Dimmi, Italo Calvino, a chi hai venduto l'anima per imparare a scrivere così? A Satana, alla musa Calliope, a uno spacciatore di LSD? Quale lampo divino ti ha investito per permetterti di concepire questa visionaria opera di genio?
Questo libro dovrebbe essere letto da ogni aspirante scrittore (soprattutto del genere fantasy), ma anche da ogni filosofo, politico e architetto. E io credo che lo rileggerò altre decine di volte, fino al momento in cui riuscirò a comprendere almeno una piccola parte dei significati nascosti tra le vie delle città invisibili.

Nella vita degli imperatori c'è un momento, che segue all'orgoglio per l'ampiezza sterminata dei territori che abbiamo conquistato, alla malinconia e al sollievo di sapere che presto rinunceremo a conoscerli e a comprenderli; un senso come di vuoto che ci prende una sera con l'odore degli elefanti dopo la pioggia e della cenere di sandalo che si raffredda nei bracieri; una vertigine che fa tremare i fiumi e le montagne istoriati sulla fulva groppa dei planisferi, arrotola uno sull'altro i dispacci che ci annunciano il franare degli ultimi eserciti nemici di sconfitta in sconfitta, e scrosta la ceralacca dei sigilli di re mai sentiti nominare che implorano la protezione delle nostre armate avanzanti in cambio di tributi annuali in metalli preziosi, pelli conciate e gusci di testuggine: è il momento disperato in cui si scopre che quest'impero che ci era sembrato la somma di tutte le meraviglie è uno sfacelo senza fine né forma, che la sua corruzione è troppo incancrenita perché il nostro scettro possa mettervi riparo, che il trionfo sui sovrani avversari ci ha fatto eredi della loro lunga rovina. Solo nei resoconti di Marco Polo, Kublai Kan riusciva a discernere, attraverso le muraglie e le torri destinate a crollare, la filigrana d'un disegno così sottile da sfuggire al morso delle termiti.

“Cities, like dreams, 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.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities



It was kinda cool to start reading this as I was finishing Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Reading about the historical Khan while sipping from the imagined Khan was a trip. This is a difficult book to get your mind around. At heart, it is a book of architecture, of city planning, of zones. I'm not sure if this book is framed to be a novel filled with poetry, or a poem filled with prose, or both. I think the beauty of it is its ability to float, with a surreal beauty through both the cities of the just and the unjust; through both the history of the fanciful and the prophesies of the certain. Anyway, Calvino illuminates in one book (within the confines of one white square of the chessboard and inside the silent whisper of a comma) the entire potential for man, for cities, and for the novel.

When confronted with true genius, you have two options as I see it: 1) take it on its own terms and let it transform you; or 2) kick it in the crotch and run away screaming, "eat shit, nerd." In the instance of Invisible Cities, I have chosen the first option. 

There's some strange sorcery taking place in this mother. It’s like reading a Yes album cover painted by Roger Dean, only if, you know, it wasn’t a Yes album cover by Roger Dean. The writing is as tightly tuned as a brand new Bösendorfer and no less immaculately engineered. Not a single sentence goes by that doesn’t unfold with as much internal logic as a living organism. It is perfection, and that’s not hyperbole. We’re talking ‘knock you on your ass’ beauty. When I finished that last paragraph, I actually said “fuck” out loud and just stared at the closed book for several minutes. It’s that transformative. I’m that mature.

Listen: I'm rarely at a loss for words. I'll talk myself blue in the face to an umbrella stand about books or music. This novel, this rare achievement, caught me—and my umbrella stand—unawares. It completely stripped me of irony and detachment (don't worry, they came right back) as I read slack-jawed and drooling. Many times I'd read over the miniatures I'd just finished, unconvinced that they were executed as flawlessly as they first appeared. They were, Jackson. They were, indeed, better. There are a million dreams in Cities’ scant 165-pages, and I have every reason to believe that each new reading will reveal a million more. In this way, the book is like my new literary analogue to Eno’s Oblique Strategies: I can open to any random page and find fresh inspiration or escape in the brief, impossible cities of Calvino’s fantasyscapes, equal parts Hieronymus Bosch, MC Escher, and, um, Roger Dean. (Just look up Fragile, Tales from Topographic Oceans, Yessongs, and Relayer and tell me I’m wrong! Pshit!)

