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In a network of lines that enlace
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
Ludmilla is late for her meeting with you (the Reader) at the café. Eventually, you are so preoccupied waiting for her that you can no longer read. Just then a server at the café calls you and says you have a phone call. It’s Ludmilla on the line. She invites you to her house, although she says she isn’t there yet.
Whereas the previous chapter involved a narrator who seemed to be haunted by an ever-present telephone ring, this chapter begins with the opposite, where the Reader is impatiently awaiting a call that seems like it might never come. At both extremes, the difficulty of communication can cause anxiety.
Themes
You go to Ludmilla’s house and can tell she lives alone, although you try not to snoop too much. The narrator pauses the story to give more details about you, the Reader. Until this point, the narrator has revealed few details about the Reader, other than the fact that the Reader is male, so that any potential reader can identify with the Reader. It’s a deliberate choice that “you,” the Reader, have no name, because by giving Ludmilla a name and referring to her in the third person, she now has a more concrete form.
While it seemed the chapters of the frame story had begun to settle into a rhythm, here the narrator abruptly and deliberately disrupts the flow of the narrative. The narrator once again draws attention to the conventions of a novel in a way that breaks the audience’s immersion, indicating a distinction between “the Reader” who is actively reading the novel and “the Reader” about whom that audience reads. (Note that while the narrator suggests that leaving “the Reader” or “you” nameless means that any potential reader may identify with the Reader, they fail to account for the book’s non-male readers.) The novel itself seems to be struggling to communicate, mirroring the Reader’s own anxieties about communication.
Themes
The narrator temporarily changes perspectives, calling Ludmilla “you” and only referring to you in the third person, as “The Reader.” Ludmilla lives in a house where the prominent placement of books shows that she keeps the outside world at a distance. Her kitchen suggests that she cooks somewhat regularly and has modest tastes.
The story has strongly identified with the Reader so far, but this passage encourages the audience to look beyond the Reader and see how his perspective might be limited. For example, here, the Reader assumes that Ludmilla uses books to keep the outside world at a distance—but he might just be projecting the way that he himself uses books.
Themes
The narrator describes in the third person how the Reader looks around Ludmilla’s house. While Ludmilla’s possessions are important to her, her house nevertheless hides many aspects of her personality. Her books seem to show that she isn’t the type of Reader who re-reads things.
Ludmilla’s decision not to re-read books makes her like the other characters in the novel who are fated to only move forward in time. Unlike many of those characters, however, she seems to move forward without holding on to the regrets of the past—or at least that’s what the Reader thinks.
Themes
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The narrator changes back to his original perspective so that when he says “you,” he means the Reader, not Ludmilla. You are reassured that Ludmilla has so many books because reading is solitary and that suggests that she doesn’t have any men in her life.
The Reader feels reassured in this passage, and the structure of the novel itself mimics this feeling of reassurance by returning to the familiar pattern of “you” once again referring to the Reader—the Reader who is physically reading Calvino’s book, and the Reader (“you”) about whom the audience of Calvino’s book is reading. This reinforces the book’s broader point that readers gravitate toward interpretations of books that align with their own understandings of truth—it is comforting, in other words, to relate to and sympathize with a book’s protagonist.
Themes
You hear a key turn and are surprised to see it’s not Ludmilla but a man entering. You tell him Ludmilla isn’t around. It turns out to be Irnerio, who says he knows Ludmilla is gone but that he’s come to pick up one of her books. He doesn’t want to read it but instead to use it as material for an art project he’s working on. You are dismayed at how easily Irnerio just takes a book from Ludmilla’s shelf, which seemed like a wall meant to keep out invaders.
This section casts doubt on the Reader’s observations from the previous passages, suggesting both the limits of his perception as well as the limits of what a person’s possessions can say about them. While the narrator has a reverent attitude toward Ludmilla’s books, Irnerio just walks in and takes one to use for his art project, suggesting that the narrator’s ideas about the sanctity of books may not be as widespread as he thinks.
