I think this short fiction is quite beautifully drawn, a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Kahn that consists mostly of one enormous travelogue consisting of cities, their differences, and eventually, only their consistencies and made-made up features.

There's nothing much more to it except cities and brief descriptions of each, from ancient all the way to modern cities and even cities magical and purely imaginary. On a few occasions, there's a philosophical discussion about what is perceived in reality and what is expected, of ennui and excitement, of grief and happiness, but in the end, it's all just cities.

It's enjoyable for what it is. It's almost purely description in conversation. Very little plot or character development, but we do get a little.

Even so, not bad, not bad.

Invisible Cities: Philosophical sketches of imaginary cities
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Italo Calvino has long been on my list of foreign writers of the fantastic who have been deeply influential to SFF writers while remaining only tangential to the genre. This would include the great Jorge Luis Borges, as well as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. All these writers revel in philosophical musings, magic realism, and intellectual play. They belong to the deeper end of the fantastic literature swimming pool, but adventurous readers and authors have often plunged into those depths to one degree or another.

Invisible Cities was first published in Italian in 1972 but appeared in English in 1974 and was a surprise nominee for the Nebula Award in 1976. It is a unique and almost unclassifiable work, a 165-page collection of brief 1-2 page vignettes much like prose poems, describing 55 cities all with women’s names. The book’s structure is very formalized, being further broken down into 11 themes: Cities & Memory, Cities & Desire, Cities & Signs, Thin Cities, Trading Cities, Cities & Eyes, Cities & Names, Cities & the Dead, Cities & the Sky, Continuous Cities, and Hidden Cities. Given the number of hidden cities embedded in the stories, the real total is much higher.

Each vignette is brief and without characters — it simply described each city in poetic imagery. It is difficult to do justice to the incredible variety of cities that Calvino conjures from his imagination, so I will choose a single sample at random. Essentially any passage in the book is quotable, but conversely no single passage can encompass the myriad ideas and emotions that the book explores and conjures up. Here is an early passage from Cities & Desire:

But with all this, I would not be telling you the city’s true essence; for while the description of Anastasia awakens desires one at a time only to force you to stifle them, when you are in the heart of Anastasia one morning your desires waken all at once and surround you. The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave.

These stories are then framed by a recurring dialogue between an aged Kublai Khan and young adventurer Marco Polo. Polo is asked by the Khan to regale him with exotic tales of his travels to the far parts of the Khan’s vast empire, but as Invisible Cities progresses, Khan begins to question the reality of many of Polo’s more fantastic tales, and also turns the tables and offers his own ideas of imaginary cities. Their discussion becomes increasingly metaphysical, as the veracity of these cities is questioned, along with the capacity for language to capture the essence of these fabulous places. There is much debate over the nature of storytelling, imagination, and metaphysics. Again, a brief sample:

Marco Polo — It has neither name nor place. I shall repeat the reason why I was describing it to you: from the number of imaginable cities we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse. With cities, it is as with dreams; everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like daydreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

The cities that Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan are exactly that — dreams of the imagination, depictions of ideas, emotions, philosophies, semiotics, and explorations of language and poetry. So the book itself can be entered at any point, and any single conclusion may point to one aspect of the overall meaning of the book but will never encompass it completely.

In more direct terms, the significance of this book cannot be narrowed to a single idea or phrase, but it touches on all these things, a literary experiment by a very daring intellect, and each reader will have varying emotional reactions to Invisible Cities. If that sounds like something you would like to try it should be a very rewarding experience (5 stars in that case). If you prefer more traditional characters and plot-based storytelling, you will be probably be disappointed (3 stars in that case). Overall, I will assign it 4 stars.

Marco Polo dialogues with Kublai Khan, telling him how he feels about the imaginary cities he has visited. Each small chapter composes them: towns and memory, cities and desire, tapered cities, cities and gaze, and cities and the dead, with a few variations. It would be necessary to provide a decoder to believe that to appreciate this text better. Unfortunately, I had not been transported as hoped; he slightly annoyed me.