Barring that, I can always punt the thing into the rain and yell, “who’s smart now, geek?” I’ll do my best to refrain.

¡Qué maravilla de libro! No sé si es propiamente una novela o una colección de miniaturas de ciudades fantásticas, a cual más bella e intrigante.

El hilo que las une son las conversaciones en que Marco Polo le habla al rey de los tártaros, Kublai Kan, de sus viajes y le reata con detalle las ciudades que ha visitado - o imaginado, que todo puede ser. La vastedad y la diversidad del Imperio los emociona y los asusta a ambos, creando una sensación de infinitud y maravilla que es difícil de explicar. También hay un juego continuo entre lo real y lo imaginado, poniendo en cuestión lo narrado, como ya ocurrió con el famoso libro de Marco Polo.

Las ciudades están clasificadas en diversas categorías: Las ciudades sutiles, Las ciudades escondidas, Las ciudades continuas... según sus características o según lo que provocan en el viajero: Las ciudades y el deseo, Las ciudades y la memoria, Las ciudades y los signos...

En todas las descripciones hay un juego intelectual y estético, a menudo complicado, que me ha hecho pensar en Borges. Es un texto riquísimo, lleno de alusiones a la literatura y la mitología, así como a lugares concretos, que se han de descifrar.

Creen empero estos habitantes que existe bajo tierra otra Bersabea, receptáculo de todo lo que tienen por despreciable e indgno, y es constante su preocupación por borrar de la Bersabea emergida todo vínculo o semejanza con la gemela inferior.

También la conversaciones entre Marco Polo y el Kan están llenas de reflexiones existenciales sobre el poder, la vida y la muerte.

En conjunto es una obra singular, llena de belleza y significados. Gracias a José Carlos Breto de @literaturainstantanea, que nos ayudó a descifrarla en su taller online.

Νιώθω πως δεν υπάρχουν λόγια να περιγράψω το μεγαλείο της σύλληψης μερικών από τα αφηγήματά του.

(Book 350 from 1001 books) - Le Citta Invisibili‬‬ = Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972. The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo.

The book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo.

The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as parables or meditations on culture, language, time, memory, death, or the general nature of human experience.

Over the nine chapters, Marco describes a total of fifty-five cities, all women's names.

The cities are divided into eleven thematic groups of five each: Cities & Memory; Cities & Desire; Cities & Signs; Thin Cities; Trading Cities; Cities & Eyes; Cities & Names; Cities & the Dead; Cities & the Sky; Continuous Cities; Hidden Cities.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «شهرهای نامرئی»؛ «شهرهای بی نشان»؛ «شهرهای ناپیدا»؛ نویسنده: ایتالو کالوینو؛ انتشاراتیها: (باغ نو، پاپیروس، کتاب خورشید، نگاه)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هفتم ماه اکتبر سال2003میلادی

عنوان: شهرهای نامرئی؛ نویسنده: ایتالو کالوینو؛ مترجم: ترانه یلدا؛ تهران، پاپیروس، سال1368؛ در152ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، باغ نو، سال1381؛ در152ص؛ شابک9647425163؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایتالیا - سده 20م

عنوان: شهرهای ناپیدا؛ نویسنده: ایتالو کالوینو؛ مترجم: بهمن رییسی؛ تهران، کتاب خورشید، سال1388؛ در206ص؛ شابک9789647081733؛ چاپ دوم سال1389؛ چاپ سوم سال1392؛

عنوان: شهرهای بی نشان؛ نویسنده: ایتالو کالوینو؛ مترجم: فرزام پروا؛ تهران، نگاه، سال1391؛ در152ص؛ شابک9789643517960؛

رمان «شهرهای نامرئی»، اثر «ایتالو کالوینو»، نویسنده ی «ایتالیایی»، توسط مترجم دیگری نیز، به فارسی ترجمه شده، و ایشان نام «شهرهای ناپیدا» را به روی اثر خود گذاشته اند، ترجمه ی جناب آقای «بهمن رییسی» از کتاب در216صفحه منتشر شده؛ ترجمه پیشین این کتاب توسط بانو «ترانه یلدا» انجام شده، که این ترجمه نخست در سال1368هجری خورشیدی، از سوی نشر پاپیروس، و سپس در سال1981هجری خورشیدی از سوی نشر «باغ نو» منتشر شده است؛ «کالوینو» این اثر را در سال1972میلادی نگاشته اند؛ و منتقدان آنرا در حوزه ی ادبیات علمی‌ تخیلی، دسته‌ بندی کرده‌ اند؛

