (102; 134).

Excess after scarcity results not in the satisfaction of desire but in dissatisfaction, duly under- scored by an exaggerated and grotesque language that is not at all realistic. The sudden possibility of satisfying a long-unfulfilled craving for food causes first "una smania" 'a frenzy' (Gesubam- bino "addentava strudel, piluccava zibibbi, lec- cava sciroppi" 'was biting into apple strudels, picking at raisins, licking syrups') and then nau- sea, when the doughnuts begin to turn into "pezzi di spugna, le omelette rotoli di carta moschicida, le torte colarono vischio e bitume" 'soggy pieces of sponge, the tarts to flypaper and the cakes to asphalt' (104; 136-37). The story includes many felicitous inventions-for example, the birthday cake the tall Sicilian, Uora-Uora, receives squarely and beatifically on his face; the police who, "distrattamente, cominciarono a portarsi alla bocca qualche pasticcino rimasto sbandato, badando bene a non confondere le tracce" 'dis- tractedly, . . . began to nibble little cakes that were lying about, taking care, though, to leave the traces of the thieves,' but who end up eating away "a quattro palmenti" 'heartily' (106; 139); and especially the conclusion centered on Ge- subambino (called simply Baby in the transla- tion). Having stuffed his shirt with every sort of pastry he could grab, he eludes the incoming police and flees safely to his lover:

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Gian-Paolo Biasin

Da Mary la Toscana quando apri la camicia si trovo col petto ricoperto da uno strano impasto. E rimasero fino al mattino, lui e lei, sdraiati sul letto a leccarsi e piluccarsi fino all'ultima briciola e all'ultimo ri-

masuglio di crema. (106)

When Baby got to Tuscan Mary's and opened his shirt, he found his whole chest covered with a strange sticky paste. And they stayed till morning, he and

she, lying on the bed licking and picking at each other till they had finished the last crumb of cake and blob of cream. (139-40)

Here alimentary enjoyment and erotic pleasure are indeed the same thing.

Food also has an erotic function in II sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest of Spiders). In the rustic kitchen of the partisan camp the dominant character is Giglia, the young and sensual wife of the cook, Mancino, and Dritto loses his head over her. Instead of peeling potatoes, Giglia combs her hair, offers Dritto some chest- nuts, and plays and runs with her lover, revealing "i seni bianchi e caldi. . . dentro la camicia da

uomo sbottonata" 'that warm breast of hers in a man's unbuttoned shirt' (164; 118). When she drinks water from a flask, Dritto "le guarda le labbra" 'looks at her lips' (164; 118)-his gaze expressing desire and, laconic as it is, presaging a whole series of similar postures and gestures throughout Calvino's work, culminating in the narrator's glance at Olivia's lips in "Sotto il sole giaguaro."

Even in Cosmicomiche vecchie e nuove (Cos- micomics and T Zero) food is an important element.' A passage in "Tutti in un punto" ("All in One Point"), for instance, describes the invention of noodles, a passage John Barth must have had in mind when he wrote that in Cosmico- miche, "along with the nebulae and the black holes and the lyricism, there is a nourishing sup- ply of pasta, bambini, and good-looking women sharply glimpsed and gone forever." Barth em- phasizes the alimentary metaphor by concluding that Calvino's fiction is "delicious and high in protein" (204). But the making of noodles separates the "boys" from Signora Ph(i)Nko-cre- ating space between them, so that they are no longer "all in one point"-and inexorably leads to a desire that will be impossible to satisfy and

will never be reciprocated: "e lei da quel momento perduta, e noi a rimpiangerla" 'she [was] lost at that very moment, and we [were left] mourning her loss' (161; Cosmicomics 47).

This separation is only one instance of that difference on which desire is founded and which in Cosmicomiche ties Qfwfq to, and divides him from, numerous female figures: Ayl, Lll, Vud, and (particularly remarkable and memorable) the

smiling Flw, who bites "la polpa sugosa" 'the

juicy pulp' of a pineapple (124; my trans.). Be- cause this difference is at the very origin of desire, of life, it is pursued into the meanders of cells and of genetic evolution in the "biocomics," that is, in most of the stories making up Ti con zero.

While in many stories in Cosmicomiche gal- axies, nebulas, and dinosaurs are interiorized by human conscience, in the biocomics it is the human individual who is projected or exteriorized into the minimal but broad structures of matter. In other words, the boundaries between subject and object are blurred, perhaps because, as Serres says,

each term of the traditional subject-object dichotomy is itself split by something like a geographical divide

75


(in the same way as I am, who speak and write today): noise, disorder, and chaos on one side; complexity, arrangement, and distribution on the other. Nothing distinguishes me ontologically from a crystal, a plant, an animal, or the order of the world [since each one has its own] diverse systemic complexion . . . but this is complexity itself, which was once called being. (Hermes 83)

Calvino explores just this systemic complexity, more as a narrator than as a philosopher; and through the ubiquitous, nonchalant, and perplexed Qfwfq he posits problems and values about the individual and the world at a new, suggestive, or dizzying level of understanding.

Particularly successful in this context is "Pris- cilla," a touching love story involving the development and diversification of pluricellular organisms. Living "in una golosa aspettativa di cio che potra venirgli incontro dal vuoto" 'in a greedy expectation of what might come to [him] from the void' (258; T 77), the protagonist is constantly aware of proteins and nucleic acids inside himself and inside Priscilla and of the changes he and his beloved undergo at every passing instant "per via del continuo rinnova- mento delle molecole di proteine nelle nostre cellule attraverso per esempio la digestione o anche la respirazione" 'because of the continuous renewal of the protein molecules in our cells through, for example, digestion or also respira- tion' (261; T 83). Priscilla is a lovely feminine creature who is difficult to define because her identity is a totality, a systemic complexity, an entire way of being that is completely hers. For example, the scent emanating from her skin is due not only to her "costituzione ghiandolare" 'glandular constitution' but also to "tutto cio che ha mangiato in vita sua" 'everything she has eaten in her life' and "le marche di saponi che ha usato" 'the brands of soap she has used'-in other words, to "quel che si dice, tra virgolette, la cultura" 'what is called, in quotes, culture.' And she is she because of the things she has stored in her memory and of the ones she has forgotten, which, however, "rimangono registrate da qualche parte nel retro dei neuroni alla maniera di tutti i traumi psichici che uno s'ingoia fin da piccolo" 'still remain recorded somewhere in the back of the neurons like all the psychic trauma a person has

to swallow from infancy on' (262; T 84-85). This way of being cannot but differ from one individual to another, because "siamo nati non da una fusione ma da una giustapposizione di corpi diversi" 'we were born not from a fusion but from a juxtaposition of distinct bodies,' all the way down into the cores of the nuclei, which, in du- plicating themselves, actually perpetuate "la di- stanza incolmabile che separa in ogni coppia i due compagni" 'the unbridgeable distance that separates in each couple the two companions' (264, 265; T 88). Thus the narrator can, at most, remember the sweetness of "tramonti nell'oasi" 'sunsets in the oasis' and a gesture by now well known to the reader, "un leggero morso" 'a little nip' he gave Priscilla's curved neck when they were camels together, before she became an elegant Parisian girl (268; T 93).

