The Cloven Viscount

The Cloven Viscount (1951) is a fantastical novella by Italian author Italo Calvino. Originally published as Il visconte dimezzato by Giulio Einaudi Editore in Turin, the work represents Calvino’s early exploration of allegorical storytelling, which would later define much of his career. The novella tells the story of Viscount Medardo of Terralba, who is literally split in half by a cannonball during a war against the Turks, with each half embodying extreme moral qualities that wreak havoc on his feudal estate. Through this surreal premise, Calvino examines themes including The Necessity of Moral Complexity for Human Wholeness, The Destructive Nature of Moral Extremism, and Searching for Authentic Identity in a Fragmented World.

Calvino (1923-1985) was one of Italy’s most celebrated 20th-century writers, known for works including Invisible Cities, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The Cloven Viscount is the first book in his Our Ancestors trilogy, which also includes The Baron in the Trees and The Nonexistent Knight. The trilogy established Calvino’s reputation as a master of philosophical fables that use fantastical elements to explore serious themes about humanity and society, such as the dangers of moral absolutism and the necessity of embracing human complexity.

This guide refers to the 2016 Mariner Books edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, and animal cruelty and death.

Language Note: The novella uses the terms “leper” and “leprosy” to refer to people with Hansen’s disease. This guide reproduces these terms only in quotes.

Plot Summary

The narrative opens with the unnamed young narrator introducing his uncle Viscount Medardo of Terralba, who has joined the Christian forces in an unnamed war in Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) against the Turks. Accompanied by his squire Kurt, Medardo passes through a battlefield strewn with corpses and devastation. The squire describes how storks now eat human flesh, and he points out the evidence of recent battles that surrounds them. Medardo, newly arrived, reports to the Imperial camp, where he is promoted to lieutenant by the Emperor. That night, he contemplates his future, feeling whole and secure as he awaits his first battle.

The next morning, Medardo leads his men into combat. During the melee, he’s left on foot after his horse is disemboweled. Medardo attacks two Turkish artillerymen head-on and is hit in the chest by their cannon. After the battle, his remains are brought to a field hospital, and the doctors discover that it is only the right half of his body. Through surgical skill, they save this half of Medardo, who becomes a literal half-man, missing the left portion of his body.

Returning to Terralba, Medardo shocks townspeople with his appearance, moving awkwardly with a crutch and concealing his absent left side under a black cloak. He refuses affection from his old nurse, Sebastiana, and pays his litter bearers only half their fee. His father, Viscount Aiolfo, a recluse devoted to birds, tries to reconnect by sending Medardo a trained shrike. Medardo kills the bird, returning it with half its body mutilated. Aiolfo, devastated, becomes ill and dies.

Following his father’s death, Medardo roams the countryside, leaving a trail of halved fruits, animals, and objects. In the woods, the narrator encounters his uncle, who gives him a basket of mushrooms containing only the poisonous halves and tells him to cook them up. Medardo presides over a trial, sentencing both brigands and their victims to death, along with negligent constables. The castle carpenter, Master Pietrochiodo, constructs a large, complex gallows for the executions. Medardo’s harshness demoralizes the community, and Pietrochiodo is conflicted by the evil purposes of his craft.

Life in Terralba becomes oppressive under Medardo’s cruelty. The narrator spends his days with Dr. Trelawney, an eccentric English doctor preoccupied with observing nature and following will-o’-the-wisps rather than medicine. Medardo’s violence escalates, as he sets fires to peasants’ homes, has torture devices built, and creates traps such as sawing through a bridge, which kills several peasants. He turns his attention to Pratofungo, the nearby village of people with Hansen’s disease, and attempts but fails to destroy it by fire. Medardo’s malevolence even extends to his own staff: He tries to have Sebastiana killed by burning her room and then falsely diagnoses her with Hansen’s disease and arranges for her exile to Pratofungo. Dr. Trelawney, reluctant to help, flees rather than intervening.

The narrator spends time with the Huguenot family, led by Ezekiel, who farm rocky land on Col Gerbido. The Huguenots, survivors of religious persecution, live rigidly and distrust outsiders. When Medardo seeks refuge with them during a storm, he offers to convert and make them leaders, but Ezekiel refuses. Medardo then threatens exposure and departs angrily. Lightning strikes a tree as he leaves, splitting it in two.

Medardo voices a philosophy to his nephew, the narrator, insisting that wholeness is ignorance and that incomplete beings understand deeper truths. He becomes infatuated with Pamela, a young goatherd, but his courtship is grotesque: He leaves her half-flowers and mutilated animals, cut in half, as tokens. Pamela resists his advances and, after her parents collaborate to deliver her to him, escapes to the woods with the help of her animals and the narrator, who secretly brings food to her. Medardo continues to terrorize Pamela and her parents.

A turning point occurs when the narrator encounters a gentle half-man, resembling Medardo, who saves him from a poisonous spider by taking the bite himself. This encounter leaves the narrator confused, as he recalls the man’s left hand being bitten—a hand that the “bad” Medardo does not possess. The mystery deepens as rumors spread of a benevolent halved stranger performing good deeds. The two halves of Medardo begin affecting the region in opposite ways: The cruel, right half continues his reign of terror, while the left half, returned after years wandering Europe, helps the sick, comforts the poor, and assists those wronged by his counterpart.

While the good Medardo wins favor through his kindness, his moralizing alienates many. Even Pamela is disillusioned by his overbearing virtue and rejects his plea to “do good together.” The townspeople, the Huguenots, and the residents of Pratofungo come to resent the intrusion and judgment of both halves.

Both Medardos begin plotting to claim Pamela. The bad half tells Pamela’s mother to insist on a marriage to the good half because, by law, it would mean that she becomes his (the bad half’s) wife. The good Medardo, out of self-sacrifice, separately advises Pamela’s father to arrange her marriage to the bad half, believing that this will resolve their conflict. Pamela, perceiving the scheme, agrees to marry “Viscount Medardo,” allowing both halves to believe that she accepts their individual proposals.

On the wedding day, confusion reigns. The good Medardo arrives first, and the ceremony proceeds; immediately after, the bad Medardo interrupts, claiming Pamela as his own and challenging his double to a duel. Pietrochiodo constructs special compass-shaped wooden legs for the duelists so that they can stand and fight. The duel commences in the Nun’s Field, but neither lands a blow until they simultaneously strike the original line of division, mortally wounding each other and collapsing side by side as their blood mingles.

Dr. Trelawney, ecstatic at the opportunity, stitches the two halves together, joining their organs and binding them until healing begins. Medardo gradually revives. At first, his reunited face is asymmetrical, but it eventually regains balance. Once whole again, he resumes rule over Terralba, showing a mixture of previously divided traits. He marries Pamela, raises a family, and brings stability. Life for the townspeople improves, but the narrator, now approaching adolescence, feels the loss of childhood and a sense of incompleteness amid the new “wholeness.” Dr. Trelawney departs with explorers to Australia, leaving the narrator to mature in a world less divided but still uncertain.