A colleague lent me this book. I don’t remember asking for it but this person is a clever musician-colleague in the music department where I work as an administrator and knowing him to be not only well read but also a brilliant singer and pianist, I welcomed the addition of this slim paperback to my already overwhelming ‘to read’ pile.

I’d heard of another book by the same writer – If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller – a title I suspect is well known to those better read than I am. I hadn’t registered the author though – Italo Calvino. Italo, I discovered, is pronounced like Italy, the emphasis on the first syllable. Calvino, as you might expect, leans on the second.

Mr Palomar is a collection of beautifully, if eccentrically, observed vignettes by a solitary, middle aged man who appears to be friendless, though married with a child; highly intelligent though not currently employed in any sort of meaningful work and deeply pitiable, though not self-pitying.

I began to feel a certain sympathy with his character in the third chapter in the collection – The sword of the sun. Palomar (we are never told his first name) observes the setting sun when taking his evening swim. He seems to like the sea. His early observations take place there. Other reflections are inspired by the garden, the sky, the city, the terrace. The writing, even in translation, is exquisite (William Weaver has done an excellent job in my inexperienced opinion):

As the sun sinks towards sunset, the incandescent-white reflection acquires gold and copper tones. And wherever Mr Palomar moves, he remains the vertex of that sharp, gilded triangle; the sword follows him, pointing him out like the hand of a watch whose pivot is the sun.

Mr Palomar thinks that the sun is paying special homage to him personally. A delightfully egocentric thought by which he admits he is tempted. He attributes these musings to the ‘megalomaniac ego that dwells in him’.

But the depressive and self-wounding ego, who dwells with the other in the same container, rebuts: “Everyone with eyes sees the reflection that follows him; illusion of the senses and of the mind holds us all prisoners always.”

At this point, Calvino writes, a ‘third tenant, a more even-handed ego speaks up: “This means that, no matter what, I am part of the feeling and thinking subjects, capable of establishing a relationship with the sun’s rays and of interpreting and evaluating perceptions and illusions.”’

I warmed to this idea of egos as tenants in the container of a person’s being. Those different parts of the self that speak and bicker and argue with each other all the day long, some with louder more authoritative voices than others, often the bullies; others subtler, less prone to assert themselves but with quiet confidence offering wisdom if one could only be still enough to hear them and brave enough to concur.

I felt a more uncomfortable affinity with Mr Palomar in the penultimate fragment in the collection. I call it a fragment because it can hardly be called a short story – more an island, one of many, within an archipelago. Like carefully taken photographs collected and mounted thematically in an album, Polomar makes observations whilst on holiday, on journeys, in society and so on. The last pages of the album contain his reflections on his relationship to others. These are more disquieting. They disquieted me anyway. To illustrate, below is an extensive section of The universe as mirror, the second in the groups of islands called, The mediations of Palomar:

Mr Palomar suffers greatly because of his difficulty in establishing relations with his fellow-man. He envies those people who have the gift of always finding the right thing to say, the right greeting for everyone, people who are at ease with anyone they happen to encounter and put others at their ease; who move easily among people and immediately understand when they must defend themselves and keep their distance or when they can win trust and affection; who give their best in their relations with others and make others want to give their best; who know at once how to evaluate a person with regard to themselves and on an absolute scale.

“These gifts,” Palomar thinks with the regret of the man who lacks them, “are granted to those who live in harmony with the world. It is natural for them to establish an accord not only with people but also with things, places, situations, occasions, with the course of the constellations in the firmament with the association of atoms in molecules. That avalanche of simultaneous events that we call the universe does not overwhelm the lucky individual who can slip through the finest interstices among the infinite combinations, permutations and chains of consequences, avoiding the paths of the murderous meteorites and catching only the beneficent rays. To the man who is the friend of the universe, the universe is a friend. “If only,” Palomar sighs, “I could be like that!”

So Palomar tries to imitate such people. The result?

He starts by becoming embroiled in a muddle of misunderstandings, hesitations, compromises, failures to act; the most futile matters stir up anguish, the most serious become unimportant; everything he says or does proves clumsy, jarring, irresolute. What is it that does not work?

