Revelling in wordplay and ambiguous meanings, each fantastical tale nevertheless contains some kernel of insight, demands to be mulled upon and relished, to be revisited again and again. Kublai Khan is intensely aware that his empire is fading, that power and control are slipping out of his mortal hands. Seeking to learn about his kingdom from his seat of power, Kublai Khan orders Polo to regale him with accounts of cities that lie within his vast realm. Exploring connections between nature, culture, and identity. I loved the homage to the original in that story. Italo Calvino (/ k æ l ˈ v iː n oʊ /, also US: / k ɑː l ˈ-/, Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Initially the two communicate without a common language, with Polo recounting his tales through objects acquired during his travels, pantomimes the emperor has to interpret, gestures that signify wonder or horror. He falls silent, though, when Kublai asks him if he has ever seen a city resembling the ancient Chinese capital of Kin-sai, which is notable for “the bridges arching over the canals, the princely palaces whose marble doorsteps were immersed in the water, the bustle of light craft zigzagging, driven by long oars, the boats unloading baskets of vegetables at the market squares, the balconies, platforms, domes, campaniles, island gardens glowing green in the lagoon’s grayness.” As any Italian reader (and many a foreign tourist) would recognize, Kin-sai is a double of Venice. “In the center of Fedora, that gray stone metropolis, stands a metal building with a crystal globe in every room. Journey to the Far Side: There's a Hair in my Dirt! Calvino’s cities are not mere descriptions of fantastical physical spaces, but also temporal and historical entities that morph over time. Some of the tales dig deeper, becoming vehicles for Calvino to insert some sly or pointed piece of commentary. Calvino was a region in the southern hemisphere of the Veda system moon Delta 2. Reading Invisible Cities is akin to visiting a candy store: The selection is marvellous, the colours are vivid, flavours burst, sensations abound. In writing this piece about Invisible Cities, I feel like I am too coming short in communicating its virtues. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Each chapter is a gemlike prose poem describing an emblematic city, replete with imagery from Polo’s travels and from The Thousand and One Nights. Several times it decayed, then burgeoned again, always keeping the first Clarice as an unparalleled model of every splendor, compared to which the city’s present state can only cause more sighs at every fading of the stars.”. The Complete Cosmicomics is a mixed bag of pleasures. Baucis is built on slender stilts with the premise that its inhabitants are either so disgusted by the earth that they avoid touching it or are so awed that they spend every moment looking down at it in awe (Cities & Eyes 3). Women lead pumas on leashes down the street; a group of men build a city inspired by a common dream of a naked woman fleeing them; lucky travelers can be invited to revel in odalisques’ baths. There are personal truths I have built for myself from memories…from books I’ve read, people I’ve known, things I’ve experienced, things I’ve observed about the world, past trauma revisited to the present. Calvino had moved to Paris in 1967, and he soon became a member of the experimental “Oulipo” group that we’ve already encountered in the work of Georges Perec. What amazing illustrations. Even when lovers twist their naked bodies, skin against skin, seeking the position that will give one the most pleasure in the other, even when murderers plunge the knife into the black veins of the neck and more clotted blood pours out the more they press the blade that slips between the tendons, it is not so much their copulating or murdering that matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror. They even speculate upon the possibility that the exchange may be occurring two non-existent people: “Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars nicknamed Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; as they sift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them.”. In his magical, unclassifiable book, Calvino imagines a series of contemplative conversations between Polo and Kublai Khan in the emperor’s twilit garden, during the years when the Venetian was (or claimed to have been) a roving ambassador for the Mongol emperor. ( Log Out / Calvino’s text crosses the borders between past and present, East and West, utopia and dystopia, viewing the modern world through multiple lenses of worlds elsewhere. “Whatever country my words may evoke around you, you will see it from such a vantage point, even if instead of the place there is a village on pilings and the breeze carries the stench of a muddy estuary.”. Do people only hear and understand only what they know and have experienced? It was almost like a surreal piece of history woven into myth or vice versa.