Themes
You wonder about the relationship between Irnerio (who has said he never reads) and Ludmilla (the avid reader). Irnerio wants to take In the network of lines that enlace for his art project, but you don’t want to give up your own book, so you instead hand Irnerio a very similar looking one. In fact, you realize the new book is almost identical to In a network of lines that enlace—and it’s also written by Silas Flannery. Irnerio explains that the book you’ve handed him isn’t Ludmilla’s.
Irnerio’s willingness to take a similar-looking book with different content highlights how superficial his relationship with books is. The Reader finds that he and Ludmilla are the only ones who truly appreciate the contents of books on their own terms (although his perspective is of course biased by his own limited perception and his attraction toward Ludmilla).
Themes
Irnerio takes you into a little storage room where there is a typewriter on a table. You see that in the typewriter is a sheet that says, “Translation by Ermes Marana.” You think back to how all the women you read about in the letters of Marana seemed to remind you of Ludmilla. You ask if Marana lives in this house, but Irnerio says it was Marana’s time to leave. When he was around, Ludmilla was unhappy and didn’t read. Marana has a way to make even true things seem false.
This strange passage seems to confirm the Reader’s fear earlier that Marana had some relationship with Ludmilla (who did not herself appear in any of Marana’s letters but who reminded the Reader of many of the women Marana met). Marana, who deliberately spreads falsehoods and counterfeits, seems to have disturbed Ludmilla’s happy reading by making her question the authenticity of what was in her books.
Themes
Just then, Ludmilla enters. She’s happy to see you with Irnerio. Sometime later, while you’re all having tea, Irnerio disappears. Ludmilla tells you it’s common for him to leave without saying anything. When you ask questions to Ludmilla about her visitors, she asks if you’re jealous. You say you have no right to be jealous, so she asks if you could imagine a future scenario where you would have a right to be jealous.
After a long absence, when it seemed possible that Ludmilla might never come back, her return to the story suggests that her connection with the narrator may not be all in his head after all. In fact, the Reader even tries to downplay the idea of any connection between himself and Ludmilla. But Ludmilla encourages the Reader, once again showing how the Reader’s limited perception has caused him to misread the situation.
Themes
The narrator now uses “you” in the plural to address both the Reader (you) and the Other Reader (Ludmilla), since the Reader and Other Reader are in bed together, forming a “two-headed person.” But the narrator notes that actually, from a grammatical standpoint, perhaps it makes more sense to refer to each reader as a singular “you” rather than both as a plural “you.” The Reader and the Other Reader “read” each other’s bodies in bed.
This passage evokes a famous quote from Shakespeare about sex creating a “beast with two backs.” In this passage, the narrator compares the physical intimacy of sex to two different readers reaching the same understanding about a book. Although English does not distinguish between singular and plural in the second person (both are “you”), it is an important distinction in other languages, which is why the narrator comments on the proper grammar to use for the Reader and the Other Reader together.
Themes
Now the narrator calls the Reader “you” again. You tell Ludmilla about the book you were just reading. She wants to read it immediately, so you get out of bed to find the book. But as you search, you can’t find it—Irnerio took it for his art show after all. You instead come back with Ludmilla’s other copy of the book. She says she received it from Silas Flannery himself.
This passage reaffirms how the connection between Ludmilla and the Reader is both sexual and based on a shared understanding of reading. But after that moment of mutual understanding, the Reader now realizes he has grabbed the wrong book, suggesting that his troubles with communication will persist even after his sex with Ludmilla.
Themes
But as it turns out, the book you found is not the one you expected after all. Ludmilla explains that Ermes Marana always liked to play tricks on Ludmilla and make things false, partly because he was always afraid of a rival coming between him and Ludmilla: her passion for reading. As you look closer at the book in your hands, you realize that it’s not actually In a network of lines that enlace but in fact a book called In a network of lines that intersect.
Marana and the falsehoods that he spread were part of what was keeping the Reader and Ludmilla apart. Although the Reader and Ludmilla thought that Marana’s absence would remove this obstacle, his presence continues to haunt them both. The Reader and Ludmilla’s relationship is based on mutual understanding, but the counterfeit translator Marana causes both of them to doubt what is or isn’t true.
Themes
