The narration of Italo Calvino’s novel The Nonexistant Knight explores the aftermath of trauma in the queer body through the repeated use of mirrored images, contorted doubles, and illusion. In this translation by Archibald Colquhoun, the character Bradamante embodies elements of a non-binary gender identity through her status as a knight within Charlemagne’s army. In her quest to achieve true knighthood—exact, honorable, and unrestricted by gender—she becomes fascinated with Agilulf, the knight with no body. He represents everything to which she aspires, and they both exist outside the established, gendered norm of their peers. After the dissolution of Agilulf and a subsequent sexual trauma to her body by the knight Raimbaut,Bradamante recreates herself under a gender-conforming feminine identity: an innocent nun living in a countryside abbey. She surrenders to the societal constraints of her life as a woman and conforms to gendered expectations as response to this trauma. She suppresses her non-binary gender expression, but also works subversively to find her way back to her authentic self by writing down the tales of Bradamante. She takes control of Bradamante’s story as penance within the abbey, but also as a way to understand what happened to her—regaining some sense of her identity as well as her power.
Bradamante and Agilulf are both social outsiders among the rest of the troops and seek a more exacting form of knighthood than the rest. They each hold elements of a queered gender identity that is expressed through their aberrant bodies within their social context—Bradamante is a female knight amongst men and boys, and Agilulf is an empty suit of armor with no gendered body within it. Bradamante becomes infatuated with Agilulf as she seeks an alternative way of being, in part because he is not limited by the gendered body that inhibits her own life. She desires “a different way of existing:” an identity that is uncertain, indefinite, and her own to navigate. (64) With the introduction of Raimbaut, however, this pursuit becomes strained; he craves a romantic and sexual possession of Bradamante that constrains her autonomy and warps her identity. As Theodora, she inquires of Raimbaut’s pursuit of Bradamante, “Is he truly urged by love for her, and not by love for himself? Isn’t he always looking for a certainty of existing that only a woman can give him? What does it matter which of the two is strong and which is weak? They are equals. But the young man does not know, because he does not want to.” (64) Raimbaut’s pursual of Bradamante thus does not result from love or even infatuation, but from a subconscious desire to inhibit her power and augment his own existence. By possessing her in this way, he forces her non-binary identity into a form that it does not fit: a constrictive configuration of femininity that allows for no flexibility within her lived gender experience. Raimbaut, though never outright malicious, represents a much larger system that controls and regulates queer and feminine bodies. His actions toward Bradamante uphold a pernicious societal power structure that rests on a strict, binary, and unbalanced construction of gender.
When Bradamante recreates herself as Sister Theodora, she portrays herself as a passive and highly feminized character; Theodora’s role as narrator, however, subversively reclaims some of her power as she works to process her trauma. She controls what information is conveyed to the reader, maintains illusions of identity, and relates the experience of her assault without directly reliving it. When Raimbaut eventually discovers her living at the abbey and she chooses to leave with him, she reveals to the reader that she is indeed both Theodora and Bradamante. From that point to the end of her narration, it is as if the identity she has suppressed and the one she has fabricated are simultaneously processing her decision of conceding to Raimbaut’s advances. The social conventions of femininity clearly still burden her; she still strives for adventure, and for a liberated embodiment of her non-binary identity. Part of her recognizes that Raimbaut is not the means to such an existence, and that he is not what she ultimately wants. Another part of her acknowledges that, although this path will not be what satisfies her, it is a choice she makes to survive and to recover what she has lost.
The first moment Bradamante and Raimbaut appear together it is as mirror images of each other, atop their horses fighting off a pair of enemy soldiers. When they finally defeat the assailants, Bradamante spurs her horse to the river; Raimbaut finds that his own steed has been struck dead, held upright by its armor “as if rooted to the spot” (45). The state of the two knights’ horses in this scene is representative of a much larger disparity between the two characters and their conceptions of gender. Where Bradamante is carried to a source of running water—a passageway symbolic of transformation and change—Raimbaut is stuck in place atop a heavy, lifeless creature that can no longer carry him. When he realizes this, he dismounts and follows Bradamante on foot—assuming she is male and hoping to thank this mystery knight for his aid. Raimbaut is surprised when he discovers Bradamante urinating in the river, covered in armor from helmet to waist but otherwise bare and feminine: a body that resists binary interpretation. In this instant, Bradamante’s mutable gender embodiment is made visible. Raimbaut’s trespass of this intimate moment and his consequent infatuation with Bradamante is the precursor to his violation of her later in the novel. His static perception of gender, evident in the way he promptly feminizes and sexualizes her exposed figure, is a force that regulates the way her non-binary body is allowed to exist in this environment.