و داستان: «قوبیلای» خان، خان «مغول»، فرستاده هایی دارد، که از سفرهایشان برایش میگویند، و «مارکو» تاجر «ونیزی»، قاصد مورد علاقه ایشانست؛ «مارکو» از شهرهای امپراطوری برایش میگوید، شهرهای افسانه ای، (برخی نوشته اند شهرهای دور از حقیقت، اما امروز به لطف تلگرام، بسیاری از این شهرها را دیده ایم)، شهری که در روی فضای دو پرتگاه ساخته شده، شهری که به جای هوا، خاک در آن جریان دارد، شهری که بنا بر شرایط روحی، آنرا به شکل متفاوتی میبینید، شهری که دو قسمت است: قسمتی ثابت است و قسمتی که هر سال آن را جا به جا میکنند، شهری که هر سال مردمانش شغل و همسر خود را دیگر میکنند، شهری که یک شهر مشابه در زیر زمین دارد، و مردگان را به آنجا انتقال میدهند، در صحنه ای فراخور حالشان و...؛

نقل از متن: (این بار از همان ابتدا، عنوانی برای هر صفحه انتخاب کرده و در بالای هر کدام نوشته بودم: «شهرها و حافظه»، «شهرها و آرزو»، «شهرها و نشانه ها»؛

چهارمین مجموعه را «شهرها و شکل ها» نام گذاشته بودم، عنوانی که بعدها به نظرم بسیار کلی آمد، و آن را به عناوین مختلف تقسیم کردم؛ برای مدت مدیدی که در حال نوشتن شهرها بودم، در این شک فرو رفته بودم که مجموعه ها را گسترش دهم، یا تعداد آنها را به چند عدد برسانم «البته دو مجموعه اول اساسی به نظر میآمد» یا آنکه بالاخره همگی را از بین ببرم؛ نوشته هایی را نیز نمیدانستم در شمار کدام مجموعه قرار دهم، و برای آنها به دنبال پیدا کردن عنوانی بودم؛ میتوانستم برای آنها عنوان «شهرهای آبستره و مجازی» را انتخاب کنم؛ بالاخره «شهرهای بلندبالا» را برگزیدم؛ بعضیها را میتوانستم در زمره ی «شهرهای دوگانه» جایگزین کنم، امّا با گذشت زمان حس کردم، که میتوانم برای آنها عناوین دیگری، انتخاب کنم؛ برخی را نیز ابدا پیش پیش بینی نکرده بودم: ناغافل بیرون آمدند، و نظم طبقه بندی قبلی را، بر هم زدند، علی الخصوص از میان شهرهای «حافظه» و «آرزو»، دو مجموعه دیگر مشتق شد؛ یکی «شهرها و چشم ها (با ویژگیهای عینی و قابل مشاهده)»، دیگری «شهرها و داد و ستدها (با ویژگیهای مربوط به خرید و فروش)»؛ داد و ستد امیال و آرزوها، قسمت و عاقبت نیک، یا بد انسان ها؛ برعکس «شهرهای پیوسته» و «شهرهای پنهان» را، در زمره دو مجموعه ای گذاشتم، که آنها را، برای بیان مقصود مشخصی نوشتم، بدین معنا که وقتی درک کردم به کتاب چه مفهوم و معنای خاصی خواهم داد، این دو مجموعه را انتخاب کردم؛ برای اینکار از میان اوراقی که برای نوشتن کتاب آماده کرده بودم، بهترین ساختار را برای آن دو برگزیدم، زیرا میخواستم از آنها یک در میان، به نحوی استفاده کنم، که از طرفی شهرهای دیگر را، به هم ارتباط دهند؛ و از طرفی نظم زمانی و مکانی آنها را نیز، دگرگون نکنند؛ دست آخر تصمیم گرفتم، دقت خود را، بر یازده گروه متشکل از پنج شهر، برای هر گروه؛ متمرکز کنم، و آنها را در فصلهای متفاوت، که از گروههای مختلف همگون ساخته شده، و دارای روحی مشترک هستند، قرار دهم؛ گرچه بسیاری از منتقدین، در مورد چگونگی آمد و شد گروه ها، مطالعات بسیار کرده اند، امّا انتخاب آنها خیلی ساده بوده است.)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 20/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 07/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Δεν ξέρω γιατί έκανα τόσα χρόνια να διαβάσω Καλβίνο. Το "μαγικό" είναι λίγο για να το περιγράψει, είχα την αίσθηση ότι πίσω από κάθε λέξη κρύβεται ένας θησαυρός που έχει το παράδοξο να σου χαρίζεται τόσο απλόχερα, αλλά και τόσο υπαινικτικά ταυτόχρονα, που δεν μπορείς παρά να (υποσχεθείς στον εαυτό σου ότι θα) επιστρέψεις στο κείμενο για να αποκρυπτογραφήσεις ακόμα περισσότερο κάτι τη γοητεία του. Ανεξάντλητο, σαν τις αφηγήσεις του Μάρκο Πόλο.

