Italo Calvino's "Lightness" Contrasted by Constriction: Illustrated by Robert Coover's Briar Rose

Calvino explains lightness in writing as being the contrast to the weight of reality. From the “dark catastrophe” of reality, an author has the opportunity to create a light, beautiful literary work. He explains weight in writing as the world’s influence. Written word is the miracle that comes from the negativity of the world. He uses the mythological Medusa and Perseus allegory to illustrate how easy it is for people, places, and events of the world to turn “lifeless” and into “stone.” From this, he stresses the risk writers are faced with – being turned to lifeless stone by the private and public events of every-day life.

Constriction reality places on the writing process is similar to an image Coover creates in one of the spin offs of Sleeping Beauty. Throughout the novel, the briar bush grows and multiplies as the prince slashes his sword through each branch, as if the bush has a competitive mind of its own ruthlessly trying to hold the prince back from his prize lady. He passes the remains of past princes who never escaped the briars, is scratched, bleeding, and clothing shredded by the thorns. In reality, it would be easy to expect the prince to give in to the weight and restriction of the briars; but much like the perspective of great writing, he embraces the murderous briars as simply a test resulting in better personal introspective understanding.

Calvino explains in order for us to write about the world, we must look at it from a different perspective. The prince looks at the briars before him in a different light on pages 58-59, “in struggling against the briars, he might in fact be struggling against himself, and that therefore, if he could understand and accept the real terms of this quest, the briars might simply fade away?” I can envision the prince as he stops slashing through the briars for careful contemplation about the deeper meaning of his adventure. Finally reaching the conclusion that he “no longer even wishes to reach her, to wake her,” and before his quest, the enjoyment he found in the “simple sensible joys” and freedom of life.

I think this illustrates the change in perspective a writer must take when dealing with the weight of reality. Like the prince, we must search for the real reasons why we are writing; what ideas and concepts we are attempting to convey; expecting the constraints of life to disappear once we have figured out the direction of the journey our pen will take us on. Also, that the final product will express the simplicity of life and liberate us as well as readers through its words.