...A five star review...

I hate flying. The claustrophobia of it. So usually when I return to Italy after visiting London I catch the train to Paris and then the night train to Venice. That’s my little extravagance. I catch the night train to Venice and not Florence for one moment. The moment of walking out of the station of Santa Lucia and beholding the Grand Canal. I sit on the steps and let all the activity on the canal wash through me. I’m not sure why this moment means so much to me. It’s not a moment I can or even want to explain. I remember a line from a novel I read where a character gazing out at the Grand Canal says, “I keep wondering when all this will happen to me.” Perhaps that’s it, Venice articulates some deep desire we all have or evokes a memory of something that has never quite happened.

Reading this for a second time is a bit like visiting Venice for a second time. A little bit of the magic fades but in compensation you notice lots of wonders you missed the first time. I read it in English this time. Now and again the writing seemed a bit clunky – “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here.” That “if there is one” is a bit of an eyesore. But it’s no less clunky in Italian - L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno – you can’t blame the translator for translating it word for word instead of trying to improve the fluency of Calvino’s prose. .

This is probably the greatest book ever written about tourism, about the urge to escape the confines of where we live. Essentially Marco Polo is a tourist. And we all as tourists need an audience to show the images of our travels to. Kublai Khan is the audience, the vicarious tourist. He’s also a warlord, and by inference every warlord intent on conquering new territory is a tourist and every tourist is a warlord in embryo. We all want to conquer new lands. We’re all hungry for new discoveries, new exotic possessions. But we all eventually have to go home. Calvino is constantly making the point that every city is essentially what we bring to it. He’s brilliant at capturing the deep division of perspective between the tourist and long term inhabitant. Florentines are famous for never looking at the city’s monuments. It’s become how they distinguish themselves from the tourist. They turn a blind eye. They stare at their phones while walking across Piazza della Signoria. Venice has almost been turned into a romance theme park – it’s called upon to provide a standard collection of microwaved emotions as efficiently as an atm provides cash. One of the wonders of Venice now is the people who live there. You need them to understand something of the true nature of the city. To get behind the postcard façade. There are times when it’s much more rewarding to watch a man bump a barrow down the steps of a nondescript bridge than gaze blankly at the façade of San Marco. Sometimes it’s these kinds of details that bring a place alive for us. Calvino’s deployment of these telling details is probably this book’s most stellar achievement and what makes it such a joy to read.

...An alternative four star review...

Calvino is one of the sacred cows of literature. He’s one of those writers who we’re tempted to pretend to like more than we really do, like Proust and Joyce, for fear of revealing some intellectual inadequacy. Interestingly for me, Virginia Woolf still isn’t one of these scared cows. When people don’t like Woolf they have more of a license to vent their scorn. It still hasn’t been officially recognised that Woolf is a great writer, by men at any rate. Often when there’s a list of the best novels ever written Woolf won’t feature at all, or if she does it’ll be her lesser but easier books like Mrs Dalloway or A Room of One's Own that makes the list. (To be fair her genius is recognised in Italy and France; it’s in the UK she tends to divide opinion.)

So Invisible Cities vs The Waves. Invisible Cities is absolutely brilliant and inspired for the first fifty pages. But then it wanes a bit, gets a bit repetitive. Seems odd to say about a book of only 145 pages but might it have been better had it been a bit shorter? The contents page has the appearance of some mathematical formula, like a star map, so perhaps there’s some hidden genius in the design of this book. But if there is I didn’t get it and nor did anyone else judging by the few reviews I’ve read. It felt to me like the number of invisible cities we get was random and some were uninspired. If you took a single page out of The Waves it would collapse. You could take ten pages out of Invisible Cities without it being noticed. Also now and again Calvino is perhaps guilty of the kind of vacuous platitudes you’ll find strewn throughout the pages of The Alchemist. “Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.” That kind of thing. Looks great if you skim read it; becomes only a half-truth if you stop to think about it. So for me, The Waves wins over Invisible Cities in a heavyweight wrestling match.

