Title of the book: Invisible Cities
Author: Italo Calvino
Introduction
The book was first published in 1972, and later translated from the Italian by William Weaver. Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in San Remo, Italy. He is an essayist and journalist as well as a novelist. The book was published in Picador. In 1973 Italo Calvino won the prestigious Italian literary award, the Premio Feltrinelli.
Review
The book explores imagination and the imaginable through description of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly having merchants to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems of 55 cities, apparently narrated by Polo. Short dialogues between the two characters are interspersed every five to ten cities and are used to discuss various ideas presented by the cities on a wide range of topics including linguistics and human nature.
Marco Polo and Kublai Khan do not speak the same language. When Polo is explaining the various cities, he uses objects from the city to tell the story. The implication is that that each character understands the other through their own interpretation of what they are saying. They literally are not speaking the same language, which leaves many decisions for the individual reader.
The book gives a strong moral value in the end to the readers, as in the book said by Polo, as in this review phrased below.
And Polo said: ‘the inferno of living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.’
The above phrase is addressed to the great king; it reminds him that acceptance is easier than bringing a change in his desire for a modern city.
The book, because of its approach to the imaginative potentialities of cities, has been used by architects and artists to visualize how cities can be, their secret folds, where the human imagination is not necessarily limited by the laws of physics or the limitations of modern urban theory. It offers an alternative approach to thinking about cities, how they are formed and how they function.
Invisible Cities
Cities and Memory
Diomira the massive city, Isidora the city with a youth mentality, Zaira the city with its memory in vain, Zora the forgotten city and Maurilia the city with a new memory.
Cities and Desire
Anastasia a treacherous city which traps your desire and empties your pocket, Despina a piece of paradise between the two desert the ocean and the sand, Fedora a city which desires another city and Zobeide a city built to capture the object in the dream of the people.
Cities and Sign
Tamara the city full of sign boards, Zirma the city which repeats itself that it’s redundant, Zoe the city with a different language which does not speak of inside or outside, Hypatia the city underwater and Olivia with a spirit of free life and refined civilization.
Thin Cities
Isaura the concentric city on water, Zenobia the city on high pilings of a dry bed, Armilla the unfinished city, Sophronia a city with two halves one permanent and one temporary and Octavia the spider web city.
Trading Cities
Euphemia the city where memories are traded every solstice and equinox, Chole the city crowded with strangers, Eutropia the city on a chessboard which repeats the same scenes with actors interchanged, Ersilia the city of strings and Esmeralda the city of waters where the shortest distance is zigzags.
Cities and Eyes
Valdrada the ying-yang city with a reflection, Zemrude the city with no return route, Baucis the city up in the clouds on stilts, Phyllis the city which plays with your eye and Moriana the city only a face and its obverse.
Cities and Names
Aglaura the city that speaks of has much of what is needed to exist, Leandra the city which is always left behind, Pyrrha the city high above the bay, Clarice a city which has always been only a confusion of obsolete and Irene the city in a distance.
Cities and the Dead
Melania the unwell city, Adelma city of the dead, Eusapia twin city of life and dead, Argia the city underground and Lavdomia the city of the unborn.
Cities and the Sky
Eudoxia the city which spreads both upwards and downwards with winding alleys, Beersheba the celestial city, Thekla a city under construction, Perinthia the city of the astrologers and Andria a city where its best to remain motionless.
Continuous Cities
Leonia the city surrounded by enormous piles of garbage, Trade, Procopia, Cecilia illustrious city and Penthesilea a city with no focus or central point.
Hidden Cities
Olinda city grows like the concentric circles on a tree trunk; Raissa an unhappy city contains a happy city, Marozia in search of salvation, Theodora, Berenice an unjust city w