The same yearning is expressed in even stron- ger and more extreme terms in "II sangue, il mare" ("Blood, Sea"), where the memory of "l'onda primordiale che continua a scorrere nelle arterie" 'the primordial wave which continues to flow in the arteries' (237; T 45) explains the aggressive impulses of Qfwfq toward his rival, Si- gnor Cecere, as well as his "sanguinario" 'sanguinary' instinct to reproduce himself by coupling with Zylphia in order to multiply their blood circulation:

[C]'era pure nell'impulso mio verso Zylphia, oltre alla spinta ad avere tutto l'oceano per noi, anche la spinta a perderlo, l'oceano, ad annientarci nell'oceano, a distruggerci, a straziarci, ossia-tanto per cominciare-a straziarla, lei Zylphia la mia amata, a farla a pezzi, a mangiarmela. E lei lo stesso: quel che voleva era straziarmi, divorarmi, inghiot- tirmi, mica altro. La macchia arancione del sole vista dalle profondita sottomarine ondeggiava come una medusa e Zylphia guizzava attraverso i filamenti lu- minosi divorata dal desiderio di divorarmi, e io mi contorcevo tra i viluppi d'oscurita che si protende- vano dal fondo come lunghe alghe inanellate dai riflessi d'indaco, smaniando dalla voglia di morsicarla. (244)

So there was in my impulse toward Zylphia, not only the drive to have all the ocean for us, but also the drive to lose it, the ocean, to annihilate ourselves in the ocean, to destroy ourselves, to torment ourselves, or rather-as a beginning-to torment her,

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Zylphia my beloved, to tear her to pieces, to eat her up. And with her it's the same: what she wanted was to torment me, devour me, swallow me, nothing but that. The orange stain of the sun seen from the water's depths swayed like a medusa, and Zylphia darted among the luminous filaments devoured by the desire to devour me, and I writhed in the tangles of darkness that rose from the depths like long strands of seaweed beringed with indigo glints, raving and longing to bite her. (T 55)

This truly beautiful passage seems to recall and enlarge a thematics playfully expressed by Ray- mond Queneau, the founder of the Oulipo group Calvino knew and admired: in Petite cosmogonie portative 'Small Portable Cosmogony' the living species are first cannibals, as descendants "de la cellule unique edentee et imberbe / qui decouvrit que c'est degustable un vivant" 'from the single toothless and callow cell / that discovered that a living being can be tasted'; then they evolve and discover sexuality, whereby all the animals "sa- vourent la planete en y procrefoutant" 'savor the planet while procreating-screwing on it' (84-85; my trans.)-notice the felicitous French neolo- gism-pun that fuses the genetic function with erotic pleasure. But while Queneau's discourse builds a joyful and ironic cosmogony, Calvino's is more perplexed and tormented: Qfwfq and Zylphia's reciprocal desire to tear and devour each other under the medusa sun is already a preview, in the genetic depths, of the inquiry that Calvino carries out in the anthropological depths of "Sotto il sole giaguaro."

The feminine names of the cities described in Le citta invisibili (Invisible Cities) indicate the constant metonymies of desire, a desire constantly different and constantly renewed that is at the root of all lives, even the most alienated, like those of the inhabitants of Chloe, who "non si conoscono tra loro" 'are all strangers' and "im- maginano mille cose uno dell'altro, . . . le sorprese, le carezze, i morsi" 'imagine a thousand things about one another,. . . surprises, caresses, bites' (57; 51)-a minimal but important signal of an extraordinary, fantastic coherence in Cal- vino's texts, from Giglia to Flw and from Priscilla to Zylphia, as noted so far, and to Olivia in "Sotto il sole giaguaro." Here it is not improper to recall that in Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (If

on a Winter Night a Traveler) the male Reader takes a "morso speciale" 'a special nip' at the feminine Reader's shoulder (155; 155) and that the act of biting the beloved is imagined or stated twice elsewhere in the novel: in the pseudo-Jap- anese erotic novel (205; 205) and in the pseudo- South American novel, where Jacinta replies to the narrator, showing her teeth, "Per quello, posso spolparti come un osso" 'As for that, I can gnaw you as clean as a bone' (232; 231). And this narrator, during his quest for his mother, eats "un piatto di polpette piccanti" 'a dish of spiced meatballs' that burns his lips "come se quel sapore dovesse contenere tutti i sapori portati all'estremo" 'as if that flavor should contain all flavors carried to their extreme'-a sensation that is perhaps equivalent to "quella del latte per il neonato, in quanto primo sapore che contiene in se ogni sapore" 'that of the milk for an infant, since as the first flavor it contains all flavors' (227- 28; 226). In any event, the narrator's quest remains useless, for in this meal synecdoche, flavor (sapore) does not bring knowledge (sapere).

Palomar (Mr. Palomar) provides another example of Calvino's consistency. As the epony- mous protagonist does his marketing in a charcuterie, a cheese store, and a butcher shop, his gastronomic and cognitive itinerary evokes the motifs traced by Calvino's earlier texts: the connections between food and eros, between the mechanism of desire and satisfaction, between abundance and lack of satisfaction; food as a me- tonymy of the world, at the center of the relations among human beings, nature, and history. By now it is apparent that Calvino's exploration can be considered anthropological even more than cultural or sociological. Palomar explicitly iden- tifies food with eros when he remembers a cas- soulet, "pingue stufato di carni e di fagioli, di cui il grasso d'oca e ingrediente essenziale" 'a fat stew of meats and beans in which goose fat is an essential ingredient' (69; 67), that awakens in him

un'istantanea fantasticheria non tanto della gola quanto dell'eros: da una montagna di grasso d'oca affiora una figura femminile, si spalma di bianco la pelle rosa, e gia lui immagina se stesso facendosi largo verso di lei tra quelle dense valanghe e ab- bracciarla e affondare con lei. (70)

77


an immediate fantasy not so much of appetite as of eros: from a mountain of goose fat a female figure surfaces, smears white over her rosy skin, and he already imagines himself making his way toward her through those thick avalanches, embracing her, sinking with her. (68)

There is not even time to listen to the intertextual echoes-of Gesubambino with Tuscan Mary after the theft in the pastry shop or of Qfwfq longing for Signora Vhd Vhd or Zylphia-because in the meantime Palomar discovers that some cheeses "sui loro vassoi sembrano offrirsi come sui divani d'un bordello" 'on their platters seem to proffer themselves as if on the divans of a brothel' (74; 72). And soon after, more subtly, he knows he is "condizionato dalla sua tradizione alimentare a cogliere da un negozio di macellaio la promessa della felicita gustativa, a immaginare . . . il pia- cere del dente nel recidere la fibra brunita" 'con- ditioned by his alimentary background to perceive in a butcher shop the promise of gustatory happiness, to imagine . . . the pleasure of the tooth in severing the browned fiber' of a grilled steak (79; 78). The (gustatory) happiness and the (tooth's) pleasure possess a remarkably sensual connotation in their ambiguity and polysemy.