This: contemplating the stars he has become accustomed to considering himself an anonymous and incorporeal dot, almost forgetting that he exists; to deal now with human beings he cannot help involving himself, and he no longer knows where his self is to be found. In dealing with every person one should know where to place himself with regard to that person, should be sure of the reaction the presence of the other inspires in him – dislike or attraction, dominion or subjugation, discipleship or mastery, performance as actor or as spectator – and on the basis of these and their counter-reactions one should then establish the rules of the game to be applied in their play, the moves and counter moves to be played. But for all this, even before he starts observing the others, one should know well who he is himself. Knowledge of one’s fellow has this special aspect: it passes necessarily through knowledge of oneself and this is precisely what Palomar is lacking. Not only knowledge is needed, but also comprehension, agreement with one’s own means and ends and impulses, which is like saying the possibility of exercising a mastery over one’s own inclinations and actions that will control them and direct them but not coerce them or stifle them. The people he admires for the rightness and naturalness of their every word and every action, are not only at peace with the universe but, first of all, at peace with themselves. Palomar, who does not love himself, has always taken care not to encounter himself face to face; this is why he preferred to take refuge among the galaxies; now he understands that he should have begun by finding an inner peace. The universe can perhaps go tranquilly about its business; he surely cannot.

I’ve quoted this section at such length because each one of its sentences resonated so powerfully and discomfitingly with my own psychological experience that I found my own internal tenants sitting up at the kitchen table as it were, suddenly alert, ears pricked, ready to make their comments.

Poor Mr Palomar! said the compassionate, kindly ego.

How pathetic and navel gazing. How very insane. Does he have BPD? cried the harsh, rejecting critic.

Oh, dear God, is this me? This is me. Oh no! And yet, perhaps I’m not the only one therefore? After all? But I’m not sure I want to be like this.

The quiet internally honest, insistent ego spoke last and with the most certainty.

Mr Palomar resolves to pursue self knowledge, his own ‘inner geography’, drawing the ‘diagram of the moods of his spirit’ and yet finds that, in fact, despite this perception that others suffer in the universe less than he does, in fact, they are, as the universe itself appears, ‘restless as he is’.

Where the universe is a mirror to Palomar, literature provides a mirror to me. Where Palomar has sought refuge among the galaxies, I have sought refuge among books. Sometimes I don’t like what I see of myself in the characters of the books I read but I learn about myself – who I am, who I want, and most certainly don’t want, to be. Literature is a kindly mirror, one that can be picked up when one is feeling brave enough to take a look and put down again if it gets too much. Whilst made up of words, it is silent unlike the audible voices and opinions of my fellow men who often hold up their own mirror, not always kind, nor invited, nor reflective of anything but their own restlessness. As such, books prove faithful friends who grow with you, challenge you, comfort you and share their wisdom with you. They do not take offence or get irritated if you fail, at first, second or even third attempt to understand their meaning. They have no issue with you throwing their opinions across the room and then returning, conciliatory, once you’ve calmed down. At times they put an arm around you so powerfully, it almost exceeds the comfort of the physical presence of a less kindred spirit.

And yet, is not Mr Palomar missing something? He thinks it is his egocentric, megalomaniac self that believes the sun is paying homage to him personally. But isn’t he right? The One who made the sun does see him; does know him. It is Mr Palomar who fails to see the One in whose eyes he has more significance than he can imagine when he gazes at the galaxies. And perhaps I am indulging the ‘depressive and self-wounding ego’ when I seek solidarity and consolation in books. Behind the printed page, behind the sun, the moon the stars lies the One who makes sense of the restless universe in which we struggle.

In Moon in the afternoon, Calvino writes:

Nobody looks at the moon in the afternoon, and this is the moment when it would most require our attention, since its existence is still in doubt.

And so in the moments when my Father’s existence, His care, His knowledge, His wisdom, His plan are most in doubt, this is when I need pay the most attention and modify my reading with the reading of His book. After all, in just one throw away moment in the course of creation, ‘He also made the stars’. (Genesis 1:16)

Perhaps many of us are like Mr Palomar. Perhaps Calvino writes of his own struggles with society. I will have to read more of him to form any sort of view.

When I gratefully return this title to its owner, who himself expressed great fondness for the protagonist, I will tell him that I have learnt a bit more about myself but also about others and their perceptions of the world. I will tell him that I am encouraged to fight my own restlessness and continue my own observations. But as one believer to another, I will also tell him how relieved I am that however seemingly meaningless life can feel at times, we do not live in a meaningless, restless universe but one which will be finally made new.

See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will onto be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. Isaiah 65:17-19