...Back to tourism...

Once upon a time the world was getting smaller. Now it’s getting bigger again as terrorism creates more and more no go areas. You could say terrorism is a war on tourism. It’s diminishing one of the biggest cultural phenomenon of our times. That’s probably the most significant change terrorism is making to the world. It’s making us think twice about travelling. I watched a heartbreaking report from Aleppo last night –a once magical town that none of us will ever see again. How long before it becomes one of Calvino’s Invisible Cities?

Poetically written novella featuring an imagined conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. It is atmospheric. Some “cities” are places that sound wonderful – a place to go visit, while others are dilapidated and unpleasant. The cities described by Marco Polo turn out to be specific aspects of a singular city. I treated it as a meditation, reading it in small bits and pieces, and re-reading segments. This is my preferred type of experimental fiction. The language flows beautifully. It is not anything like a traditional story, but I enjoyed it.

Το βιβλίο αυτό το διαβάζεις μια φορά στα γρήγορα (σαν να θέλεις να το καταπιείς ολόκληρο) και μετά το ξαναδιαβάζεις πολλές πολλές φορές. Γραμμένο σε μορφή αφήγησης, ο Μάρκο Πόλο (aka ο αναζητητής) περιγράφει στο Μεγάλο Χαν τις πόλεις που είδε στις περιηγήσεις του.

Συνολικά περιγράφονται 55 πόλεις, όλες με γυναικεία ονόματα, όπου όλες έχουν κάποιο ιδιαίτερο χαρακτηριστικό. Κατά κάποιον τρόπο, όλες είναι ίδιες μεταξύ τους, μα συνάμα και τελείως διαφορετικές. Με σχεδόν ποιητικό λόγο ο Καλβίνο περιγράφει εξαιρετικά τις πόλεις του, με τις εικόνες να κατακλύζουν το μυαλό του αναγνώστη. Προσωπικά, ομολογώ ότι ξεκίνησα να διαβάζω ιστορίες fantasy ακριβώς γι' αυτό το σύμπαν που είχε δημιουργήσει ο συγγραφέας για τους ήρωές του: πολλές φορές μάλιστα έχω ανεχθεί μια μέτρια ιστορία γιατί είχα συγκλονιστεί με την πόλη και το σκηνικό. Εδώ παρουσιάζονται μόνο οι πόλεις, όπου αφήνεται στον καθένα μας να προσθέσει την ιστορία! Για τον ίδιο λόγο έχω καθίσει να παρακολουθήσω video games στρατηγικής ακριβώς για τα υπέροχα γραφικά των κόσμων των ηρώων!

Το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο έχει αποτελέσει αφορμή για πολλά έργα τέχνης (στο deviantart έχω δει διάφορες εκδοχές των πόλεων), ενώ φυσικά θα μπορούσε να αποτελέσει αφορμή και για πολλές ακόμα εκδοχές τέχνης.

Υπάρχουν και πολλά φιλοσοφικού τύπου ερωτήματα που διαχέονται, καθώς βασικός στόχος του συγγραφέα ήταν "να ανακαλύψει τις κρυφές αιτίες που οδήγησαν τους ανθρώπους να ζήσουν στις πόλεις, αιτίες που μπορούν να ισχύουν πέρα και πάνω από οποιαδήποτε κρίση" (από το οπισθόφυλλο)

Κλείνω με τις τελευταίες φράσεις του βιβλίου: "Η κόλαση των ζωντανών δεν είναι κάτι που αφορά το μέλλον: αν υπάρχει μια κόλαση, είναι αυτή που υπάρχει ήδη εδώ, η κόλαση που κατοικούμε καθημερινά, που διαμορφώνουμε με τη συμβίωσή μας. Δύο τρόποι υπάρχουν για να μην υποφέρουμε. Ο πρώτος είναι για πολλούς εύκολος: να αποδεχθούν την κόλαση και να γίνουν τμήμα της μέχρι να καταλήξουν να μην βλέπουν πια. Ο δεύτερος είναι επικίνδυνος και απαιτεί συνεχή προσοχή και διάθεση για μάθηση: να προσπαθήσουμε και να μάθουμε να αναγνωρίζου��ε ποιος και τι, μέσα στην κόλαση, δεν είναι κόλαση, και να του δώσουμε διάρκεια, να του δώσουμε χώρο".

