Il Barone Rampante = The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino

The Baron in the Trees is a 1957 novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Calvino published a new version of the novel in 1959.

Set in an imaginary village on the Ligurian Riviera, Ombrosa represents the author's vision as a central theme, little inclined to judgments and dull opinions.

The novel is narrated by Biagio, the younger brother of the protagonist, and is the story of a young baron, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, firstborn of a noble family sadly behind the times.

The main story begins with a dispute on June 15, 1767 in the villa of Ombrosa, between an adolescent Cosimo and his father, after which Cosimo, who had quarreled with his father because he had refused to eat a snail soup, climbs the trees of the home garden and promise never to come down again in his entire life.

After the quarrel, Cosimo's life take place in the trees; first in the family garden and then in the surrounding woods.

Cosimo's life is full of adventures, from friendships with fruit thieves to days spent hunting or reading. In the life of the baron there is no lack of amorous encounters either.

Cosimo's fame spreads quickly. At first, he becomes famous as a freak show and his family is almost ashamed of him, but later he also finds a way to win the respect of the Ombrosa community.

The return of Viola, his first love, triggers a mutual feeling, always existent, which sadly ends due to a series of misunderstandings.

The love between the two is strong, even if the relationship is filled with furious quarrels.

Its end comes about in an unusual way: aged and sick, feeling the onset of death, Cosimo climbs to the top of a large walnut tree and hangs himself on a passing balloon.

Thus, without betraying his promise to never set foot on the earth again, he disappears into the sky, without even giving the earth his remains.

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????? ?????? ????? 04/06/1399???? ???????? 16/05/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Vit Babenco1,557 4,341

Why do people rebel? What is the nature of mutiny? Grownups can be rebelliousÂ… Children may be mutinousÂ…
Cosimo is just twelve years oldÂ…
The wind was blowing in from the sea, I remember, and the leaves were stirring. Cosimo said, “I told you I don’t want it, and I don’t!” and he pushed away the plate of snails. Never had such grave disobedience been seen.
Stuffiness and stagnationÂ… The father is a symbol of the old rotten timesÂ…
Our father, the baron, was a dull man certainly, although not a bad one: dull because his life was dominated by thoughts that were out of step, as often happens in eras of transition.
Cosimo revoltsÂ… And leaving the world of bipeds walking the earth he, jumping from branch to branch, migrates to the world of treesÂ… He becomes an arboreal dwellerÂ…
CosimoÂ’s first days in the trees had no goals or plans but were dominated only by the desire to know and possess that kingdom of his. He would have d to explore it immediately to its farthest boundaries, study all the possibilities it offered, discover it tree by tree and branch by branch.
Rebellion for rebellionÂ’s sake is the purest form of revolution.237 s10 comments Jim Fonseca1,121 7,545

A fantasy/farce by the master. Set in Italy around the time of Napoleon, a young man, discouraged by his boring relationship with his two crazy parents, crazy sister, friar/tutor and crazy uncle who lives with them, “takes to the trees” of the surrounding forest at age twelve and never touches the ground again, dying at age 65. an overly long joke, I wondered how long Calvino could pull off this story and keep it interesting, but he does it successfully for more than 200 pages.



The Barn’s lifelong story is told mostly by his younger brother who sees him daily and supplies him with essentials, although the brother in the trees gathers wild food and shoots animals. Their father, the older ‘Baron, ‘is obsessed by his social pretentions. Their mother, German by birth, is equally obsessed with military operations, maps and battles and seems not to mind her son’s bizarre behavior, taking it as a kind of military scouting campaign. They call her the ‘Generalessa.’

The forest is extensive and he lowers baskets to buy books from the local bookstore in town at the edge of the forest. When still young, his tutor comes to sit up in the trees with him. He courts young women and falls in love with one. He battles bandits and pirates, meets up with soldiers (including Napoleon), and makes friends with the marginal folks who live in the forest including homeless coal miners, fruit pickers and poachers. He even sets up a press and prints a newspaper for a time. The locals defer to him as the ‘Young Baron.’ He acquires a reputation beyond Italy as the man who lives in the trees and corresponds with folks Voltaire, receiving back brief, polite letters.



Not my favorite Calvino, but a decent read.

The Baron in the Trees, painting by Italian artist Salvatore Nangione from artrabbit.com
The author from ilglobo.com
fantasy farce italian-authors164 s Richard Derus3,185 2,102

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

My Review: This being a famous and well-studied book, I suppose the publisher didn't feel the need to do a sell-job on it. That little squib is barely a log-line!