But Palomar is also fascinated, irresistibly, by the "cornucopia del mondo" 'cornucopia of the world,' by the "gloria pantagruelica" 'Panta- gruelic glory' displayed in the shop windows. His fascination is expressed above all through the list and the catalog. But since Palomar's gluttony is perhaps "soprattutto mentale, estetica, simbo- lica" 'chiefly mental, aesthetic, symbolic' (71; 69), he is destined to remain disappointed; and at the butcher's his mood is one "di gioia trattenuta e di timore, di desiderio e di rispetto, di preoccu- pazione egoistica e di compassione universale, lo stato d'animo che forse altri esprimono nella preghiera" 'of restrained joy and fear, desire and respect, egoistic concern and universal compas- sion, the mood that perhaps others express in prayer' (79; 78).

To make up for his disappointment, his eyes and his reflections transform every food "in un documento della storia della civilta, in un oggetto da museo" 'into a document of the history of

civilization, a museum exhibit' (72; 70)-but a living, fertile museum (one that Duthuit would call "unimaginable"):

Dietro ogni formaggio c'e un pascolo d'un diverso verde sotto un diverso cielo: prati incrostati di sale che le maree di Normandia depositano ogni sera; prati profumati d'aromi al sole ventoso di Provenza; ci sono diversi armenti con le loro stabulazioni e transumanze; ci sono segreti di lavorazione traman- dati nei secoli. Questo negozio e un museo: il signor Palomar visitandolo sente, come al Louvre, dietro ogni oggetto esposto la presenza della civilta che gli ha dato forma e che da esso prende forma. (75)

Behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky: meadows caked with salt that the tides of Normandy deposit every eve- ning; meadows scented with aromas in the windy sunlight of Provence; there are different flocks, with their stablings and their transhumances; there are secret processes handed down over the centuries. This shop is a museum: Mr. Palomar, visiting it, feels as he does in the Louvre, behind every displayed object the presence of the civilization that has given it form and takes form from it. (73)

Similarly, Palomar experiences the cheese shop as an encyclopedia and a dictionary ("la lingua e il sistema dei formaggi nel suo insieme" 'the language is the system of cheeses as a whole'; "impararsi un po' di nomenclatura resta sempre la prima misura da prendere" 'learning a bit of nomenclature still remains the first measure to be taken' in order to "fermare un momento le cose che scorrono" 'stop for a moment the things that are flowing' [75-76; 74]). Obviously his personal relationship with cheeses, with the world, will be extremely complicated and perplexed. Palomar responds in much the same way at the butcher shop when he looks at a chart with the outline of a steer, "come una carta geografica percorsa da linee di confine che delimitano le aree d'interesse mangereccio" 'like a map covered with frontier lines that mark off the areas of consuming interest':

La mappa dell'habitat umano & questa, non meno del planisfero del pianeta, entrambi protocolli che dovrebbero sancire i diritti che l'uomo s'e attribuito, di possesso, spartizione e divoramento senza residui

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dei continenti terrestri e dei lombi del corpo animale. (78)

The map of the human habitat is this, no less than the planisphere of the planet; both are protocols that should sanction the rights man has attributed to himself, of possession, division, and consumption without residue of the terrestrial continents and of the loins of the animal body. (77)

Here Palomar advances the same view that jux- taposes Marco Polo and the Khan in Le citta invisibili, the same deconstructive and cognitive logic that contrasts with the Western dialectics of possession and power. His perplexity becomes emblematic of an attitude toward the world that is less arrogant and violent than logocentrism: if "la sapienza macellatrice e quella culinaria ap- partengono alle scienze esatte, . . . la sapienza sacrificale invece e dominata dall'incertezza, e per di piu caduta in oblio da secoli, ma pesa sulle coscienze oscuramente, come esigenza ine- spressa" 'butchering wisdom and culinary doc- trine belong to the exact sciences, . . . sacrificial practice, on the other hand, is dominated by un- certainty, and what's more fell into oblivion centuries ago, but still it weighs obscurely on the conscience, an unexpressed demand' (77; 76). Palomar embodies and expresses precisely this demand, with pensive irony, by partaking of "la simbiosi uomo-bue" 'the man-beef symbiosis' with "lucida coscienza e pieno consenso" 'a clear conscience and full agreement' but stressing again that "la civilta detta umana andrebbe detta umano-bovina" 'what is called human civilization should be called human-bovine,' as well as "umano-ovina e umano-suina . . . secondo le alternative d'una complicata geografia d'inter- dizioni religiose" 'human-ovine and human- porcine . . . depending on the alternatives of a complicated geography of religious prohibitions' (79; 78). The insights and the interpretations that the anthropologist Mary Douglas develops on this subject are quite pertinent to Calvino's discourse and should not be forgotten (249-75).

The sense of the sacred is in full evidence in these passages from Palomar, and perhaps it is this sense that explains the protagonist's obscure fascination with the belly of the gecko on an il- luminated glass, which allows him to see, as if

under X rays, a just-swallowed gnat "nel suo tra- gitto attraverso le viscere che l'assorbono" 'in its course through the viscera that absorb it' (60; 58). He ponders:

Forse in questo momento un dio degli inferi situato al centro della terra col suo occhio che trapassa il granito sta guardandoci dal basso, seguendo il ciclo del vivere e del morire, le vittime sbranate che si disfano nei ventri dei divoratori, finche alla loro volta un altro ventre non li inghiotte. (60)

Perhaps at this moment a god of the nether world situated in the center of the earth with his eyes that can pierce granite is watching us from below, following the cycle of living and dying, the lacerated victims dissolving in the bellies of their devourers, until they, in their turn, are swallowed by another belly. (58)

An infernal god: a terrible and sanguinary god similar to the ancient Mexican deities the Italian couple face in "Sotto il sole giaguaro"-the story to which I finally return, a cognitive inquiry that inextricably combines gastronomy, anthropology, and eroticism on the literary page. All the examples collected and ordered so far should prove indispensable as antecedents that elucidate how the culinary obsession in the story works to explain both the individual and the species.

