Cicero the Barbarian

Abstract

Late Into The Night, I Sit Alone in My Study, Listening. in This, I Am Not Unlike The Title Character of Italo Calvino's “A King Listens,” one of three stories that make up hisUnder a Jaguar Sun, first published as a collection in 1986. The aim of Calvino's king is the acoustic surveillance of his realm, every corner of which is connected to the throne room by a twisting network of resonant tubes. Day in, day out, he listens, learning much, but feeling very little.This royal listener would later capture the imagination of the philosopher Adriana Cavarero, who opens her bookFor More than One Voicewith a close reading of the story. For Cavarero, Calvino's king is very much like philosophy in its traditional Western form, listening for bodiless, universallogos, the Greek word for “word” that ancient philosophy uses to designate the rational order of the cosmos. In the story, the king is brought to his knees, suddenly and unexpectedly, by the sound of a woman singing. For Cavarero, this single, singular voice embodies the particularity that philosophy traditionally excludes in the name of the universal.