In Italo Calvino’s 1957 novel, The Baron in the Trees, the book’s main protagonist, a nobleman’s son called Cosimo, climbs into a tree in the family’s Italian garden. He clambers through the branches into the forest beyond, to live out his adventures in the canopy, running from the oaks to the olives to the beech trees in a childlike wonderland. It is both a fairytale and parable, and an elegy to arboreal paradise before we cut it down. “I don’t know if it’s true that, as you read in books, in olden days a monkey that left Rome jumping from tree to tree could reach Spain without touching the ground,” observes the book’s narrator.
在伊塔洛·卡尔维诺(Italo Calvino)1957年的小说《树上的男爵》(The Baron in the Trees)中，书的主角，一个名叫科西莫的贵族子弟，爬上了家里意大利花园的一棵树。他爬过树枝进入远处的森林，在树冠上经历他的冒险，在孩子般的仙境中从橡树到橄榄再到山毛榉树。这既是一个童话，也是一个寓言，是在我们砍倒它之前，对树木天堂的挽歌。“我不知道这是不是真的，就像你在书中读到的那样，在古代，一只离开罗马的猴子从一棵树跳到另一棵树上，不碰地面就能到达西班牙，”书中的叙述者评论道。