The theme of mirrored images appears again in Agilulf’s coat of arms; his shield depicts the image of another shield that is mirrored inside itself ad infinitum. This emblem functions to represent Agilulf’s distinct embodiment of knighthood. The liminality of this image—a form of mise en abyme—illustrates the tension of maintaining his consciousness through sheer will, and his resistance of falling victim to “the void.” This infinitely occurring assertion of existence portrays the vast nature of his own non-binary body. It is forever reflecting on itself, deconstructing the conventions of gendered bodies and the parameters of existence. Agilulf’s use of this emblem illuminates aspects of Bradamante’s own non-binary experience: she hides parts of her identity within herself to survive but rather than disappear beneath her façade, these parts of her reflect infinitely and internally. The trauma she experiences does not rid her of her queer selfhood, but rather expands it, transforms it, and creates something new.
Prior to Agilulf’s dissolution, it is revealed how he first came to be a knight years prior: by saving a virginal young girl from rape. His entity dissolves due to a misunderstanding after that same girl’s virginity comes into question, and he leaves his empty armor to Raimbaut. To him, this suit of armor represents power and superior ability; it gives him newfound determination and courage in battle. Raimbaut assaults Bradamante after the battle, still disguised as Agilulf—for Bradamante does not yet know Agilulf’s spirit has left his form. Raimbaut muses that, “it was like that first time he had followed her when still not suspecting her to be a woman.” (134) This assault functions as a warped double of their first scene together—it is carnal rather than combative, and they oppose each other rather than uniting against an enemy. This is the moment the whole story rests upon, the act that necessitates the split in Bradamante’s identity. The heaviness of his body in the previously empty suit echoes the heaviness of the dead horse propped up by its armor. Rather than the pristine white suit of armor that characterized Agilulf, the outfit of the nonexistent knight has become dented, bloody, and spattered with mud—indicative of the interior change. Agilulf’s shield with the mirrored coat of arms is gashed, and this is the damage that finally makes Raimbaut feel as if the armor truly belongs to him. The severance of this emblem, representative of the model of true knighthood that Agilulf embodied, acts to emphasize Raimbaut’s role in enforcing a singular, gendered conception of knighthood. When Bradamante recognizes the profound betrayal that has transpired, her faith in a knighthood unrestricted by gender is broken; she then moves to the abbey to conceal her unconventional gender identity beneath the guise of a highly feminized figure. It is difficult to reconcile the words of Sister Theodora with the life of Bradamante, and elements of duality characterize this complex relationship she has to her past and to her authentic self.
Bradamante’s transformation into Sister Theodora, the nun who is writing the narration of the story, is another instance of contorted doubling within the novel. This text itself forms the boundary between Bradamante and Theodora, but also the connection between the two; it is both the way she atones for her gendered transgressions, and how she maintains contact with her suppressed identity. The distance Theodora creates between her conventionally feminine guise and her past queer identity exemplifies the way this trauma has convoluted her relationship with herself. Her faith in true knighthood falters when she experiences her sexual trauma, and she reconstructs the way she presents to the world in response. It is not only her vocation that she transforms, but her disposition, her knowledge, and her relationship with her sexuality. Bradamante, to survive, internalizes what is perceived as her gendered transgressions and becomes the type of woman that does not rebel against the societal conventions of womanhood. As Theodora, she uses assertions of her worldly innocence as protection within her narrative while she unflinchingly details her experiences as Bradamante. This doubling that she manifests functions to help her process her trauma and regain some sense of control, without reliving her experience at such close proximity. The internalization of her difference is evident in the distance she puts between her role as Theodora and her lived experience as Bradamante. She has emotionally separated herself from her past to the extent that she can relate the experience of her assault without reliving it as Bradamante. Like the mise en abyme of Agilulf’s shield, the interiority of her identity gives insight into her exterior reality. This internalization reveals another facet of the constraints of conventional femininity: the role of the self in regulating binary gender expression. At some point in her existence as Theodora, it is not only the society around her that determines the way she ought to express her gender—it is her own perception of what will preserve her and keep her interior self safe from further harm.
Theodora relies on the reader’s perceptions to maintain the illusion of her conventionally gendered status. She does not simply relate the story of Bradamante and Agilulf—which she claims comes from old documents and hearsay rather than her own lived experience; she also punctuates the narrative with assurances about her feminine identity as Theodora. She withholds the truth of her connection to Bradamante from the reader, and she attests to her own sexual innocence and lack of worldly knowledge. When she first acknowledges herself as the narrator of the story, she relates that as part of her penance she must, “describe that greatest of mortal follies, the passion of love, from which my vow, the cloister and my natural shyness have saved me til now.” She insists that the only vague notions she has of sex come from young women who escape to the abbey after becoming pregnant or being raped. (61) In her life as Bradamante, however, she had “strong amorous appetites” for warriors she deemed up to her standard of excellence. (63) This declaration of her sexual innocence acts to distance herself from her trauma, but also to assert her new identity as an exemplar of socially sanctioned womanhood.