کالوینو و ذهن محشرش!
توی این کتاب میاد شهرهای مختلفی رو از زبون مارکوپولو تعریف می‌کنه. نوشته‌هایی تکه‌تکه و ریز درباره شهرهایی عجیب با خصوصیات خاص. درواقع این شهرها، همان آدم‌ها هستند. آدمهایی با ویژگی‌های خاص و پیش‌بینی‌نشدنی.
با خوندن هر شهر، می‌شه نمادسازی‌هایی ذهنی انجام داد و چیزهای مختلف رو به بخش‌های مختلف روح انسان و زندگی و فلسفه نسبت داد.
و اما جمله پایانی این کتاب که واقعن به‌فکرفروبرنده‌س و نیاز به کشف داره:

برای آسودن از رنج‌ آن - جهنمِ زندگی- دو راه است
راه اول برای بسیاری آدم‌ها ساده است و عبارتست از قبول آن شرایط و جزئی از آن شدن، تا جایی که دیگر وجودش حس نشود. راه دوم راهی پرخطر است و نیازمند توجه و آموزش مستمر، و در جستجو و بازشناسی آنچه و آنکس که در میان جهنم، جهنمی نیست و سپس تداوم بخشیدن و فضا دادن به آن چیز یا آن شخص، خلاصه می‌شود.

Given the subject matter—um, descriptions of cities—I wasn’t expecting this book to affect me on such a personal, visceral level. But during the final city description and again in Marco Polo’s closing dialogue with Kublai Khan, I got serious chills. And to put that in perspective, I was finishing it outside (90+ degrees) George Bush Intercontinental Houston, or whatever the hell that airport’s called. Now this effect may have been compounded by the fact that I was also listening to the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. Despite the inarguable greatness of Basil Poledouris’ score, however, I have no doubt that it was this book that ultimately moved me to an epidermal state that has no business budding on a summer day in Texas. It’s that good—a philosophical gem and a gratifying guide for the adventurous mind and wonder-full spirit.

It took two or three city descriptions for me to realize that Marco Polo wasn't describing cities so much as the human mind and experience. Rather than take away from the beautiful physicality of the descriptions, however, this gives the book a limitless pleasure and depth. How to describe it? It's like a children's book for adults. There's this magical other-world, other-time feel that's complex and meaningful and gorgeous. Think about a fairy tale with its shiny storyline, ex facie, that's also serving up something edifying and subtextual. Invisible Cities is the grown-up version. And the descriptions are often just curious and strange enough that you can come away with multiple meanings, in part determined by your current mental/emotional state. Sometimes I was too puzzled or infatuated with the physical description to divine much of anything coherent, but this serves to make the inevitable reread that much more appealing. As Calvino via Polo tells us, it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear. Amen.

I live in a city. It's not small, neither big but it's always happening. It's sheltered with huge green trees and the city looks like an emerald. When seasons change, the city changes its colors. It then resembles to red rubies or molten gold. I wish it'd be lapis lazuli once in a year. My city is strange in a way. It's a city I've always dreamt of since childhood when I just knew it by name. Accidentally I stumbled into it and never left. But I feel it hypnotized me, pulled me towards it and never allowed me to leave. I settled in here and except few loved ones I pulled everything I have, in here. My city somehow shows me glimpses of other cities.

