The following text is from Archibald Colquhoun’s translation of Italo Calvino’s 1957 novel The Baron in the Trees.
Cosimo is sitting high in the branches of a large oak tree outside his family’s home.
From the tree Cosimo looked at the world; everything seen from up there was different, which was fun in itself. The alley took on a new aspect, and so did the flower beds, the hortensias, the camellias, the iron table for coffee in the garden. Farther away, the tops of the trees thinned out and the kitchen garden merged into little terraced fields propped by stone walls; the middle ground was dark with olive trees, and beyond that the village of Ombrosa thrust up roofs of slate and faded brick, and down at the port ships’ masts.
Cosimo is sitting high in the branches of a large oak tree outside his family’s home.
From the tree Cosimo looked at the world; everything seen from up there was different, which was fun in itself. The alley took on a new aspect, and so did the flower beds, the hortensias, the camellias, the iron table for coffee in the garden. Farther away, the tops of the trees thinned out and the kitchen garden merged into little terraced fields propped by stone walls; the middle ground was dark with olive trees, and beyond that the village of Ombrosa thrust up roofs of slate and faded brick, and down at the port ships’ masts.