Early in "Sotto il sole giaguaro" elements of a cultural gastronomy are already oriented toward anthropology: "A Tepotzotlan . . . avevamo gustato vivande preparate (cosi almeno ci era stato detto) seguendo le antiche ricette delle monache" 'In Tepotzotlan . . . we had savored dishes prepared (at least, so we were told) according to the traditional recipes of the nuns.' The description of these doubly exotic recipes- exotic both in space (they are Mexican) and in time (they are ancient)-is based entirely on the minimal nuances of Olivia's gustatory percep- tions and sensations, but the conceptualization that follows is the narrator's, even if both are cast in the first person plural of the couple:

Da quel momento l'idea delle monache evocava in noi i sapori di una cucina elaborata e audace, come tesa a far vibrare le note estreme dei sapori e ad accostarle in modulazioni, accordi e soprattutto dis-

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sonanze che s'imponessero come un'esperienza senza confronti, un punto di non ritorno, una pos- sessione assoluta esercitata sulla ricettivita di tutti i sensi. (31)

After that, for us, the thought of nuns called up the flavors of an elaborate and bold cuisine, bent on making the flavors' highest notes vibrate, juxtaposing them in modulations, in chords, and especially in dissonances that would assert themselves as an in- comparable experience-a point of no return, an absolute possession exercised on the receptivity of all the senses. (5)

But such a conceptualization must take history-microhistory-into account. It presup- poses nuns who devoted their entire lives "alla ricerca di nuove mescolanze d'ingredienti e va- riazioni nei dosaggi, all'attenta pazienza combinatoria, alla trasmissione d'un sapere minuzioso e puntuale" 'to the search of new blends of in- gredients, new variations in the measurements, to alert and patient mixing, to the handing down of an intricate, precise lore' and who desired, through their recipes, to express "le loro fantasie costrette" 'their fantasies confined' within the convents' walls:

fantasie anche di donne raffinate, e accese, e intro- verse, e complicate, donne con bisogni d'assoluto, con letture che parlavano d'estasi e trasfigurazioni e martiri e supplizi, donne con contrastanti richiami nel sangue, genealogie in cui la discendenza dei Conquistadores si mescolava con quella delle prin- cipesse indie, o delle schiave, donne con ricordi in- fantili di frutti e aromi d'una vegetazione succulenta e densa di fermenti, benche cresciuta da quegli as- solati altopiani. (32-33)

the fantasies, after all, of sophisticated women, bright and introverted and complex women who needed absolutes, whose reading told of ecstasies and trans- figurations, martyrs and tortures, women with con- flicting calls in their blood, genealogies in which the descendants of the conquistadores mingled with thnose of Indian princesses or slaves, women with childhood recollections of the fruits and fragrances of a succulent vegetation, thick with ferments, though growing from those sun-baked plateaus.

(6)

An intertextual reference is necessary here: the "ottomila monache" 'eight thousand nuns' de-

scribed by Emilio Cecchi, who comments not only on the "luminosa e sfarzosa imbandigione" 'luminous and sumptuous preparation' of their sweets but also on "gli urti del sangue, l'orgoglio delle caste, le ambizioni, le gelosie, le febbri ata- viche e tetre" 'the clashes in their blood, the pride of their castes, the ambitions, the jealousies, the atavistic and dark fevers' (162, 163, 165; my trans.). The sacred architecture Cecchi discusses is also pertinent (148-56), for in Calvino's story it is the setting for "le vite di queste religiose, mossa dalla stessa spinta verso l'estremo che por- tava all'esasperazione dei sapori amplificata dalla vampa dei chiles piu piccanti" 'the lives of those religious; it, too, was impelled by the same drive toward the extreme that led to the exacerbation of flavors amplified by the blaze of the most spicy chiles,' which "apriva le prospettive d'un'estasi fiammeggiante" 'opened vistas of a flaming ec- stasy' (33; 7). It is the baroque architecture, "danzante e acrobatico" 'a dancing and acrobatic baroque,' of the seminary that the Jesuits built during the eighteenth century at Tepotzotlfan to compete "con lo splendore degli Aztechi" 'with the splendor of the Aztecs' (33; 7), and it provides the necessary historical and anthropological background for Calvino's inquiry:2

[D]all'architettura questa sfida [tra le civilta d'A- merica e di Spagna nell'arte d'incantare i sensi con seduzioni allucinanti] s'estendeva alla cucina, dove le due civilta s'erano fuse, o forse dove quella dei vinti aveva trionfato, forte dei condimenti nati dal suo suolo. Attraverso bianche mani di novizie e mani brune di converse, la cucina della nuova civilta ispano-india s'era fatta anch'essa campo di battaglia tra la ferinita aggressiva degli antichi dei dell'altopiano e la sovrabbondanza sinuosa della re- ligione barocca. (34)

[F]rom architecture this rivalry [between the civilizations of America and Spain in the art of bewitching the senses with dazzling seductions] extended to cuisine, where the two civilizations had merged, or perhaps where the conquered had triumphed, strong in the condiments born from their very soil. Through the white hands of novices and the brown hands of lay sisters, the cuisine of the new Indo-Hispanic civilization had become also the field of battle between the aggressive ferocity of the ancient gods of

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the mesa and the sinuous excess of the baroque religion. (7-8)

During a skillfully and tastily described supper of guacamole, guajolote con mole poblano, and quesadillas, the narrator persistently watches Olivia's lips pause "nel bel mezzo della masti- cazione" 'right in the midst of chewing' and her face take on "una speciale concentrazione" 'a special concentration' (35; 8-9). When then the couple, continuing their trip, go on to Monte Al- ban, with its temples, reliefs, grand stairways, and platforms for human sacrifice, the narrator observes that "l'orrore, il sacro e il mistero vengono inglobati dal turismo, che ci detta comportamenti preordinati, modesti succedanei di quei riti. Contemplando questi gradini cerchiamo d'immaginare il sangue caldo zampillante dai petti squarciati dalle lame di pietra dei sacerdoti" '[h]orror, sacredness, and mystery are consoli- dated by tourism, which dictates preordained forms of behavior, the modest surrogates of those rites. Contemplating these stairs, we try to imagine the hot blood spurting from the breast split by the stone axe of the priest' (39; 12-13). After visiting these sacred places, Olivia asks the native guide, without getting a satisfactory answer, "Ma del corpo delle vittime, dopo, cosa ne facevano?" 'But what did they do with the victims' bodies afterward?' (42; 15); and during the return trip on the jolting bus, the narrator notices a strange change in his own attitude toward his companion:

