A modern Jekyll/Hyde fable about the good and evil within everyone but that has surprises on the theme, and is amusingly told. The Viscount goes off to the Crusades and, not having a clue what he's doing, promptly jumps in front of a cannon and gets his body split vertically in half. One side is found and restored to life, returns home, and proceeds to rule over his subjects cruelly and selfishly. A while later the other half of the Viscount also returns home, having been found under a pile of corpses and likewise restored to life; but this half is the Viscount's good half, performing good deeds and acting utterly selflessly in all circumstances.

As predictably intolerable as the bad half of the Viscount is, his good half is perhaps surprisingly found less than tolerable itself. For instance, farmers don't appreciate being told they should sell their crops for a smaller price because there's a famine and people are starving. Others don't appreciate their personal moral conduct being called into question. "Lucky that cannonball only split him in two. If it had done it in three, who knows what we'd have to put up with!", say the Viscount's put upon subjects. Turns out that goodness without a healthy dose of self-interest to temper it is difficult to accept, as a little reflection will prove the point of.

Also brought into the spotlight is the average person's accommodation of the world's evil, as everyone of course accommodates to some degree (what, you donate every cent you don't need for food and shelter to the poor? No?). This is done through the character of the Viscount's carpenter, Pietrochiodo, who takes pride in his work and is paid well, but the bad Viscount keeps having him create torture and execution devices. "Just forget the purpose for which they're used, and look at them as pieces of mechanism. You see how fine they are?", he says. He justifies himself: "he was beginning to doubt whether building good machines was not beyond human possibility when the only mechanism which could function really practically and exactly seemed to be gibbets and racks." His conscience does bother him sometimes: "Can it be in my soul, this evil which makes only my cruel machines work?" Nevertheless, "he went on inventing other tortures with great zeal and ability."

There are plenty of funny moments in the story. The bad Viscount decides to marry a peasant lass, and, only having badness in him, comes up with a unique way to approach her parents: "That night the haystack where the mother slept caught fire and the barrel where the father slept came apart. In the morning the two old folk were staring at the remains when the Viscount appeared. 'I must apologize for alarming you last night,' said he, 'but I didn't quite know how to approach the subject.'"

In the end, the two halves of the Viscount fight a Monty Python-esque duel, exactly reopen each other's vertical scars, and the doctor stitches them back together, restoring wholeness. Having experienced both halves of what humanity is capable of, unrestrained, he ruled wisely, but limitedly: "Some might expect that with the Viscount entire again a period of marvelous happiness would open; but obviously a whole Viscount is not enough to make all the world whole."
( )

Una historia profunda, contada de una forma simple y con mucho humor. El bien y el mal sólo se separan para demostrarnos que la vida no pueden ser blancos y negros, los matices son necesarios. ( )

Finora di Calvino avevo sempre riconosciuto il talento (genio?), ma i suoi romanzi non mi avevano mai coinvolto, era più un apprezzamento intellettuale: con Il visconte dimezzato finalmente mi sono davvero goduta un suo libro.
E' un gioiellino, una fiaba dark sapientemente costruita con molteplici interpretazioni e livelli di lettura. Apparentemente è una storia di opposti, a cominciare da quello palese tra bene e male, tra la metà buona e la metà cattiva del visconte; ma c'è anche il dualismo tra l'austerità ugonotta e la lascivia del paese dei lebbrosi, tra la scienza astratta del Dottor Trelawney e la saggezza popolare della balia Sebastiana. Scavando a fondo invece ci accorgiamo che più che di antitesi si parla di incompletezza: ciascuno di questi aspetti da solo è disfunzionale e unicamente nell'unione col suo contrario trova compiutezza. O almeno questa è la morale apparente, perché ogni favola che si rispetti deve averne una no?
Il vero finale però ci racconta altro, anzi ci mostra paradossalmente che non esiste un finale a cui tendere, che la vita scorre piena di contraddizioni e delusioni, eternamente incompleta e inconcludente.
Sullo stile nulla da dire: è Calvino, sa scrivere.
Consiglio la lettura a tutti quelli che come me lo consideravano un autore troppo cerebrale: rimarranno stupiti nel constatare come in quest'opera abbia saputo coniugare la profondità di significati con il puro piacere di raccontare e divertire. ( )

El vizconde demediado es la primera incursión de Italo Calvino en lo fabuloso y lo fantástico. Cuenta Calvino la historia del vizconde de Terralba, quien fue partido en dos por un cañonazo de los turcos y cuyas dos mitades continuaron viviendo por separado. Símbolo de la condición humana dividida, Medardo de Terralba sale a caminar por sus tierras. A su paso, las peras que colgaban de los árboles aparecen todas partidas por la mitad. «Cada encuentro de dos seres en el mundo es un desgarrarse» le dice la mitad mala del vizconde a la mujer de quien se ha enamorado. Pero ¿es seguro que se trate de la mitad mala? Esta magnífica fábula plantea la búsqueda del ser humano en su totalidad, quien suele estar hecho de algo más que de la suma de sus mitades.

A viscount gets blown in two by cannon fire during battle but miraculously survives and returns home as literally half a man. This half is all evil, though, and spends his days terrorizing the countryside. One day his other half, which also survived the battle, arrives home and travels round to the local residents doing as much good as he possibly can, even if the results are sometimes not exactly wanted. So one is too evil and the other too good, until they finally battle one another and rediscover an equilibrium.
Meh. I've loved the other Calvino stuff I've read, but this one fell flat for me. A little too heavy handed with the parable feel, maybe, and also maybe a little too silly. ( )