Theodora makes a similar assertion of inexperience with the violence of the world, which of course she has been exposed to as a knight. She claims that her knowledge of the world is limited to the activity of the domestic sphere—that which is appropriate for her to know as a conventionally gendered woman. She lists the life experience she and her fellow nuns have, at first mundane and pastoral: religious ceremonies, prayer, gardening, and harvest practices—but then continues with instances of violence that occur within this domestic sphere. She insists that besides: “slavery, incest, fires, hangings, invasion, sacking, rape, and pestilence, we have had no experience…. What can a poor nun know of the world? So, I proceed laboriously with this tale whose narration I have undertaken as a penance.” (34) This assertion functions to insulate Theodora’s scope of knowledge from the masculine world, but also calls into question the arbitrary nature of this classification of gendered knowledge. Although these experiences all occur in what is considered a domestic and feminized domain, so many of them are horrific and violent events. The two realms—the masculine world of knighthood and the feminine world of the cloister—are connected by violence just as Bradamante and Theodora are connected by their shared trauma.
Theodora uses her claims of inexperience and the subsequent readers’ perception to recreate a version of herself that fits within a societally gendered body; as Bradamante, she was in search of “a different way of existing,” (64) but that version of her was penalized for her deviation. In many ways, she loses touch with the authentic expression of her identity—only preserving connection with Bradamante through her distanced writings of her. To achieve this preservation, Theodora reforms herself within definite and socially defined parameters. Agilulf, because of his lack of physical body, only maintained consciousness because he “pitched the tension of his will” against something certain and absolute. In periods of liminality—while the other knights slept, in the half-light of dawn, in the anticipatory moments before battle—he had to brace himself against some ritual that kept him from “plunging into the void.” (20) Bradamante’s process of recreating herself within the constraints of conventional femininity serves a similar purpose; while her trauma made her feel unsafe as her past self, her new identity becomes something she can pitch the tension of her will against to preserve the parts of herself that are uncertain, unconventional, and indefinite. It allows her to safely come to an understanding of what happened to her and regain some sense of her own power.
During Sister Theodora’s time in the abbey, Raimbaut has been travelling all over the country in search of her. When he finds her, she responds to him in a way that drastically contrasts her prior opinion of him. Rather than rebuke or attack him, she professes her excitement at his arrival. She mounts his horse with him, and they leave the abbey together. She proclaims, “When I shut myself in here I was desperate with love for Agilulf, now I burn for the young and passionate Raimbaut.” (140) This reversal functions as another element of her constructed feminine identity as Theodora. Her infatuation with Agilulf—a being who was neither biologically male nor female—was expelled not only through Agilulf’s dissolution, but through Raimbaut’s assault of her disguised as the ungendered knight. When reforming herself to fit within a socialized feminine identity, Theodora suppresses her queer desires and passively accepts the conventionally masculine suiter who pursues her. As she rides with him away from the abbey, however, she acknowledges that her reason for accepting this proposition from Raimbaut is to regain the possibility of adventuring like she did as Bradamante. Although still within the constraints of a binary, feminine identity, Theodora seeks elements of the identity she has labored over concealing—and Raimbaut is the means to accessing that part of herself again. She then suggests that travelling with Raimbaut is a temporary solution—that she knows a future with him will not satisfy her, and therefore she doesn’t even bid the abbess goodbye. She knows at some point she will return to the cloister, come to a deeper understanding of herself, and transform into something new. She ends her narration ambiguously: she simply states, “But it will be different now…it will be…” Here she allows herself to imagine her future as indefinite, uncertain, and ambiguous. Although she still maintains her binary femininity, she knows that her identity is not stagnant; she is simply inhabiting one ephemeral phase of her being on her quest to find the freedom she desires.
Calvino’s The Nonexistent Knight constructs a complicated reflection of identity and existence, trauma and power. As the narrator, Theodora has full control over the story she is conveying to the reader and uses it to hide and alter information—revealing herself time and again as something unexpected. As her conventionally feminine alter ego, Bradamante loses some power over her non-binary gender embodiment but regains some sense of power over her trauma. She uses her transformation to understand what has happened to her, and to work toward reclaiming her authentic identity. The recurrent use of mirrored imaged, contorted doubles, and illusion work to deepen and complicate the relationships the characters have with their own existence and with the power structures that prevail around them. Theodora muses that: “The will and determination to exist, to leave a trace, to rub up against all that existed, was not wholly used since there were many who did nothing about it—from poverty or ignorance or simply from finding things bearable as they were—and so a certain amount was lost into the void.” Although Bradamante’s identity is suppressed, transforms, and reveals itself in unexpected ways, the tale she relates as Theodora is one of preservation and survival. True knighthood—exact, honorable, and unrestricted by gender—does not disappear with the dissolution of Agilulf’s soul, or with the assault of Bradamante. It is internalized, reflected infinitely inward, until it can once more be borne to the world. Under the identity of Sister Theodora, Bradamante pushes back against the way her world restricts her, insuring she is not lost to the void.
honey gaze 