[M]'accorsi che il mio sguardo si fermava non sui suoi occhi ma sui suoi denti (teneva le labbra di- schiuse in un'espressione assorta), denti che per la prima volta m'accadeva di vedere non come il lampo luminoso del sorriso ma come gli strumenti pit adatti alla propria funzione: l'affondare nella carne, lo sbranare, il recidere. (43)

I realised my gaze was resting not on her eyes but on her teeth (she kept her lips parted in a pensive expression), which I happened to be seeing for the first time not as the radiant glow of a smile but as the instrument most suited for their purpose: to be dug into flesh, to sever it, tear it. (16)

Here the narrator, with a self-reflexive movement, becomes explicitly aware ("I realised") of his own

attitude toward Olivia, which he had mentioned a few pages earlier; and his meditation, which superimposes an anthropological dimension on the erotic one, calls to mind the many similar images already noted in Calvino's earlier texts. The interest in human sacrifices that had always animated Calvino's mentor and friend, Cesare Pavese (in the ethnographic area of a Kerenyi or a Frazer),3 is combined here with a post-Freudian and post-Sadean intellectual curiosity. Calvino contemplates the individual and collective un- conscious at its most unexplored and disquieting levels, in an effort to understand the most obscure sides of desire, eros, and culture.

Not by chance Salustiano, the couple's Mex- ican friend, functions in these pages as the illus- trator of well-known anthropological notions, such as those Peggy Reeves Sanday discusses in Divine Hunger. Cannibalism as a Cultural Sys- tem. Significantly, the treatise by Sahagfun that accompanies Calvino's story in FMR serves as the primary historical source and preliminary documentation for her anthropological interpretation: the "ritual meal"; the victim considered as "divine food"; the participation of priests, princes, and warriors but not the one person who had captured the victim (169-95). Olivia, however, is not satisfied by such accounts. Her desire to know is directed toward what Reeves Sanday calls "a gourmet appreciation of human flesh" and includes among other possible explanations for cannibalism: psychological ones ("revenge, masculine bravado"), political ("ambition"), cosmological and religious ("desire to communicate with and feed the gods") (194).4

In her desire to know, in her insistent probing, Olivia seems truly to embody literature as Cal- vino conceives it: a cognitive instrument that goes beyond anthropology and postulates an inex- haustible inquiry. In Una pietra sopra (The Uses of Literature), Calvino asks:

Ma la tensione della letteratura non & forse rivolta continuamente a uscire da questo numero finito [di elementi e funzioni del linguaggio], non cerca forse di dire continuamente qualcosa che non sa dire, qualcosa che non pu6 dire, qualcosa che non sa, qualcosa che non si pu6 sapere? (174)

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But is the tension in literature not continually striv- ing to escape from this finite number [of elements and functions of language]? Does it not continually attempt to say something it cannot say, something that it does not know, and that no one could ever know? (18)

And Olivia's prodding questions echo Calvino's rhetorical repetitions: "Ma questa carne, per mangiarla, la cucina, la cucina sacra, il modo di prepararla, i sapori, se ne sa qualcosa?" 'But this flesh-in order to eat it.... The way it was cooked, the sacred cuisine, the seasoning-is anything known about that?' (47; 19). Salustiano concedes that human flesh must have had "un sapore strano" 'a strange flavor' and that "tutti i sapori dovevano essere chiamati a raccolta" 'all other flavors had to be brought together' in order to hide that flavor (48; 20). But Olivia objects that "forse quel sapore veniva fuori comunque.... anche in mezzo ad altri sapori...." 'perhaps that flavor emerged, all the same-even through the other flavors,' and Salustiano, enigmatically enough, replies that the sacred cuisine "doveva celebrare l'armonia degli elementi raggiunta attraverso il sacrificio, un'armonia terribile, fiammeggiante, incandescente" 'had to celebrate the harmony of the elements achieved through sacrifice-a terrible harmony, flaming, incandes- cent' (48; 20).

Later on, taking up the anxious debate again, Olivia remarks to the narrator that "forse la morte del tempo riguarda solo noi . . . noi che ci sbraniamo facendo finta di non saperlo, facendo finta di non sentire piu i sapori" 'perhaps the death of time concerns only us. .... We who tear one another apart, pretending not to know it, pretending not to taste flavors anymore' (49; 22), while the Aztecs dared to look at the horror in front of them. So Olivia proposes her conjec- ture on the "sacred" taste of human flesh.

Forse non si poteva, non si doveva nasconderlo.... Altrimenti era come non mangiare quel che si man- giava.... Forse gli altri sapori avevano la funzione d'esaltare quel sapore, di dargli uno sfondo degno, di fargli onore.... (50)

Perhaps it couldn't be hidden. Shouldn't be. Oth- erwise, it was like not eating what they were really

eating. Perhaps the other flavors served to enhance that flavor, to give it a worthy background, to honor it. (22)

At these words, the narrator again feels "il bisogno di guardarla nei denti" 'the need to look her in the teeth' as he had done earlier (50; 22), and he does so when the two are eating sopa de cama- rones and cabrito:

Era la sensazione dei suoi denti nella mia carne che stavo immaginando, e sentivo la sua lingua solle- varmi contro la volta del palato, avvolgermi di saliva, poi spingermi sotto la punta dei canini. .... Situa- zione non completamente passiva in quanto mentre venivo masticato da lei sentivo anche che agivo su di lei, le trasmettevo sensazioni che si propagavano dalle papille della bocca per tutto il suo corpo, che ogni sua vibrazione ero io a provocarla: era un rapporto reciproco e completo che ci coinvolgeva e ci travolgeva. (50-51)

It was the sensation of her teeth in my flesh that I was imagining, and I could feel her tongue lift me against the roof of her mouth, enfold me in saliva, then thrust me under the tips of the canines .... The situation was not entirely passive, since while I was being chewed by her I felt also that I was acting on her, transmitting sensations that spread from the taste buds through her whole body. I was the one who aroused her every vibration-it was a reciprocal and complete relationship, which involved us and overwhelmed us. (23)

What the narrator describes is an entirely inner sensation, an intense and silent act of imagination that fuses anthropological and erotic compo- nents; but it is also a narrative turn, because his silence prompts Olivia to accuse him of being "sempre sprofondato" 'always sunk' into himself, "scoraggiante, indifferente" 'depressing, indiffer- ent,' and even "insipido!" 'insipid' (52; 24-25).5 In response to this charge, the narrator muses:

