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Without fear of wind or vertigo
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If on a winter’s night a traveler, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Act of Reading
Academia and Publishing
Censorship and Government Oppression
Love, Lust, and Anxiety
Summary
Analysis
The story pauses, and the other students in the seminar begin discussing topics like “the laws of a market economy” and “castration.” You and Ludmilla seem to be the only ones interested in continuing the story. You ask Lotaria for the rest of the book, but Lotaria says she’s already given you enough material to discuss for a month. She says that the book had to be cut up and shared with other departments, but she believes she captured the best part of it.
Both “market economy” and “castration” are meant to sound like jargon that would come up during an academic discussion about literary theory. It is debatable whether they actually have any relation to the previous story, suggesting that the members of the seminar are using big words to reference topics that they don’t understand.
Themes
Later, you and Ludmilla meet up, having decided that if the two of you really want to find the endings to any of the novels you’ve read recently, you’ll have to go directly to the publishing house. But then Ludmilla disappoints you by suggesting that perhaps you should go alone and report back to her. She has her principles: She believes some people make books and others read them, and she always wants to be on the side of the readers.
In some ways, Ludmilla’s distinction between readers and book-makers is arbitrary, since nearly all authors are themselves readers. Still, Ludmilla’s commitment to avoid going to the publishing house also demonstrates her principles, which include accepting books as they are rather than getting bogged down in details about external context, as many people at the university do.
Themes
When you (the Reader) make it to the publishing house, a small man named Mr. Cavedagna assumes you’re there to check about a manuscript you submitted. He then leads you through the publishing house, and you look around. In this time period, books are no longer written by individuals but by groups, like seminars, political parties, and research teams. Finally, you tell Mr. Cavedagna that you’re just a reader, not a writer, and he looks pleased.
The Reader soon understands why Ludmilla stayed behind: the reality of publishing that he sees is disappointing to him, just as Ludmilla expected. Although the novel depicts many lonely characters who struggle to connect with others, this passage presents the opposite problem, where group-thinking and orthodoxy lead to books that are less personal.
Themes
Mr. Cavedagna confesses that in spite of all the books he’s worked on, he doesn’t really feel like what he does counts as real reading. When you (the Reader) try to interrupt to explain the problem with the unfinished books you’ve been reading, Mr. Cavedagna says he already knows all about it.
In some ways, Mr. Cavedagna resembles Irnerio, who also frequently deals with books but doesn’t actually read them. Mr. Cavedagna takes a practical view that disappoints the Reader, treating the defective books as just another part of the business.
Themes
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You and Mr. Cavedagna discuss the book fragments you’ve read recently. Apparently, due to a war, a group of people called the Cimbrians have taken over much of Cimmerian literature. You learn that Without fear of wind or vertigo was translated by a young man named Ermes Marana, who claimed to know Cimbrian but in fact didn’t know a word. It turns out that Ermes Marana actually translated a French novel called Looks down in the gathering shadow by the Belgian author Bertrand Vandervelde.
The name Ermes resembles Hermes, the Greek messenger god, revealing how a translator acts like a messenger between writer and reader. This passage also shows how an author has to place a lot of trust in a translator, since there is always the danger that a translator will misrepresent what an author says (with Marana being an extreme example).
Themes
Despite Mr. Cavedagna’s claims, as you leaf through Looks down in the gathering shadow, you don’t think it has any relation to any of the previous books you’ve read. Ermes Marana wrote Mr. Cavedagna a note defending his fraud, saying that the author’s name on a book doesn’t matter—some great works are anonymous, some famous authors have no surviving works, and some famous authors may in fact be the combined work of multiple authors (like Homer).
Calvino himself bears some resemblance to Marana (since in this novel, Calvino falsely “translates” his own words into fragments of work by other authors). On the one hand, there are reasons to be skeptical of Marana’s claims about the insignificance of an author’s name on the cover, particularly since Calvino, the real author of this book, is literally a character in the book, and since the opening chapter explores all of the expectations a reader might have for a book by the author Calvino.
Themes
Mr. Cavedagna tells you not to let Looks down in the gathering shadow leave the office, since it’s important evidence in a fraud case. As Mr. Cavedagna gets called away for some important publishing matter, you sit down to read this new novel.
Mr. Cavedagna helps to illustrate how for some, books are just a business matter. Rather than exploring or even celebrating Marana’s unusual translations, Mr. Cavedagna’s only concern is an upcoming lawsuit.
Themes