Kentler bir çok şeyin bir araya gelmesidir, diyor Calvino; anıların, arzuların, bir dilin işaretlerinin.. Romanlar da bir çok şeyin bir araya gelmesi işte; geçmişin, geleceğin, olanın, olmayanın, masalın ve gerçeğin, görünenle görünmeyenin.. Bir gezgin, şehir romantiği ve hayalperest olarak ben bu kitabı çok sevdim. Çünkü yolculuk yapa yapa farklılıkların kaybolduğunu hissediyor insan, her kent bütün öteki kentlere benziyor sonuçta.

Calvino'nun neden usta bir yazar olduğundan ziyade, benim kendisini neden bu kadar çok sevdiğimi en güzel anlatan kitaplarından biri.

“I LIKE NONSENSE. IT WAKES UP THE BRAIN CELLS.”
Dr. Seuss

Stuff and nonsense! The old folks used to say - and our fantastic inner fantasies can take us there for sure. But watch out.

For traumatic thoughts may occur:

When to sweet sessions of silent thought
(We) summon up Remembrance of Things Past...

So said the Bard, suggesting posthumously to Scott Moncrieff a snappy title for his new English translation of La Recherche du Temps Perdu, with all its devastating aperçus!

For to some people the past is “a nightmare from which we are trying to wake up.” So, as with Proust, it was for Calvino.

But the primitive side of the past can inspire us, too!

The great, existentially driven classical pianist Alfred Brendel prized his huge collection of African masks. Yes, for like us, primitive emotion had the power to unleash creativity...

But to Calvino, that was all over for him. For all Value in his life had been wiped out by a plethora of violently primitive feelings and actions.

As a young man he had seen the Gorgon’s head of War close up - and it had deeply scored his youthful, passionate affectivity.

And Calvino had had the dull light of the humdrum and blasé blasted right outa him by a starker representation of Trauma - the trauma of being a perpetual target on the cross-hairs of Mussolini’s porcine secret police!

Any primitive thoughts he had harboured in his imagination were killed by the not-so-dulce Duce... Bestiality Incarnate in a blunt Pig’s Bullet Head!

And this deep Agenbite of Inwit had killed his youthful ebullience. So what did he do?

Simple - he sought refuge like his traumatized intellectual forbears Mallarme and Sartre - in le Néant.

With a Difference - for under the sheltering guise of meaningless his whimsy grew wings. He could now fly...

A writer was born.

Friends, please welcome the NEW Edward Lear of the Atomic Age of Existentialism...

Brute trauma Does wake us up to another world, and it is an ugly world from which the sheer whimsy of fantasy can be an bona fide and blessed release!

So at the time when, on a felicitous and sybaritic whim, he penned this delectable Angel’s Food Cake of a fantasy it was like an open escape hatch to him.

Because there still remained, in his anxiety, the open window of pure imaginative caprice. And he invested all his driven energy into gazing out at its wondrous vistas.

He wanted to just let his harried mind unbend a little.

And what a wonderfully delightful concoction of sybaritic fun it is...

Let me draw you a picture.

Like Scheherazade, the Italian explorer Marco Polo found that at the end of his arduous Journey to the East, he had to regale the ruthlessly powerful Oriental potentate Kubla Khan - for endless hours on end - with tales of the awesome glittering cities of the Mysterious West, his homeland.