Ecco, ero insipido, pensai, e la cucina messicana con tutta la sua audacia e fantasia era necessaria perche Olivia potesse cibarsi di me con soddisfazione; i sapori piu accesi erano il complemento, anzi il mezzo di comunicazione indispensabile come un altopar- lante che amplifica i suoni perche Olivia potesse nu- trirsi della mia sostanza. (52)

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There: I was insipid, I thought, without flavor. And the Mexican cuisine, with all its boldness and imagination, was needed if Olivia was to feed on me with satisfaction. The spiciest flavors were the comple- ment-indeed, the avenue of communication, indispensable as a loudspeaker that amplifies sounds- for Olivia to be nourished by my substance. (25)

Of course, the narrator is wrong; and only the thought of the chac-mool, a "figura umana semi- sdraiata, in posa quasi etrusca, che regge un vassoio posato sul ventre" 'half-reclining human figure, in an almost Etruscan pose, with a tray resting on his belly,' a tray on which "venivano offerti al dio i cuori delle vittime" 'the victims' hearts were offered to the gods' (53; 25), will be useful in resolving the couple's conflict. In fact, Salustiano explains, the chac-mool perhaps rep- resents both the victim and the sacrificer and as- sumes "la posa della vittima perche sa che domani tocchera a lui.... Senza questa reversi- bilita il sacrificio umano sarebbe impensabile . . . la vittima accettava d'essere vittima perche aveva lottato per catturare gli altri come vittime" 'the pose of the victim because he is aware that to- morrow it will be his turn. Without this reci- procity, human sacrifice would be unthinkable. . . . [T]he victim accepted his role as victim because he had fought to capture the others as victims' (53-54; 26). These words find precise confirmation in anthropological studies,6 but here they have the essential narrative function of pro- voking a psychological reaction in the narrator:

[L]o avevo capito, intanto. I1 mio torto con Olivia era di considerarmi mangiato da lei, mentre dovevo essere, anzi ero (ero sempre stato) colui che la man- giava. La carne umana di sapore piu attraente e quella di chi mangia carne umana. Solo nutrendomi voracemente d'Olivia non sarei piu riuscito insipido al suo palato. (54)

Meanwhile I understood: my mistake with Olivia was to consider myself eaten by her, whereas I should be myself (I always had been) the one who ate her. The most appetizingly flavored human flesh belongs to the eater of human flesh. It was only by feeding ravenously on Olivia that I would cease being taste- less to her palate. (26)

The small private drama is then solved through a metaphoric attitude patterned after the sur-

rounding anthropological and cultural realities. Hence the following supper confirms the couple's newfound linguistic accord, which is a prelude to a more properly erotic harmony:

[L]o m'immedesimavo a divorare in ogni polpetta tutta la fragranza d'Olivia attraverso una mastica- zione voluttuosa, una vampiresca estrazione di suc- chi vitali, ma mi accorgevo che in quello che doveva essere un rapporto tra tre termini, io-polpetta-Olivia, s'inseriva un quarto termine che assumeva un ruolo dominante: il nome delle polpette. Era il nome "gorditas pellizcadas con manteca" [letteralmente, "paffutelle pizzicate al burro"] che io gustavo soprattutto e assimilavo e possedevo. Tanto che la ma- gia del nome continu6 ad agire su di me anche dopo il pasto, quando ci ritirammo insieme nella nostra camera d'albergo, nella notte. E per la prima volta durante il nostro viaggio in Messico l'incantesimo di cui eravamo rimasti vittime fu rotto e l'ispirazione che aveva favorito i momenti migliori della nostra convivenza torno a visitarci. (54-55)

I concentrated on devouring, with every meatball, the whole fragrance of Olivia-through voluptuous mastication, a vampire extraction of vital juices. But I realized that in a relationship that should have been among three terms-me, meatball, Olivia-a fourth term had intruded, assuming a dominant role: the name of the meatballs. It was the name "gorditas pellizcadas con manteca" [literally, "the small chubby ones (feminine plural) pinched with butter"] that I was especially savoring and assimilating and possessing. And, in fact, the magic of that name continued affecting me even after the meal, when we retired together to our hotel room in the night. And for the first time during our Mexican journey the spell whose victims we had been was broken, and the inspiration that had blessed the finest moments of our joint life came to visit us again. (27)

This ironic happy ending is prolonged the following morning by the "posa da chac-mool" 'chac-mool pose' of the couple in bed, with "il vassoio dell'anonima colazione alberghiera" 'the tray with the anonymous hotel breakfast' in their laps (55; 27). But if the fabula is solved, a conclusion is still lacking.

In fact, the couple's newfound harmony fore- shadows the arduous and uneasy sense of universal harmony that the narrator later experiences like a vertigo at Palenque when he imagines him-

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self a cut-up victim falling down the steps of the Mayan Temple of the Inscriptions. He has just visited the underground crypt "con la lastra di pietra scolpita complicatissima" 'with the highly complicated carved stone slab' representing "la discesa del corpo agli dei sotterranei e la rinascita nella vegetazione" 'the descent of the body to the subterranean gods and its rebirth as vegetation,' and the high and intense words he uses to convey what he felt bring out the meaning of the title "Under the Jaguar Sun":

Discesi, risalii alla luce del sole-giaguaro, nel mare di linfa verde delle foglie. I1 mondo vortico, precipi- tavo sgozzato dal coltello del re-sacerdote giu dagli alti gradini sulla selva di turisti con le cineprese e gli usurpati sombreros a larghe tese, l'energia solare scorreva per reti fittissime di sangue e clorofilla, io vivevo e morivo in tutte le fibre di ci6 che viene masticato e digerito e in tutte le fibre che s'appro- priano del sole mangiando e digerendo. (56)

I went down, I climbed back up into the light of the jaguar sun-into the sea of the green sap of the leaves. The world spun, I plunged down, my throat cut by the knife of the king-priest, down the high steps onto the forest of tourists with super-8s and usurped, broad-brimmed sombreros. The solar energy coursed along dense networks of blood and chlorophyll; I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting.

(28-29)

Here the narrator is like his ancestor Qfwfq, who yearned to devour and be devoured by Zylphia under the medusa sun in the depths of the primordial ocean; and he is like the contemporary thinker Michel Serres, who experiences "the living organism," the "hypercomplex system" that "receives, stores, exchanges, and gives off both energy and information-in all forms, from the light of the sun to the flow of matter which passes through it (food, oxygen, heat, signals)" (Hermes 74).

Prompted first by Olivia and then by the sun and the environment, the narrator understands that today, as Serres says, "it is no longer necessary to maintain the distinction between intro- spective . . . and objective knowledge. There is only one type of knowledge and it is always linked

to an observer, an observer submerged in a system or in its proximity. And this observer is structured exactly like what he observes" (Hermes 83).

