Under the Jaguar Sun is Calvino’s exploration of our senses; sensuous and salacious, Calvino is able to render even the most mundane of smells into something magical, our tongue and mouth become receptacles to the most titillating of flavours and the silver cadence of a woman’s voice is transformed into a symbol of love. The set of stories starts with Under the Jaguar Sun, a story about a somewhat disaffected couple and their holiday to Mexico. The couple gradually become fascinated with a cannibalistic ritual associated with the food they eat, indeed the food they eat is described in great detail, every morsel of food is consumed beneath the cacophony of emotions which beset the couple as they journey further and further in Mexico’s macabre history. Eating becomes a form of communication in a world in which words mean so little, our tongues and teeth cease to communicate via voices, but instead transmit their desires and obsessions via taste, that most amorous of senses;“And I couldn’t help remarking how certain manifestations of Olivia’s vital energy, certain prompt reactions or delays on her part, yearnings or throbs, continued to take place before my eyes, losing none their intensity, with only one significant difference; their stages was no longer the bed of our embraces but a dinner table.”The bitterness of walnut sauce, the heat of jalapenos, all of these tastes increase their sensory receptivity, the world transformed into a world of taste, as they begin to fantasise about that most unknown of tastes; human flesh. Their minds febrile with their cannibalistic fantasies, they use taste to travel back in the past to a cannibalistic ritual, as the narrator feels the knife of the priest-cut cut his throat as he feels himself become one with world and their bodies become one with the food they are eating.A King Listens is the story of a paranoid king who hears the endless echo of insurgency in his palace walls, which are transformed into a giant ear, receptors of the rebellion which is taking place in his mind. “The palace is a clock: its ciphered sounds follow the course of the sun; invisible arrows point to the change of the guard on the ramparts with a scuffle of hob-bailed boots, a slamming of rifle-buts, answered by the crunch of gravel under the tanks kept ready in the forecourt.”Repetition is the reassurance which the king needs to prevent paranoid ideas about rebellion entering his head, so long as sounds remain the same, his reign will remain the same too. However he hears the sound has never heard before; the sound of a woman singing, the silvery cadence of her voice envelops his heart and disturbs his soul, he tries to reach it, to capture it, to kiss and caress the sound of her song, but fails to do so, but not before becoming surrounded in a world of pure sound;“If you raise your eyes, you will see a glow. Above your head the imminent morning is brightening in the sky : that breath against your face is the wind stirring the leaves. You are outside again, the dogs are barking, the birds awake the colours return to the world’s surface, things reoccupy space, living beings again give signs of life…now a noise, a rumble, a roar occupies all space, absorbs all sighs, calls sobs…”The final story, The Name, The Rose, is an elegiacal celebration of smell, as three different men; a disaffect musician, a dandy and a caveman search for the sultry scent of a unknown woman. It is the most poetic novella in the collection, perfume becomes an art form which can only be truly discerned by the truest artist of all; a man in love. Their noses are indifferent to the beauty of the smell; the execrable scent of excrement is given as much important as the indescribable loveliness of a woman’s perfume, what matter is the ability of our noses to see the world via a carousel of smells;“I knew nothing of her, but I felt I knew all in that perfume; and I would have desired a world without names, where that perfume alone would have sufficed as name and as all the words she could speak to me: that perfume I knew was now lost in Madame Odile’s liquid labyrinth, evaporated on my memory, so that I could not summon it back even by remembering her when she followed me into the conservatory with the hydrangeas.”The men fail to realise that they are in fact being led by the nose and the perfume which has perforated their souls and they are following is in fact the smell of death. Under the Jaguar Sun is a wonderful, original and beautiful exploration of our senses, a masterpiece whose lack of length is made up for by its sensuous brilliance.
