Previous
Chapter 4
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
A military parade with musicians marches across town at five in the morning. The narrator is dressed as a soldier and carries a pistol. With him is his friend Valerian, who is in civilian clothes but may also have a pistol, and Irina, who walks arm in arm with both the narrator and Valerian. As they walk, they pass a church that has become a place to quarantine cholera patients. An old woman outside the church shakes her fist and says, “Down with the gentry!”
The previous story hinted at a conspiracy to break people out of prison, and this story continues the theme of going against authority by depicting a city in the middle of a revolution. The political turmoil in these stories suggests a real-world struggle for truth that parallels a reader’s journey to find truth.
Themes
The narrator says that he mentions the old woman because she seems like a premonition of things to come, like strikes (including at the Kauderer munitions factories) and counterrevolutionary armies.
This story is the third to mention the name Kauderer, although none of the three Kauderers seem to have any relation to each other. In fact, this Kauderer may be the opposite of the Kauderer of the previous story—while Kauderer the meteorologist may have been in an anti-government conspiracy, this Kauderer is apparently part of the group that revolutionaries are rebelling against.
Themes
Earlier, when the narrator first meets Irina, it’s back when a front of the army has collapsed. In preparation for an advancing foe, people from a citizen militia take up defensive positions in the city while noncombatants try to seek refuge by rushing over the Iron Bridge into the city. Despite the confusion, the narrator feels in harmony with everyone else as he crossed the Iron Bridge. Just then, he notices Irina fall, and fearing she might get trampled, the narrator runs over to help her up.
Each of the stories in this novel contains a distant looming threat of danger, whether it’s men in black coats, a deadly feud between families, or in this case, an enemy army approaching. These threats build a sense of dread and suspense, perhaps in part embodying the unsettled feeling that a reader feels when a story refuses to provide closure. The narrators generally don’t actually experience pain or death within the story fragments, but the threat always looms over them.
Themes
Still in the past, Irina says that she is feeling better, although she doesn’t thank the narrator for helping her. He introduces himself to her as Alex Zinnober and says he is the equivalent of a lieutenant (although his regiment has abolished official ranks). Irina and the narrator go walking across the chaotic city where the narrator eventually loses sight of her. He decides to go to the Heavy Industry Commission, where his friend Valerian works.
Although this narrator is one of the few named ones in the story, his status as a revolutionary raises the question of whether he is concealing any part of his identity. The lack of army ranks and the references to strikes earlier would seem to identify Alex Zinnober as a communist, although Calvino deliberately avoids most traditional political labels, perhaps in part to reflect the fact that characters in these stories often have uncertain allegiances. This passage hints that the narrator may be a hypocrite, since despite believing in an army without ranks, he also knows exactly what rank he would be in a traditional army
Themes
Get the entire If on a winter’s night a traveler LitChart as a printable PDF.
The narrator finds Valerian behind his desk cleaning a gun. They’re talking about the revolution when Irina suddenly appears and reveals she has been eavesdropping. She takes the gun Valerian is cleaning and puts it up against her head as if about to shoot herself. The narrator warns her not to joke about such things. Irina says that the revolution itself is a joke if only men can bear arms and not women.
Valerian’s cleaning of his gun is a sign that he is preparing for violence. Irina’s comments about the lack of gender equality in the revolution relate back to the frame story for this section (where Lotaria is reading the story aloud in a feminist seminar).
Themes
A messenger comes by for Valerian, forcing Irina to hide. After the messenger is gone but Irina is still hidden, the narrator asks Valerian if Irina’s jokes are really appropriate, but Valerian says Irina never jokes.
Despite his beliefs in equality (serving in an army that has no ranks), the narrator seems to be more hesitant to include women, revealing potential hypocrisy.
Themes
The flashback catches up to the present, and now the narrator, Valerian, and Irina are having a threesome in Irina’s room. In the middle of sex, the narrator thinks about how he has to keep a secret: he is looking for a spy who has infiltrated the Revolutionary Committee. At one point, the narrator manages to get away and search Valerian’s clothes. He finds that Valerian has a death warrant for the narrator in his pocket. The warrant is for the crime of treason, and it’s already signed and stamped.
The ending of this story fragment raises several new questions that will never be answered. The death warrant seems to show that the narrator, Valerian, and Irena have different allegiances after all, but this doesn’t stop them from having sex. This ending suggests that urges like lust can be stronger than political allegiances, while also suggesting that it’s so difficult to know other people that even a good friend might turn into a betrayer.
Themes
