#ITALO CALVINO INVISIBLE CITIES QUOTES HOW TO#

Eventually, the merchant reveals that each of his fantastical descriptions may really be reflections of his home place of VeniceвЂ¦ Cities and Words

Captivated but skeptical of the travellerвЂ™s tales, the emperor probes and jousts with Polo during each of their exchanges. Polo tells Kublai about cities of delight and desire, cities tinged with regrets, vibrant cities, failing cities, seemingly impossible cities that defy logic and time. 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. The story loosely revolves around meetings between an aging Kublai Khan, Tartar emperor, and a young Marco Polo, Venetian merchant.

At times delightfully whimsical and intensely melancholic, Invisible Cities is a testament to the power of an author at the height of his powers to provoke, enthrall, and connect. It is a work that brushes aside conventions of form and narrative to ruminate on ideas of memory and place, touching on everything from trajectory of civilizations to the limits of communication. Even the broadest definitions of historical fiction and magical realism donвЂ™t quite fit, as CalvinoВ blends real and imagined details into a concoction of seemingly irreverent tales.В Invisible Cities is a travelogue to places that do not exist. Nor is it conventional fantasy, doing away with the worlds it creates almost as soon as it forms them. It isnвЂ™t traditional fiction on a structural level, having no story arc or a defined ending.

#ITALO CALVINO INVISIBLE CITIES QUOTES HOW TO#

In colored miniatures the a.IвЂ™m not sure how to describe Italo CalvinoвЂ™s Invisible Cities. The traveler recognizes Constantinople in the city which from three shores dominates a long strait, a narrow gulf, and an enclosed seaj he remembers that Jerusalem is set on two hills, ofunequal height, facing each otherj he has no hesitation in pointing to Samarkand and its gardens.ДЇor other cities he falls back on descriptions handed down by word of mouth, or he guesses on the basis of scant indications: and so Granada, the streaked pearl of the caliphs,' Lubeck, the neat, boreal port Timbuktu, black with ebony and white with ivory Paris, where millions of men come home every day grasping a wand of bread. He leafs through the maps before Marco Polo's eyes to put his knowledge to the test. The Great Khan owns an atlas whose drawings depict the terrestrial globe all at once and continent by continent, the borders of the most distant realms, the ships' routes, the coastlines, the maps of the most illustrious metropolises and of the most opulent ports. And I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again.' 'At times 1 feel your fIOice is reaching me from far away, while 1 am priJoner of a galldy and IInlwahle present, whtre all forms of hllman society haw reached an extreme 0/ their cycle and there is 710 imagining what new forms they may assume. 'I speak and speak,' MArco says, 'bllt the liJtener retains only the words he iJ expecting, The description ofthe world to which you lend a bmetlOlent ear iJ one thing,' the description that wiD go the rounds of the groups of stewdares and gondoliers 071 the street olltside my house the day of my rellim iJ another and yet another, that which 1 might dictate late in life, if 1 were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and pilI in irom in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories, It iJ not the fIOice that commands the story: it iJ the ear, II KMblai asks MArco, 'When YOIl reltm'I to the West, will you repeat to your people the same tales you tell me?' The Great Khan owm an atlas where aillhe cities of the empire and the neighboring realms are drawn, bllilding by bllilding and street by street, with walls, rivers, bridges, harbors, clifft, He realizes thaI from Marco Polo's tales it iJ pointless to expect news of those places, which for that matter ht knows well: how at Kamballl, capital ofChina, three square cities stand one within the other, each with fOllr lemples and follr gates that are opened according to the SeaI07IS,' how 071 tht island of Java the rhinoceros rages,Д¬harging, with hiJ mllrderous horn how pearls are gathered 071 the ocean bed off the coasts of Malabar, Fts laden with logs that come down the rivers, of docks, of women at the windows.

Italo calvino invisible cities quotes