I read this book first in ~1974, because it had a cool-looking jacket. It also had an Italian author, which was also cool. But the reading of it was a revelation because the titular Baron was the perfect rebel, firm of purpose and adamant of spirit. And all over what seems, at first anyway, such a ridiculous cause: Refusing to eat snails. I'd never had snails offered to me at that point, and I was in full agreement with the Baron. But as the pages flipped on, I could see what was really at stake was the right to set one's own boundaries, to establish a core identity by and for one's own self.

All adolescents resonate to that theme, I think, and that's why I'm surprised that this book isn't required reading until college. It would serve well in junior or senior year of high school. Anything that deals with the process and price of becoming and being an individual seems to me to be a good fit for that age. Plus it's beautifully translated, so it's easy to read.

And for the record, I ate snails the first time they were offered to me. They were delicious.154 s Nayra.Hassan1,259 5,961

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This was my eleventh Calvino, and while I don't think it's his best writing, it was such a sheer joy to read, brimming with great charm and delight from start to finish, that it's probably my favourite. Calvino has conjured up such a fantastical tale of an eighteenth century Baron living in the trees - without ever stepping foot on the ground again.

The Baron in the Trees is part fairy-tale, part coming-of-age novel, but what sets it apart from a lot of other novels simply tagged 'magic realism' is it's subtle air of parody and seriousness that gives it a deeper level. When it was written, the novel was reflecting on the not-so-distant past of Italian fascism and dictatorship, which Italo Calvino felt robbed him of his youth. Well, this is kind of him getting his own back. The novel is not narrated by the protagonist Cosimo, but by his somewhat obsessed younger brother Biagio, who sees Cosimo, fed up with the pomp of his father's demands, climb into the great oak tree in their garden and refuse to budge. It soon becomes apparent he has no intention of ever coming down. The oak connects into the grand forest of the neighbouring aristocrats, is close to the sea, and with the view from high above, the whole region is opened up before his eyes. Cosimo makes new friends, falls in love, learns handy new skills, and creates a permanent outdoors life for himself in the trees.

Basking itself fully in the nostalgic joys of childhood, CosimoÂ’s adventures are treated with a sort of sacrosanct level of detail by his brother. How he gets on with the basics food, water, sleep and clothes are all carefully described in the narration, and Calvino's story is uncluttered by the trappings of a normal life that obscure our vision and can make unimportant things table manners seem essential. In the trees, Cosimo finds a way to leave all the rotten things in life down below, just keeping with the good. He always, ironically, stays grounded, with plenty of books and studying, as he consumes the new philosophical and science progress coming from the Enlightenment era, while cautiously avoiding the rapid dangers of the dying old way of life below. He keeps his distance and his identity and when nothing seems sure, he stays hidden in the trees.

Calvino's novel is ultimately about navigating individualism, and stabilising the connection with the real world and one's self. Some could say the story becomes less effective or fun when Cosimo is much older, and that the spark that ignites the first half isn't there so much later on, but this just adds another aspect to the brilliant storytelling, it doesn't take anything away.

I loved it, and will certainly be reading it again. After being disappointed by one of his autobiographical works the last time around, it's clear to see his greatest blessing was in writing fiction to enchant. And he again pulls that off with masterful ease.classic-literature fiction italy ...more133 s ?.??? (??? ??????)309 605

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"(..) surrounding buds of phrases with frameworks of leaves and clouds, then interweaving again, and so running on and on and on until it splutters and bursts into a last senseless clusters of words, ideas, dreams, and so..."

Once upon a time, somewhere between the innocence of childhood and the pluck of the bold rebel, a young Italian nobleman called Cosimo exercised his right to dissent after twelve long years of abiding by the inherent societal norms of his aristocratic title and refused to eat beheaded snails defying parental authority. In order to avoid the wrath of his authoritarian father, Cosimo climbed to the top of an enormous holm oak situated in the garden of the family state and promised to never touch the ground again, becoming the irreverent Baron in the Trees thenceforth.