There's one city I recall vividly, the city of words. The reason it's called so being it always forces me to read. It makes me read; read the slogans on hoardings, the names on banners, the advertisements and signboards of doctors, or a cornered fish merchant. It makes me read a thrown away piece of newspaper sprayed on the table, wrinkled or a calendar of gone by years. It makes me read again and again the old book or a mail sent by old friend who is long forgotten or a scribbled poem in the moment of ecstasy. I know those books, mails, poems by heart now but the city has its powers and it'd force me re-read it anyhow. The last time I went there I kept on reading the signboards of roads, lane numbers and the areas, I only know names of. I wonder where that road will lead, how it will end, will I find a mother waiting for her children at houses there or a restless lovers seeking rendezvous.
There's another city I know. It makes me read too but not the words. I read situations there coz nobody there talks to each other. I try decipher the public bus driver when he puts brakes to his vehicle recklessly, halts in the way, drumming fingers on the hood of idling engine. They seem reflection of each other, the idle man and the engine. He darts his eyes around and before he catches me, I look the other ways. I see ladies shopping at the hawkers stall, bargaining and leaving with empty baskets. People stop abruptly in between the road, jamming the lanes and nobody seems to mind it. Every shopkeeper puts prices to his goods as he wishes. The children wander about in front of running vehicles and thugs but nobody cares. I do not like this city but I'm compelled to make trips there, frequently.
When I return from that city I don't like things around. So I go to another city which is velvety dark. It's like a black hole, an empty well. Its called city of hidden because it hides everyone inside so even if people are around you don't see them. The voices, even muffled ones, are absorbed by air and you don't hear them. The breeze refuses to carry the scent of sweat trickling on eyebrows of exhausted laborer or a lingering perfume of a posh lady. You feel peace there and instantly the city connects with you. Maybe because the city creates an aura of your mood and isolates you in your own wish. You are encased in what you want, which is desolate and bereft.
But there's one city in which I don't live neither do I go to. The city, rather, stays inside me. There's no reading inside this city. Everything is so intrinsic that I don't need to read or listen to it. There is clamor so great that it reveals everything. Naturally its opposition of the city of hidden. There's chaos in air, in sky, in woods and I find it too complex to comprehend. It changes its color before I see it. It shifts its hoarding before I know what was hanging there earlier. It stops abruptly before I realize the stealthy eyes of someone speaking to me. My strange city, where I live, which I dreamt of since childhood travels too and shows me these glimpses but yet it binds me to itself, making me take shelter in its dark green shadows in harsh summer.

Com'è bella la città

Ci sono libri scritti per trasmettere significati attraverso una trama più o meno complessa, altri libri che stimolano la nostra immaginazione descrivendo sensazioni e libri che fanno riflettere per i pensieri e le massime che riportano.

Calvino in questo libro del 1972 non segue queste categorie, ma si "limita" a descrivere cose immaginarie per spingerci a riflettere sulle cose reali.

Dando voce a Marco Polo e al Kublai Khan, Calvino magnifica luoghi immaginari forse per spingerci a pensare al nostro mondo in cui l'innovazione è spinta agli eccessi, il consumismo sfrenato e sprecone, la produzione di spazzatura è continua e irrefrenabile , l'architettura poco funzionale e orribile.

Luoghi quasi invivibili quindi le nostre città. Qual è la soluzione per Calvino?

“Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l’inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. ll secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere che cosa, in mezzo all’inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio”

E' molto innovativo Calvino nella costruzione della struttura di questo libro. La narrazione, originale, fantasiosa e poco concreta, è slegata e piena di metafore e di prospettive irreali o insolite. E' un libro questo i cui contenuti vanno degustati a piccoli morsi, con pazienza, per cogliere tutte le sfumature di sapore, i profumi e gli aromi.
Quella pazienza che, sfortunatamente, evidentemente non ho.

Suggestivo, innovativo, moderno, ermetico. Frasi bellissime e suggestive che però mi hanno trasmesso ben poco e che mi hanno negato l'indispensabile piacere di lettura.

