ABSTRACT
Italo Calvino twists the conference title, using word-play to create the Fantasist and the Accountant from Fantasy and Reason, and interpreting the metaphor of riding literally. The idea of starting with a preliminary image is typical of Calvino himself, in whose game the visual imagination plays a major role. In verbal games, for instance in anagrams, Calvino loves the virtuosity involved in the tight limits left by the ludus. The high-point of Calvino's experimentation with a purely verbal constraint comes in a homage to Raymond Queneau. The idea of an Odyssey with Ulysses forced into a sedentary existence depends on a narrative constraint, and this is basically a paradoxical variant of the narrative constraint that underlies the story of the Baron permanently in the trees. The Castle of Crossed Destinies finally encapsulates Calvino's idea that the diagram guarantees a form of 'consistency' to the text's macrostructure.