This is how this tale, related from the first-person narrative by CosimoÂ’s little brother who adopts the role of impartial chronicler, unfolds with the recognizable paced rhythm and whimsical tone of legends and fables. Only that instead of following the moral exploration of a Little Prince and a sagacious fox, the reader is engulfed on this occasion by the incredible story of an eccentric Baron who creates a unique life among the treetops where he is free from the mundane routine and sometimes absurd obligations of earthbound existence. CosimoÂ’s proximity to the open skies allows him to ponder the deeper issues of his period and after devoting years to studying and reading the classics, and without ever climbing down from the trees, he achieves all sort of extraordinary feats corresponding with Diderot and Rousseau, founding secret freemasonry societies or becoming an invaluable military strategist during the French Revolution when he meets Napoleon face to face.

Nevertheless, what makes this parable unforgettable is CalvinoÂ’s dexterity in mixing the magic connotation of CosimoÂ’s arboreal existence with shattering realism, for Cosimo falls sick, has a very vigorous sexual life and plays an essential part in his community, in which he amazingly manages to integrate himself in spite of the physical isolation of his whereabouts.
The dualistic nature of the story engenders a new archetypal figure, that of the active nonconformist, the revolutionary dissenter who rejects the establishment struggles for the improvement of his fellowmen in apparent seclusion. A man straddling two worlds, the utopian and the terrestrial, a man who discovers himself in every leaf, who finds reason in the boughs that cradle him to sleep, whose ideological militancy is a hotchpotch of his natural watchtower made of pines, elms and oaks, a man who symbolizes the limitless imagination that should move the world forward.
In the same way there is ascending poetry to be heard in the rustle of dancing foliage, there is metaphysical revelation without a hint of religiosity to be found in the image of a man who lived literally above his peers with both head and soul looking up at the endless possibilities tattooed in cerulean skies.

read-in-2014102 s Kenny526 1,281

... anyone who wants to see the earth properly must keep himself at a necessary distance from it ...
The Baron in the Trees ~~ Italo Calvino


Italo Calvino has been on my bucket list of authors for quite some time. For some reason I just never got around to reading him; there were better known or flashier authors positioned higher on the list. Then, my friend, Matthew, reviewed a work of CalvinoÂ’s, The Castle of Crossed Destinies and in his review he mentioned The Baron in the Trees. I knew at that moment I needed to move Calvino to the top of my list.

Matthew said to me of The Baron in the Trees it is Charming, well-written, whimsical, oddly poignant... Calvino at his best . He is correct on all points.

The Baron in the Trees is an extraordinary, eccentric, intelligent, and sparkling fantasy concerning Cosimo, the eldest son of a noble family, who, in a moment of defiance, vows to live out his life up in the trees ~~ and does so. I absolutely loved inhabiting this strange world Calvino created.



Fed up with the grandiosity his father demands, CosimoÂ’s rebellion is to climb into the great oak tree in their garden and refuse to come down. Almost immediately, Cosimo realizes heÂ’s never going to set foot on the ground again; soon he learns the great oak connects to the grand forest of the adjoining estates. Immediately, an entirely new world is opened to him. Cosimo makes new friends, learns new skills, and creates a life for himself in the trees.

Every time youÂ’re ready to get used to CosimoÂ’s new life in the trees, he meets and befriends a silly, whimsical robber or engages a daschund to help with hunting. The Baron in the Trees is a fairy-tale, coming-of-age novel and romance all rolled into one, but what sets it apart is the understated use of satire.



Cosimo isn???t content to just live in the trees; our young hero wants to learn all there is to learn; he initially convinces his tutor to climb the trees as well for lessons, but soon Cosimo turns to books for his learning. The young Barron ends up becoming the teacher and will share his new found knowledge with anyone who has a love of learning. Eventually, Cosimo begins correspondences with the greatest minds of his time; he becomes not only a man living in trees, but an esteemed scholar, known the world over.

It is flourishes this that make Cosimo such an enchanting character. Life in the trees is not the most interesting thing about Cosimo; heÂ’d be a fascinating character on the ground as well ~~ though it is difficult to envision him on the ground. Cosimo has more adventures than most land lovers dream of, and he meets so many interesting characters along the way ~~ life in the trees has not limited him in anyway. Thru all of these adventures, remains Cosimo the most compelling person of all those he encounters.

The Baron in the Trees reads a collection of parables centered around Cosimo. many parables, thereÂ’s definitely a sense of wonderment and playfulness, and they are very funny.

I could end this review by making some philosophical pronouncement or waxing poetical, but honestly, I recommend reading The Baron in the Trees because it will make you smile.

fantasy italiano matthew-says-so104 s ????? ?????315 190

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80 s Peiman463 136

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Autor del comentario:
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