Abstract

"The Baron in the Trees" is a "long dream", the long dream of the reader who, after finishing the book, looks up in the clear sky and goes back to life, with the feeling of having found himself in the written world. Souls are such stuff as readings, and dreams, are made on. Thus, the novel seeps through us and probes us for the meaning of life, which is tantamount as dreams and which lives on dreams. As Cosimo holds his book, so the reader projects himself in the aerial shelf, made out of books and ink branches. This paper explores Cosimo's and Calvino's books, by comparing the former's imaginary shelf and the latter's real shelf: paper dreams that dissolve into «words and ideas». By doing so, these dreams come to an end. Whereas books never end.