Legend Of Charlemagne: A Story That Decodes Love
The American lesson that Italo Calvino titled Rapidity tells a legend of Charlemagne which is one of the author’s strongest and most interesting stories. This wonderful writer born in Cuba of Italian parents left an impressive testimony of his acute sensitivity and clear intelligence in this micro-story.
Calvino has always struggled between radical realism and limitless imagination. The legend of Charlemagne is a good example of this. Starting from a fantastic and almost unlikely story, he manages to shape a profound and analytical vision of passionate love .
Many of Calvino’s works have a fairytale tone. The legend of Charlemagne could fall into this group. However, in this case the purpose goes far beyond a moral. The tale makes an impressive revelation about love as a couple. On this issue, Italo Calvino’s position is very close to that of contemporary psychoanalysis.
The legend of Charlemagne and love as a passion
The legend of Charlemagne begins in the following way: “Emperor Charlemagne in old age fell in love with a German girl. The barons of the court were very worried seeing that the sovereign, all absorbed in his love for love and oblivious to the royal dignity, was neglecting the affairs of the Empire ”.
It is interesting that Italo Calvino chose an elderly and powerful man as the central character. Apparently, it is the antithesis of that adolescent phase during which love floods everything. Regardless of being the emperor, when he falls in love he no longer has eyes for anyone else.
The barons, therefore, worry. The power and love are not two things compatible with each other, although sometimes proceed hand in hand. In this case, love imposes itself on power, a question that jeopardizes the entire empire. This is just the beginning of the amazing events that happen to follow.
Love: a deception, a spell
After falling in love so intensely, the unthinkable happens. The young beloved suddenly dies. The legend of Charlemagne tells, however, that love did not die with it. The emperor, blinded by grief, had the young woman’s body taken to his own room. And he did not want to separate for even a moment from the inert body.
The story continues by reciting the following: “Archbishop Turpino, frightened by this macabre passion, suspected a spell and wanted to examine the corpse. Hidden under the dead woman’s tongue, he found a ring with a precious stone ”.
Then it was discovered that what appeared to be love was hiding a spell. After all, Charlemagne wasn’t all that in love with the young German. What had happened to him was the work of magic and not of real feeling.
Italo Calvino begins to reveal the true nature of love here. The loved one carries something with him, which is not himself. The lover falls in love with what the other is the bearer of and not with the other per se. In psychic terms , we would say that love is the activation of a magical element. Not in a poetic sense, but in a literal sense. When you love, you renounce the rules of logic and begin to touch the impossible, with the illusion of making it a reality.
Love: a ring with a precious stone
The ending of the Charlemagne legend couldn’t be more surprising and overwhelming. What happened after the archbishop found the ring was the following: “From the moment the ring was in the hands of Turpino, Charlemagne hastened to have the corpse buried, and poured out his love on the person of the archbishop. Turpino, to escape from that embarrassing situation, threw the ring into Lake Constance. Charlemagne fell in love with the lake and never wanted to leave its shores ”.
In this final part, the nature of this fiery love that leaves no room for reason is definitively revealed. Charlemagne doesn’t care what the object of his love is. For this he falls in love with the archbishop and then with a lake, which he continues to love forever. The secret of it all lay in the magic ring.
The ring is a figure in which there is an edge, but nothing in the center. It is a circle that delimits the void. But it has a precious stone, something that shines, that attracts, that blinds. In the end, that’s how love is, or that’s how some people interpret it: an attempt to put a limit on emptiness, on nothingness. Despite this, it comes to life in people, acquires a real existence, and determines their life. Passionate love is born, grows and dies in the imagination.
