Under the Jaguar Sun is an ideal book for those who fancy a taste of Italo Calvino (1923-1985), to see what his writing is like. It comprises just three short stories:

• Under the Jaguar Sun


• A King Listens


• The Name, the Nose

At the back of the book, there is a brief note by Calvino's Argentinian wife and translator Esther Calvino about his intention in 1972 to write a book about the five senses. By the time he died in 1985, however, only the three published in this book had been written.

Had he lived, this book would certainly have evolved into something different.

In the light of Calvino's previous works and given what he said to me—'How shall I make a book out of this?'—I believe he would not have stopped with sight and touch, the two 'missing' senses. He would have provided a frame, as in If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, a frame that amounts to another novel, virtually a book in itself.

In fact in notes written a few days before he fell ill—when he had started to think about the book's overall structure—Calvino refers to the importance of the frame and defines it:
Both in art and in literature the function of the frame is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the boundary between the picture and what is outside. It allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the rest; but at the same time, it recalls—and somehow stands for—everything that remains out of the picture. I might venture a definition: we consider poetic a production in which each individual experience acquires prominence through its detachment from the general continuum, while it retains a kind of glint of that unlimited vastness. (p.84-5)

If you go to an art gallery where the curators have attended to the space around the paintings, you can see exactly what Calvino means. The empty space allows the imagination to conjure more of the painting and its artist than is actually there. Clutter, or inappropriate juxtapositions of other works, interfere with the viewer's personal response. So too in Calvino's 1972 masterpiece Invisible Cities: it is the framing of the story that is fundamental. The contest of ideas between a mighty ruler (Kublai Khan) and the intellectual authority of Marco Polo frames events which would otherwise be 'just' a fantastic subversion of the travel genre. (See my review here).

Esther Calvino, however, would prefer readers to consider the three stories on their own terms, and that is how I read them.

'Under the Jaguar Sun' is set in Mexico, where two travellers are undertaking a culinary tour: the only kind of travel that has a meaning these days, when everything visible you can see on television without rising from your easy chair.

(And you mustn't rebut that the same result can be achieved by visiting the exotic restaurants of our big cities; they so counterfeit the reality of the cuisine they claim to follow that, as far as our deriving real knowledge is concerned, they are the equivalent not of an actual locality but of a scene reconstructed and shot in a studio.) (p.12)

How much more true is this in our own time, when we can 'visit' anywhere in the world via the internet! (I wonder what Calvino would have made of 'bucket list' tourism and the selfie...)

Well, the couple are in search of something really different and exotic, and Mexico being the home of the Aztecs and human sacrifice... Olivia is determined to satisfy not only her curiosity...

Olivia still didn't seem satisfied. 'But this flesh—in order to eat it... The way it was cooked, the sacred cuisine, the seasoning—is anything known about that?' (p.19)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/01/24/under-the-jaguar-sun-1983-by-italo-calvino-t... ( )

Three shorts stories based on taste, sound, and smell. Mexican cannibalism amidst a breaking marriage; a king imprisoned on his own throne losing his sense of reality though obsession and paranoia of the sounds he hears; and a man searching for his lover who's only identifiable from her scent . ( )

Tres cuentos de Calvino: oído, gusto y olfato, de los cinco sobre los sentidos: gusto, tacto, oído, olfato y vista que quiso escribir. ( )

My experience of Calvino is quite limited, but after reading his Why Read the Classics, learning more about Calvino's influence from Harold Bloom, and more recently purchasing The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, I have decided to immerse myself in Calvino's work. In Under the Jaguar Sun, Calvino begins what was planned to be a novel on the five senses. Unfortunately, Calvino died before he was able to complete sight and touch, but the three short stories on taste, sound, and smell survive and work as stand alone pieces, or pieces on a theme. The first story (the title piece) covers taste and tells the story of a couple of gastro-tourists discovering the link between taste and ancient Central American human sacrifice and cannibalism. The second piece, "A King Listens", had me shivering with imagery so vivid as to be on the edge of surreal. The third piece, "The Name, the Nose", was my favourite, although I can barely work out what was meant to have happened. This is, so far, the most gritty of Calvino's work I have read. It reminded me of Bukowski crossed with Thomas Mann. The language seems suited to the 1980s (when it was written), but after mostly reviews of classic works and Marcovaldo, I wasn't ready for Calvino to be so grunge. Cynthia Ozick's review in the New York Times of 23 October 1988 suggests "The Name, the Nose" was not a success. But I found it interesting in the way it echoes Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story. Or rather, having previously thought of Calvino as a late-nineteenth early-twentieth century writer, "The Name, the Nose" is more like Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where you get the sense that the characters and setting are of another time, but not as in the "on steroids" Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet. I am often amazed at how good short stories can fire up the imagination in such a way that the work takes some time to digest. "The Name, the Nose" has left its residue, and while it may not be regarded as one of Calvino's best, I am pleased to discover that his range is not as limited as I first thought. ( )

Ohhhh Italo, I adore you so much. ( )