O carte care se citește de plăcere, fragmentară și dezordonată: fabulosul (în care excelează Marco Polo) se intersectează cu poezia (în care excelează Italo Calvino) și, adeseori, cu înțelepciunea (în care excelează hanul Kubilai).

Cartea poate fi citită pe sărite, ca Rayuela lui Julio Cortázar, căci prezentarea orașelor „invizibile” nu urmează vreo ordine necesară, iar clasificarea lor e de tipul celei din enciclopedia chinezească, consultată (numai) de Jorge Luis Borges. O astfel de operă provine din parabolele lui Kafka și din Cartea ființelor imaginare, editată de același Borges (în colaborare cu Margarita Guerrero). Rezultatul e artificios și amuzant. Inutil să adaug că Marco Polo prezintă 55 de așezări, grupate în 11 secțiuni, asta au constatat deja toți cronicarii.

Conversația dintre Kubilai și Marco Polo se desfășoară în amurgul imperiului fără sfîrșit, controlat foarte vag de un han indiferent, preocupat mai degrabă de chestiuni metafizice decît de administrație. Acum căpetenia mongolă a înțeles că imperiul lui e în disoluție, că va deveni cît de curînd „o ruină fără sfîrșit”, dacă nu a devenit deja: „Știu prea bine că imperiul meu putrezește ca un hoit într-o mlaștină”. El e prea „măcinat de corupție ca sceptrul hanului să-l mai poată salva”. În definitiv, imperiul lui Kubilai are soarta oricărei construcții umane. Doar relatările lui Marco Polo îi pot oferi suveranului dezamăgit ceva care nu mai poate fi distrus, un șir incoruptibil de orașe a cărui / căror existență se întemeiază doar pe cuvinte. Și numai cuvintele nu amăgesc, de vreme ce realitățile se arată înșelătoare.

Puterea de invenție a naratorului provine din dorință și frustrare. Toate orașele au nume feminine. Cîteva sînt locuite de femei. În Isidora, străinul care ezită între două femei o întîlnește fără greș pe a treia, dar acest noroc nu-i folosește la nimic, pentru că străinul care a intrat în oraș e deja foarte bătrîn (deși se visează tînăr). În Despina, toate ferestrele de la parter sînt luminate și „în fiecare stă o femeie care se piaptănă”. În Zima, „o fată se plimbă cu o puma în lesă”, prin urmare, e inabordabilă. În Zobeide, bărbații au mereu și mereu același vis: zăresc o femeie care aleargă noaptea printr-un oraș necunoscut, cu părul despletit, goală, de o albeață strălucitoare. A doua zi o caută în van, femeia a dispărut. În Armilla, femeile stau tolănite în căzi de alabastru, se parfumează cu arome amețitoare sau își piaptănă pletele lungi. Și tot aici, prin canale subterane, au năvălit nimfele și naiadele. Cîntecul lor poate fi auzit în fiecare dimineață. În sfîrșit, o „vibrație desfrînată freamătă întruna în Chloe, cel mai cast oraș”.

M-am lungit. Ar mai trebui să spun că bătrînul han e un platonist, el și-a construit un model de oraș imuabil, o Formă din care pot fi deduse toate orașele sensibile. Marco Polo are o opțiune contrară: „Și eu mi-am închipuit un model de oraș din care le deduc pe toate celelalte. E un oraș făcut doar din excepții, opreliști, contradicții, incongruențe, contrasensuri”.

Deja e prea mult. Mai bine mă duc s-o visez pe femeia care aleargă despletită prin orașul necunoscut...

3 Eylül 2020 (İkinci okuma) :

Bu yıl yoğun bir Calvino yılı oldu benim için, bu nedenle ikinci kez okuduğum ve daha önce yorum yapmadığım “Görünmez Kentler” ile ilgili düşüncelerimi paylaşıyorum.