In three stories dealing with the senses of taste, hearing, and smell, Calvino once again demonstrates his ability to use a seemingly simple jumping off point to explore more interesting topics, like the nature of relationships, the pointlessness of power, and the way desire connects to loss.The first story, the one that gives this collection its name, is the best of the three. Concerning itself with taste, Under the Jaguar Sun does a great job evoking the lush atmosphere of Oaxaca and the surrounding parts of Mexico, and more specifically the Mexican cuisine of the region. Although in the beginning it appears as though Calvino’s story about taste is going to be about the sensual nature of food (hardly a new interpretation of the topic), the tale takes a turn as it dances around the idea of cannibalism, and relationships as a form of emotional cannibalism. Flesh to the Aztecs was what raised the sun and fueled the universe, and in this story Calvino presents us with a tale of the flesh in more ways than one. Beyond the interesting take on the topic Under the Jaguar Sun also features a realistic depiction of a relationship and creates a sense of simmering tension that is masterfully done, making this story stand with the very best that Calvino has written.The second story, A King Listens, has an interesting premise, but the execution prevented the story from striking me with real force. Here a king keeps himself on his throne perpetually, out of fear that leaving his throne for even a moment will provide all the opportunity a usurper would need to replace him with a convincing double. While on the throne the king can only keep in touch with the occurrences of the palace and in the city at large through his sense of hearing, though who knows if what he thinks he hears is truly what is occurring. Sound, when it reaches us through echoes or from a distance, can be warped and misleading. Intriguing, but Calvino wrote the story in such a way that the reader feels detached from the thoughts of the king and the events of the story as a whole. It also doesn’t help that the king has no characterization beyond his position and a generous dose of paranoia. The fact that this story was penned only a year before Calvino’s death raises the possibility that he was not done tinkering with it yet, but as it stands it is decidedly the weakest of the lot.The final story is called The Name, the Nose and is actually a set of three intertwining tales following men dealing with women that they can only identify by their scent. Skipping between a nobleman, a caveman, and a rock band’s drum player, the story does a fine job at drawing parallels between the three stories and generally establishes smelling the scent of a woman as a primal, timeless experience. The story also establishes that, despite its primal nature, scents are things we imbue with meaning on our own through our life experiences, not pieces of objective information. Not quite as strong as Under the Jaguar Sun, but a solid story with impressive complexity given that it is less than twenty pages long.The novel ends with a note from Calvino’s wife Esther, which states her belief that Calvino would not only have written stories dealing with the remaining senses of sight and touch, but would have created a frame narrative as well, perhaps to illustrate the world that exists outside of the physical senses. If he had pulled it off then this work would have stood with Invisible Cities and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller as one of Calvino’s best. Instead we are left with a more modest work, but one where two of the three stories are quite good. I round that up to 4 stars on the strength of Under the Jaguar Sun, and recommend it to anyone looking for a shorter work by Calvino.
What do You think about Under The Jaguar Sun (1990)?
This collection of three short stories about the senses (five total were intended, but the author died before he could get around to the final two) was an artful and thought-provoking read. The middle story, about a paranoid king sitting enthroned and mostly immobile in his audience hall while trying to interpret the manifold sounds all around him (are they murmurs of appreciation or whispers of dissent?), was the best, although I also loved the pungency of the language in the final story, about the nose and its connection to lust and desire. Calvino seldom disappoints.
—Daniel Simmons
Before reading any Calvino I had noted with dismay that none of his novels ever really get much beyond the 200 page mark, how foolish I was to worry. From what I have read stories of any size can satiate and I am now happy for their warm abundance. These are three stories about three senses - do not listen to the quibbles about how the two other senses were to have stories and that it would all be housed in an elaborate frame story, these are illusion, they never existed. These stories do, and they're lovely.
—Ned Rifle
SenselessThis was my first reading of Calvino -- an author that my trusted friends have raved about. And I get it. He writes beautifully. I wish the library had this book in Italian. I think I might have enjoyed it more.Alas, the main problem was the lack of a story (in the first two). It came across as a creative writing exercise. It was a never-ending description, which of course, becomes extremely aggravating. It was like someone was describing a painting. I saw the whole painting and it was beautiful, but the characters were two-dimensional. Under the Jaguar Sun was a yawn fest. A King Listens was a bit better, although it was merely a long, drawn out version of Plato's Cave Allegory (with hints of holding on to power for power's sake). The last story, The Name, The Nose, was Calvino's best (unfortunately it was also the shortest). The characters search for the mystery woman was the only worthwhile plot in the whole collection.I will read Calvino again. I'm just disappointed by my first choice.
—M. Mastromatteo
