One of the new things we’ve been doing here at DK is asking clients to refer us to books they think embody a personality they’d want their new brand to be. One particular fictional character has touched and settled upon my heart, and as of late, I often consider him.
Just finished Italo Calvino’s story of a 12-year-old boy who keeps a vow to live his full life without letting his feet touch the ground.
The Baron in the Trees is narrated by the Baron’s younger brother, in a voice that just sort of lulls you along into this fantasy world where, yes, of course, it’s the most natural thing in the world to flit about from nut tree to ilex, and swing right back again.
What I love about the elder brother, the Baron Cosimo, is the tenderness of his heart.
Here is an excerpt–Cosimo, in adult life, happens upon a foreign military officer in the midst of the Baron’s wood.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” he said to Cosimo. “So you know our language?”
“Da, gospodin ofitser,” replied my brother, “but not more than you do French, all the same.”
“Are you an inhabitant of this country? Were you here while Napoleon was about?”
“Yes, monsieur l’officier.”
“How did that go?”
“You know, monsieur, armies always loot, whatever the ideas they bring.”
“Yes, we too do a lot of looting… but we don’t bring ideas…”
He was sad and worried, though a victor. Cosimo liked him and tried to console him. “You have won!”
“Yes. We fought well. Very well. But perhaps…”
Suddenly yells broke out, rifle fire, a clash of arms. “Kto tam?” exclaimed the officer. The Cossacks returned, dragging over the ground some half-naked corpses, and holding something in their hands, their left hands (the right were grasping wide curved scimitars, bared and–yes–dripping with blood), and this something was the hairy heads of those three drunken hussars. “Frantsuzy! Napoleon! All dead!”
The young officer barked out a sharp order, and made them take the things away.
“You see… War… For years now I’ve been dealing as best I can with a thing that in itself is apalling; war… and all this for ideas which I shall never, perhaps, be able to explain fully to myself…”
“I too,” replied Cosimo, “have lived many years for ideals which I would never be able to explain to myself; but I do something entirely good. I live on trees.”
The officer’s mood had suddenly changed from melancholy to nervous. “Well,” he said. “I must be moving on.” –Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees
More from the series In Search of Meaning
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