Castle of Intertwined Fates

First direct translation from Italian.

Calvino's world-renowned novel written with "Tarot cards."

Meaning is destiny. This seemingly shallow storytelling game reveals the fragility and vitality woven between destiny and self.

A group of travelers, having journeyed through a dense, fantastical forest, gather one by one in a castle and a tavern. Having lost their ability to speak due to their traverse through the forest, they tell their stories through tarot cards.

The entire book tells the story of "destiny" through two sets of tarot cards, an experiment in fantastical iconography by Calvino. The speechless travelers must use tarot card spreads to tell their stories. Calvino crafted this novel with an unprecedented framework, featuring twelve highly imaginative and intricately structured stories. From the castle lord to the alchemist, this group of forest travelers even includes Faust, Lady Macbeth, Oedipus, and Calvino himself. Drawing cards such as The Lovers, Queen of Pentacles, and Knight of Wands, it's like a séance, full of reading pleasure. The table full of cards is like film storyboards, constructing a legendary journey, with the card faces capturing the brilliant moments of every adventure the imagination can conjure.

Advancing the story with cards, it's like a game full of unpredictable constraints and twists. Calvino's storytelling ability is, of course, beyond doubt. However, from the card illustrations to the spreads, the interpretations of tarot cards are ever-changing, repeatedly inspiring the reader's imagination. The arbitrariness of storytelling also tests the reader's ability to receive meaning. Therefore, if meaning is destiny, the meaning of storytelling lies only in "telling." The "interweaving" of traveler and traveler, castle and tavern, author and reader, denies the meaning of writing and reading novels, denies the unity of the work, just as it denies destiny, yet it presents the unpresentable—the free randomness of destiny, an affirmation of self-creation. Writing a novel with tarot cards, seemingly a storytelling game, eliminates absolutes and singularity, yet affirms plurality, self, and humor itself. No one should negate others; acknowledging each other's spiritual freedom, the desert will once again become an enclave, mystifying imagination and bringing miracles back into our lives.

Influenced by French semiotics at the time, Calvino shifted his writing focus to postmodernism, and this book is an important representative work of his later writing transformation. It includes two stories written by the author in 1973: "The Castle of Crossed Destinies" and "The Tavern of Crossed Destinies." The author uses the dual structures of the castle and the tavern to present "relativity," in that we are uncertain about anything, especially profound matters, but fun is certain, and you'll know it once you start reading. Through the interweaving of images and language, this book confirms Calvino's foresight into postmodern shifts such as future visual narratives, computer games, and even artificial intelligence.

Transforming human destiny into spatial arrangements on cards,

Card after card, performing all the joys and sorrows of life,
The story, like destiny, constantly multiplies and expands...