In fear, perhaps - as Calvino was centuries later of Il Duce’s wrath - of the Great Khan’s awful retribution!

So he talked. And talked. And like Seuss’s Bartholomew Cubbins, his fantasy creations just HAD to be ever more and more Awesome and Glittering as he went on - in the interests of longevity (his own!).

As in Seuss, the effect must have been exponential in persuasive force.

The Emperor was extremely well pleased.

He loaded young Marco’s mules down with gifts as glittering as the young man’s fantasy cities. And when young Marco arrived back on the Italian Peninsula weary and worn-out, long months later, he was tired but very, very satisfied.

For he was the great Conquering Hero of his day. And he was now the toast of all civilized Europe!

One for the history books, for sure - right up there with the Moon Landing!

You know, Mary McCarthy called Calvino a Wizard. That he indeed is.

And I think you will see that for yourself...

So, why don’t you, late one evening, after a few drams of some refreshing spirits to reawaken that dreaming spirit of yours, Gently unleash it - and lead it, with the refreshing fantasy of this book, to this magical place of invisible cities?

A place where all your workaday wormies, existential angst and primitive trauma will EVAPORATE!

Guaranteed.

After travelling to the Far East for more than twenty years, Marco Polo sailed back to his Venice hometown and, upon arriving, was taken prisoner by the invading army of Genoa. And so his journey ended at the bottom of a cell. As a precursor of captive writers such as Cervantes or Dostoyevsky, Marco Polo then went on to write a large book about his travels: the Livre des merveilles du monde (Book of the Marvels of the World, ca. 1300 AD).

To us, 21st-century fast-paced tourists and business travellers (except when a global pandemic strikes!), the world is a monotonous place. You can probably eat the same tasteless McDonalds burger everywhere you go. But, to a man of the 13th century, who usually would never in his whole life have gone further away from home than the next town, you would think that travelling to the other end of the world would have been a dazzling experience! In a way, you would be wrong… What came to the older Marco Polo’s memory from his journey to China did not feel quite marvellous enough, and he went on to embellish his tale with fantastical embroideries… To such an extent that, when leafing through his book, you would hardly be able to believe that he actually went there.

More than half a millennia later, Italo Calvino, Marco Polo’s distant countryman, decided to elaborate further on the Livre des Merveilles’ shimmering and misleading pictures of the world. Invisible Cities (1972) is a book in the form of a dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo: the former, overwhelmed by the vastness of his Mongol Empire — which, at the time, extended from the Baltic Sea to Japan and Vietnam —, asks the Italian traveller to describe the cities he has visited during his voyage before reaching the court of Xanadu. So Marco Polo, as we have seen, concocts exotic and outlandish descriptions of cities he has never seen: literally, invisible cities. Justifiably, the great Khan asks Marco Polo in Calvino’s book: “I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden”.

Invisible Cities is like a medieval bestiary or herbarium: a fanciful list of everything that God has (or ought to have) created under a specific category. There are fifty-five-women-name-bearing cities catalogued in Calvino’s book, arranged into a fastidious series of themes (typical of mid-20th-century formal music and French literature). Each vignette is very short — about a couple of pages long at most. However, all are incredibly evocative and intriguing, like pictures out of the nightmare of an urbanist. Some cities, just as actual cities, are just made of dreams, desires and fears, others of lost memory, of opposing deserts or opposing gods, of stage roles, of endless repetitions, of conceptual differences, of moving parts, of pure verticality, upward or upside down, of thousands of identical faces, of boundless wastelands, inexhaustible dumps, untold graves, bottomless latrines, countless stars.

All in all, each dense and intricate description of a fantastical city is, in and of itself, as the seed of a more significant novel (say, like Reeve’s Mortal Engines?). Each page is a barely veiled evocation of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories and M. C. Escher’s drawings. The wonderful Cités obscures graphic novels by Schuiten and Peeters, published a few years later, also come to mind. All are indeed highly cerebral authors.

Capolavoro assoluto, geniale, visionario e al tempo stesso realistico e pragmatico. Cinquantacinque visioni di una realtà che sconfina dalle solite coordinate spazio-temporali facendo approdare il pensatore ad un'altra materia pensata, pensabile, fantastica eppure fortemente reale.