Appropriately, such knowledge receives its de- finitive narrative seal in the couple's final supper:

I nostri denti presero a muoversi lentamente con pari ritmo e i nostri sguardi si fissarono l'uno nell'altro con un'intensita di serpenti. Serpenti im- medesimati nello spasimo d'inghiottirci a vicenda, coscienti d'essere a nostra volta inghiottiti dal ser- pente che tutti ci digerisce e assimila incessantemente nel processo d'ingestione e digestione del canniba- lismo universale che impronta di se ogni rapporto amoroso e annulla i confini tra i nostri corpi e la sopa defrijoles, lo huac[h]inango a la veracruzana, le enchiladas.... (56-57)

Our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the inten- sity of serpents'-serpents concentrated in the ec- stasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa defrijoles, huachinango a la veracruzana, and enchiladas.... (29)

Here food is at once the object and the instrument of a transgression of a fundamental taboo-a to- tally mental and imaginary transgression, to be sure, but nevertheless a powerful and significant one, a transgression already present in Olivia's insistent questioning and the narrator's silent glances. Abandoning the cognitive perplexity that makes Palomar pause, in analogous circum- stances, in front of the chac-mool and the serpent, the narrator too finds it impossible "non inter- pretare" 'not to interpret' (100; 98).

In fact the narrator, who after all is a tourist (that is, a potential observer par excellence), uses the figures and the memories of the ancient myths and rites to suggest the most wide-ranging and rational explanation possible, on the threshold of the unspeakable, for the aspects of human nature that are the farthest from reason, to understand the relation of self to others and the world. The "universal cannibalism" is the "geographical divide" inside him and his companion as subjects

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and observers (it leaves its mark on their love for each other) as well as outside them, in the objects of their observation (it "erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la veracruzana, and enchiladas"). It is a cognitive category that is broader than the biological knowledge of Qfwfq in "Priscilla" and "II sangue, il mare": natura naturans both surrounds and exists within us, but so does civilization, so does culture.7 Neither culture nor nature is at all idyl- lic: both are "hypercomplex systems." As Calvino states in his account of his own visit (as a tourist following Cecchi's lead) to the Temple of the In- scriptions at Palenque:

Forse gli dei che comandano il discorso non sono piii quelli che ripetevano il racconto, terribile ma mai disperato, del susseguirsi di distruzione e rinascita in un ciclo senza fine. Altri dei parlano attraverso di noi, consapevoli che tutto ci6 che finisce non ritorna. (Collezione 203)

Perhaps the gods that rule over discourse are no longer those who repeated the terrible but never des- perate tale of a sequence of destruction and rebirth in an endless cycle. Other gods speak through us, aware that what is finished does not return.

(my trans.)

For this reason we cannot be cannibals; we can only be tourists, perhaps gluttonous and en- amored, but always sensitive and aware. Both the ancient Aztec cannibals and the modern Italian tourists are part of human civilization, with the same status and the same rights, in two phases. The first phase included humankind, synecdoch- ically and metaphorically, in a discourse on the cosmos in which the cycle (the species) was more important than linearity (the individual) and the individual sacrifice served to preserve the species by concretizing the metaphor of "feeding" the gods. In contrast, the second phase, with the coming of Christianity, effects a complete rever- sal: linearity prevails over the cycle, the individual is valorized to the utmost vis-a-vis the species, and it is God himself, Christ, who through the Eucharist ("Take and eat: this is my body") con- cretizes an opposite metaphor and "nourishes," and hence saves, the individual.8

Today, Calvino's tourists are undoubtedly lay Christians, but it is as tourists, not as believers, that they show an interest in religion and come into contact with it. The contamination of the sacred by the profane, typical of symbolist art and particularly of Gabriele D'Annunzio's aes- theticism, appears to be taken for granted-after all, Eucharist means "communion" and hence also "conviviality." However, at the very moment when a common root is recognized and interiorized, the couple's gustatory and cognitive exploration through modem scientific categories (from biology to psychoanalysis) cannot but confirm the fundamental change that has taken place in civilization (and the related taboo). I am also thinking, in this connection, of the story about the sense of smell in the collection Sotto il sole giaguaro: in a procedure harking back to Qfwfq, the narrator is in turn a prehistoric man, a nineteenth-century Casanova, and a contemporary rock musician, all three united by the irresistible sexual attraction of a trace of feminine perfume in their nostrils-and it is not useless to under- score once more the fantastic coherence of a parenthetic sentence dealing with Sidonie, a shopgirl in a Parisian parfumerie: "tra le sue labbra s'affacciavano i piccoli denti di cui cono- scevo bene i morsi" 'between her parted lips I could glimpse her little teeth, whose bites I knew so well' (9; 69).

It is because of this common root, of this fundamental equality, that Calvino's discourse can be related to discourses born of opposing but complementary viewpoints-Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude and Tzvetan Todorov's Conquest of America. The Question of the Other (originally published in French in 1982, the year that "Sapore sapere" appeared). From Columbus to Sahaguin, Todorov reports, the history of Eu- rope's confrontation with the other passed through terrible and contradictory phases: dis- covering and knowing, loving and destroying, produced enslavement and colonialism but also communication and understanding. Analo- gously, Paz refuses "to regard the human sacrifices of the Aztecs as an isolated expression of cruelty without relation to the rest of that civilization" but acknowledges that the conquest and the consequent colonialism, beyond the massa-

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cres and the exploitation, created in the New World both art forms and a cosmological and universal order that somehow redeem the atroc- ities: "History has the cruel reality of a nightmare, and the grandeur of man consists in his making beautiful and lasting works out of the real substance of that nightmare" (103-04). It is this type of ideological, historical, and moral discourse, this self-awareness, that underlies Calvino's literary invention. Therefore one could say that if it is impossible for us to be cannibals (that is, if we cannot accept a society based on human sacrifice), then, being tourists, we cannot and must not ever be conquistadores (that is, we cannot accept a society based on massacres).