Calvino bir rüya görür, belki üstüste birkaç gece bu rüya devam eder, sonra oturur gördüğü bu rüyayı masalsı bir dille bize anlatır. Gördüğü rüya Kubilay Han ile Marco Polo’nun tarihin bir noktasında buluştuğu zamandadır yani gerçektir. Polo’nun Kubilay Han ile diyalogları ve rüyasında gördüğü kentler ise kurmacadır, Calvino’nun fantastik düş dünyasından derledikleridir. Gerçek ile kurmaca içiçedir. Ve en önemlisi şiirseldir, aşık olduğu İtalyan şiirine ve hayranlık duyduğu G. Leopardi’ye saygı duruşudur.

Tüm kurmaca kentlerin adları kadın isimlerini taşır. Calvino’nun uslubunu ve düşüncesini bilenler bunun cinsiyetçi bir yaklaşım içermediğini hemen anlarlar. Kentleri kadınlaştırmakla acaba onları gizemli kılmak mı istedi Calvino, yoksa estetik bir duyguya mı yöneldi, veya doğurgan ve bereketli olduklarını mı vurgulamak istedi ? Sanırım kentle insan ilişkisini iki erkek üzerinden (Marco Polo ve Kubilay Han) anlatmanın kısırlığını gördüğü için kadim ilişki olan kadın-erkek ilişkisiyle anlatımı uygun gördü.

Kitabın başlarında yaklaşık 50 sayfa kadar kitapla ilgili çok yararlı felsefi-edebi-tarihi açıklamalar var. Keza çok başarılı bir çeviri yapan Işıl Saatçıoğlu‘nun açıklaması da kitaba başlamadan oldukça zihin açıcı olmuş. Burada yazılanları okuyunca anlaşılıyor ki oldukça felsefi, derinliği olan bir metin söz konusu, doğu-batı sorunu, Venedik özlemi, güç ve güçsüzlük gibi benzeri birçok noktaya göndermeler yapılmış, halbuki Calvino basit, eğlenceli düş anlatımı yazmak niyetindeymiş gibi bahsediyor kitabından.

Siz okuduğunuzda nasıl anlamlar yükleyeceksiniz bilemem ama ben her kentin bir metafor, her konuşmanın bir düşünce biçimi, her tanımlamanın kentlerle özdeşleştirilen insan olduğunu, kısaca kitabın insanlık hallerini anlatan özel bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyorum. Bu düşüncemi destekleyen cümle kitapta 111. sayfada şöyle iade ediliyor; “konuşulan kent varolmak için gerekli olandan çok daha fazlasına sahipken, onun yerinde varolan kent onun kadar varolamıyor”. Buradaki “kent” yerine “insan” kelimesini koyup bir kez daha okuyun lütfen.

Okurken keyif aldım mı, şehir tanımlamalarında kendimi o şehirde hissettim mi, Kubilay Han ile Marco Polo’nun sohbetinde iki zeki adamın satranç hamlelerini gördüm mü ? Tüm bu soruların cevabı net bir evettir. Calvino’nun gerçeküstü dünyasını gerçekmişçesine anlatmasını çok seviyorum. Toplumsal gerçekçilik ile yazması o dönemlerde çok uygun ortama sahip olmasına rağmen kolaya kaçmayıp, hatta risk alarak büyülü gerçekçilik, fantastik ve gerçeküstü öyküler yazması da ayrı bir beğeni nedeni.

Belki iddialı olacak ama Calvino’nun, inanılmaz zenginlikteki eşya, nesne, cisim, meslek, yeryüzü oluşumları, taşıtlar, makinalar hatta kavram tanımlamalarını önceki kitaplarında görmediğimiz yoğunlukta bu eserinde kullanmasında bir ara ilgi duyduğu ve katıldığı Oulipo grubunun aktif üyelerinden G. Perec’in (özellikle “Şeyler” novellasının) etkisinin olduğu kanısındayım.

Bu kitap anlatılmaz, özetlenmez, okunur, beğenilmeyebilir de...