The Baron in the Trees (Paperback)

by Italo Calvino (Author) "It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, my brother, sat among us for the last time..." (more)
Key Phrases: fruit thieves, holm oak, Ottimo Massimo, Donna Viola, Don Sulpicio (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Cosimo, a young eighteenth-century Italian nobleman, rebels by climbing into the trees to remain there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an arboreal existence and even has love affairs. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun.

Language Notes
Text: English, Italian (translation)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; 1 edition (March 28, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156106809
• ISBN-13: 978-0156106801
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #109,248 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Fable, November 16, 2001

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Calvino is another of those writers I'd heard of, but would never have read had it not been for our book group's selection of this book. I'm glad to say that this is a tale enjoyable by children and adults alike, skillfully operating on several levels. The story concerns Cosimo, a noble born boy in late 18th-century Italy who one day defies his parents by climbing a tree and refusing to come back down. His life story is narrated by his younger brother, and Cosimo's adventures in the trees work both as charming tale for children, and as a metaphor for the Enlightenment for adults. Living among the treetops, Cosimo is seeking to distance himself from social traditions and norms while creating his own world and relationships. It obviously requires a little suspension of disbelief, but even those who normally hate magical realism (like me) will find it palatable. The cast of supporting characters are quirky and vividly entertaining, including his dog, militarist mother, disaster-in-the-kitchen sister, and exiled Spanish nobles. It's one of the most enjoyable (and short) piece of utopian literature I've encountered, and would make ripe reading for high school students.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Calvino at his best, August 10, 2004

By	Tory "toryofmaine" - See all my reviews

The Baron in the Trees is one of the most enchanting novels ever written. When the Baron decides to take up his arboreal existence, one cannot help but believe he is making the right decision. Calvino fleshes out the Baron into one of the most believable characters in literature. This is an amazing feat considering the farcical lifestyle the Baron decides to adopt. Calvino takes the opportunity to create a world at once steeped in history, philosophy and politics while at the same time illustrating the everyday existence and lives of those around him. The cat skin hat, the exiles in the trees, the Napoleonic troops all brought to life with amazing detail. Memory, love and history all combine and swirl throughout the story. While there is nothing exactly magical or out of this world about this book, it is one of the best examples of magical realism I have read. I could not put this book down. Stop reading this review and buy the book.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A kingdom among the foliage, August 1, 2004

By	A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Like most of Italo Calvino's fiction, "The Baron in the Trees" is pure enchantment that charms the reader into an alternate reality with the warmth of subtle humor and the pioneering spirit, similar to Borges's, that desires to explore fascinating new literary territory within the context of world history. In this novel, set in Italy in the late eighteenth century, Calvino tells the story of a young baron named Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo who lives with his eccentric family in a villa on the edge of the town of Ombrosa. One day when he is twelve years old, after an argument with his parents (about having to eat snails), he runs out to the garden and climbs an oak, declaring that he will spend the rest of his life in the trees and vowing never to set foot on the earth again.

Like an arboreal Robinson Crusoe who has chosen his fate, Cosimo determines to make his living in the contiguous group of trees that link his family's garden with those of his neighbors and the forests beyond the town. He travels between trees by climbing and jumping from branch to branch, becoming as nimble and elusive as a squirrel, while he trains himself to survive by hunting wild animals for food and clothing and building a flume to draw drinking water from a waterfall. Even in the trees he engages in activities normally reserved for people on the ground: He continues his formal education, befriends a dachshund that helps him hunt, supports a bumbling brigand's reading habit, and even has an adventure on a pirate ship without touching the deck.

Through his life in the trees, Cosimo becomes notorious throughout Europe and attains a reputation for madness that gradually turns into a strange sort of esteem. He converses with strangers, meets a group of Spanish exiles who also happen to be tree-dwellers, becomes a writer and natural scientist, and wins the hearts of many ladies who provide him with sexual gratification--in the branches, of course. Far from becoming a Rousseauian savage or a hermit, however, he remains quite civilized and gregarious; his palpable wisdom and curious residence ironically earn him more respect than he would get from the people if he were just a normal land-dwelling baron.

Calvino presents the story as a biography narrated by Cosimo's younger brother Biagio, who with affectionate patience describes in vivid detail every aspect of Cosimo's life and is quite hilarious in his explanations of their beleaguered father, militaristic mother, and gruesome, mischievous sister Battista, a "kind of stay-at-home nun." His efforts to explain Cosimo require him to delve into the mind of a political philosopher who aspires to be as influential as Machiavelli: When his father admonishes him that living in trees does not befit a nobleman, Cosimo replies that a true leader is someone who has ideas and communicates them to the people, not a man with an inherited title.

"The Baron in the Trees" may be read as a parable about withdrawing from reality and creating an isolated fantasy world in which to live free from the constraints of society as the ultimate expression of individuality, or as just a wonderful fable about a boy becoming a man on his own terms. One thing is sure: you'll never look at a tree the same way again.