The whole story of "Sotto il sole giaguaro" is filtered through the narrator's "verbalization" and "conceptualization," his linguistic conscience, which is also his self-awareness in writing. This self-awareness is revealed by the very first words of the text ("Oaxaca si pronuncia Uahaca" ' "Oaxaca" is pronounced "Wahaka" ' [29; 3]) and is confirmed in particular, in the last extended quotations, by the emphasis on "the magic of. . . the name gorditas pellizcadas" and by the last sentence of the story, which ends with the names of three exotic foods followed by sus- pension dots to indicate that the list is not con- cluded (and as I have noted, lists play an important part in Calvino's cognitive itinerary, even beyond the combinatorial process).9

This linguistic self-awareness is the key element in Calvino's literary construction, the element that allows him to transcend the horror he has explored at the root of civilization. This horror remains indicated but absolutely unspeakable at the end of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Calvino's first critical interest, it should not be forgotten). But in Conrad the idealism, the pas- sivity, and the blindness of the unnamed woman betrothed to Kurtz may be interpreted, according to both Sertoli and Stark, as the meaning that fills the void of a missing signifier (the "name" of the woman is, narratively speaking, in Mar- low's answer, "the horror," whereby primitive cannibalism is turned back ironically against "civilized" colonialism). Instead, in Calvino, Olivia's sensorial concreteness, dynamism, and intellectual curiosity are the forces of an inquiry

that takes for granted the equality of human beings no longer divided between civilized and primitive and that wants to face the horror of a common originary condition. Once again, Olivia is literature; she embodies its cognitive tension: "La battaglia della letteratura e appunto uno sforzo per uscire fuori dai confini del linguaggio; e dall'orlo estremo del dicibile che essa si protende" 'The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said,' as Calvino observes in Una pietra sopra (174; 18).

It is for this reason that cannibalism is meta- phorized-in fact, lived as a metaphor; indeed, Calvino's story seems to illustrate the thesis of the ethnologist Jean Pouillon, who, in explaining that the rules of incest and of cannibalism (called "alimentary incest" by Levi-Strauss) are always at the foundation of social structures, remarks that in societies where "man is not an object of alimentary consumption" the "eating manners" of cannibalistic societies become "manners of speaking about manners of going to bed" (21- 22; my trans.). Accordingly, as we have seen, cannibalism is uttered-that is, exorcised in the transference of its field of application-by and in the spasmodic gastronomic sensitivity of "Sotto il sole giaguaro," in a prose miraculously balanced between the sublime (myth) and the comic (tourism), the universal (blood and chlorophyll) and the particular (the couple's meals and bed), the subjective (psychoanalysis) and the objective (anthropology).

In applying to "Sotto il sole giaguaro" the literary "valori o qualita o specificita" 'values, qualities, or peculiarities' Calvino discusses in Lezioni americane (Six Memos for the Next Mil- lennium), I hope that I have not loaded the story's "leggerezza" 'lightness' with undue weight or slowed down the "rapidita" 'quickness' of its narrative pace;10 all the meditations it inspires are due to the "esattezza" 'exactitude' of its de- scriptions of Mexican foods (with the related per- ceptions and sensations) and to the "visibilita" 'visibility' of primary images like the jaguar sun and Olivia's teeth, which are truly memorable; above all, these meditations should be the re-

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vealing index of the "molteplicita" 'multiplicity' of the text.

At the end of his journey, of his search, Calvino arrives indeed at a knowledge ("sapere"), in fact a wisdom ("sapienza") similar to that indicated by Roland Barthes in concluding his inaugural lesson at the College de France: "Sapientia: no power, a bit of knowledge, a bit of wisdom, and the most flavor possible" (LeQon 46; my trans.). Sapienza derives from the Latin sapio, and according to the note by Niccolo Tommaseo that serves as the epigraph of the story ("Sapore sapere" 63), it is superior to science: it is, in fact, wisdom, a human wisdom that, starting with the sense of taste (the sense that Barthes describes as "oral like language, liminal like eros" ["Reading" 67]), has discovered the most remote conditions, of nature and culture, that made possible the birth and the renewal of desire-that is, of life; that is, of writing. " And writing, Calvino says, is always a "proiezione del desiderio" 'projection of desire,' especially when it deals, as it does here, with "un eros ultimo, fondamentale, mitico, inattingibile" 'another and ultimate Eros, fundamental, myth- ical, and unattainable' (Pietra sopra 195, 211; 50, 66).

Notes

'As the title suggests, Cosmicomiche vecchie e nuove combines (and regroups) all the preceding old and new cosmicomic stories contained in Cosmicomiche, Ti con zero, and La memoria dei mondi.

2Calvino's adjectives call to mind D'Ors's conception of the baroque: in contrast to classic style, which is "all economy and reason, the style of the 'heavy forms,' " the baroque is "all music and passion," and its "flying forms dance their dance" (82; my trans.). One understands, then, why "lightness" is such an important stylistic quality for Calvino.

30n the problems of the ritual sacrifice that founds society and civilization, see Ren6 Girard's fundamental contributions (Violence and Scapegoat).

4In this connection see also Visser's brief remark: "Most of the remainder of the body [of the victim] may have been eaten in the form of a 'man-stew'-with maize" (34).

5Indulging for a moment, and with due irony, the "bio- graphical fallacy," I point out that Calvino had "a very long intestine which for many years gave him serious troubles," as Cases reveals: "[Calvino] hinted with his hands at the gesture

of unwinding it. . . , with a certain resigned disgust, as if he were dealing with a very bad novel" (174-75; my trans.).

6These studies include, beside Girard's contributions, Reeves Sanday's chapters on the Aztecs and on the Iroquois in the seventeenth century (125-50).

7In this connection see Levi-Strauss's analyses of primitive societies' attitudes toward raw and cooked foods, with the related notion of cannibalism extended to the vegetable and animal realms (Raw), and also his assertion that the nature- culture juxtaposition is itself cultural, an artificial creation of culture (Structures); see also Geertz's interpretation.

8Marin dedicates a section of his study to the formula of the Eucharist: "The Body of the Divinity Captured by Signs" (3-25). On the alleged "cannibalism" of Christianity and its psychoanalytic sides, see Green 34-35. And on this subject in general, see Kilgour.

9On this point, see the important contributions by Battistini (19-20) and Cannon (esp. 103-04, on enumeraci6n ca6tica).

'0As far as lightness is concerned, an obvious reference can be made to Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, as well as to D'Ors's "dancing" baroque. In addition, Cam- poresi makes some interesting observations in the alimentary and cultural area: "Lightness, one of the idols of our times, . . . has singular correspondences with the lively and light spirit of the philosophes"; in fact, "if in the eighteenth century the project of renewal was aimed against the heavy, sumptuous, expensive, and aromatic cuisine of the Baroque age," today the "postmodern, reformist culinary lightening is juxtaposed to the nineteenth century-style cuisine of the age of factories and heavy works" (271-72; my trans.).

"In Anatomy of Criticism (which Calvino reviews in Una pietra sopra), Frye defines the archetypal myth of the "quest- romance" as the victory of fertility over the wasteland and adds that "fertility means food and drink, bread and wine, body and blood, the union of male and female" (193).

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