Résumé : “Le Baron perched” takes place in Italy, in the Ombrosa region, in the eighteenth century. Bagio tells how his big brother Cosimo Piovasco Di Rondo, twelve years old, leaves the table during a family meal and gets into a tree so that you no longer put a footing on the ground. Life reserves many surprises for this young perched baron, who crosses the end of the century of Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars …
Critique : The book tells not only of this cosimo madness, but also all its existence. The story begins in 1767 and continues after the fall of the first empire. The young Cosimo therefore becomes this baron perched in trees which nevertheless lives many adventures. Love will be present, of course, but amazing friendships, stormy family relationships, one night adventures, affection for animals and plants are also mentioned in this story told in the first person.
The narrator is not Cosimo, as we could have expected, but the little brother of the baron, admiring and a little fearful in front of the coup of his elder. It is one of Italo Calvino’s good ideas: telling the plot by this character, who alternates between what he knows or sees in his eyes and events in which he did not participate. For the latter, the little brother gives the floor to Cosimo, or rather records one of his versions of the facts. Indeed, Cosimo tends to embellish and constantly return to an anecdote to modify and inflate it in order to create more effect on its audience. Indeed, many people are intrigued by this whimsical nobleman who is not afraid to address the crowds or to help the peasants defend the herds.
This solitary baron is looking from time to time the company of its fellow men: this allows Italo Calvino to treat the paradoxes of our behavior. Cosimo crosses time and discovers the same situations that model our lives. These situations are different because we do not live in a tree, but this singular story is designed to move all audiences.
In this, the gaze of an admiring man, sometimes frightened, a little jealous, on his big brother, allows us to identify ourselves as much with the narrator as to the protagonist.
And Cosimo, with this refusal to abandon his posture and his decision, so crazy could appear, reminds us of the stubbornness of all children, but also of all the idealists, who defend against all odds a vision, a thirst for a better world, a just cause.
Cosimo sees men from above and never forgets that he is one himself. He does not judge the humanity of his divine throne: on the contrary, he helps the poor and the rich, the soldiers and the brigands, made by his feelings more than by law.
The writing, alive, rich in details without being too descriptive, gives a dynamic to history. The short chapters, offering breaks in reading, allow you to follow the story without ever getting tired.
Italo Calvino’s descriptions are funny; Crowd situations alternate with dramas, ups with stockings, laughter with tears; And this is the rhythm of life that the author manages to give back with his pen, or rather his typewriter.
Le baron because is a touching, intriguing philosophical tale that takes us into Italy of the eighteenth century, on the peaks of trees and at the heart of man.