Infinite Limits

Intro to Quickness

          Quickness is not a value in itself because time can also be delayed, cyclic, or motionless. Calvino describes quickness through many different folktales and analogies. One specific tale is that of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving. In this story, the relativity of time is subject of the tale because someone who thinks it has lasted only a few hours makes a journey to another world. This motif can also be interpreted as an allegory of narrative time that cannot be measured against real time. Overall, Calvino incorporates this example with quickness because the story is capturing time, which in turn makes the reader eager to know what comes next. Here, quickness is seen as an immediate connection that writing establishes between everything existent or possible.

         It is also interesting to relate Calvino’s emblem of a horse to quickness. The horse in many ways represents speed, but not only actual speed, but also speed of mind. The horse as an emblem is one that has run through the history of literature and therefore deems very important in Calvino’s memo of quickness.