I did not get this book at all. True I was excited to read it as so many readers sang it praises. The descriptions of these cities felt repetitive and lack color and connection for me. The book stopped for me at page 19. The writing felt a tad pretentious and I was completely bored. But that’s me :)

I listened to an audio version of this book twice (which technically puts it into a 'reread' category), for two days in a row, while I was working on a new painting. The painting turned out pretty much perfect, should I thank Calvino for that? I'm not kidding, perhaps the beauty of his prose really helped (or somehow improved) my painting process. It is not such a far fetched idea as it might seem at first. The first time I listened to this book, I was mostly focused on the form that is to say, on the language and the writing style. The second time I listened to it, I was more focused on the content, that is, the meaning behind the words. I listened to it in original (that would be Italian), but I can't remember the name of the narrator.

At times, the form and the content have a way of merging together that can be challenging to describe. This is perhaps especially the case with literature (for obvious reasons). Likewise, this book is hard to classify. Is it a philosophical book? Is it a short novel? Can it truly be considered a novel? Is it a series of short stories or perhaps even better to say a series of prose poems? I'm tempted to use the word magic when trying to describe Invisible Cities, but we all already know that books are magic, don't we? At least, all the good ones are. How else can you explain that feeling of witnessing someone's soul so clearly? How else can you explain feeling your heart and mind opening up and seeing your life prostrated before you? How else can you explain all those life-changing moments than happened during reading?

What is reading really? Perhaps it is something as essentially human as: Hearing a story. What is writing really? Perhaps it is something as essentially human as: Story-telling. In Invisible cities, we have Kublai Khan listening to Marco Polo as he narrates a series of stories about different cities. There is something mathematical (and probably also symbolic) about the number and the organization of these stories, but what struck me the most is (besides the already mentioned beauty of the lyrical narrative) is the philosophical aspect of these stories. Invisible stories is certainly a book that is open to interpretations. Marco Polo might be making everything up. Kublai has no ways of knowing, does he? Kublai Khan might not believe him at all. On the other hand, perhaps Khan wants to believe him (or maybe it doesn't really matter to him either way). The conversations between Polo and Khan were perhaps the most interesting part of the book.

The relationship between the two set aside, this book discusses a great deal more. Why do we travel? How do we travel? Isn't travelling in time, a form of travelling as well? What kind of city do we live in? Can we live in different cities within the same city? In reference to this book, one play immediately comes to my mind and that is Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams. If you read that one, you might remember that famous saying that night and day people live in different cities and may never see or meet each other, meaning that people who have very different lifestyles may live in (experience) very different (versions of their) cities, even if technically speaking, they happen to live in the same city.

It is fascinating to me how at ease I felt while listening to Invisible Cities. There was almost a deja vu sensation to it (and not because I have listened to the same book twice, the feeling was from the start, it only intensified with the second reading). I could imagine the 'cities' Calvino (or Marco Polo if you will) was describing, if not with an absolute precision then with a feeling very akin to intimacy. You know when you know someone so well that it is hard to know where one starts and the other ends, when their feelings become your feelings. That kind of feeling.

I actually read quite a few works by Calvino, I just haven't gotten to reviewing them here on goodreads. He is certainly among my favourite modern Italian writers. This year I'll be focusing more on classics (and non-fiction), so I'm looking forward to reading more of his works. I might even return to this one (for the third time!), because this is one beautifully written book.

Fantastic observations on the eternal charm of the new, the relationship humans have with their surroundings and the dialectical dance between observers and the observed
Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly

Marco Polo reminiscing on Venice to Kublai Khan; it doesn’t seem the most exciting of plots but the fantastical cities Italo Calvino offers us are lush, exotic and filmic. We are drawn into philosophical thoughts on the existence of a city beyond the confines of the observer and its interpretation.
Enticing and unique, as can be expected of this brilliant author.

Memory in relation to the real, if that can be defined and seen as separate from the remembered, seem key topics as is the charm of the new. What can we really see and understand, especially in connection to our expectations. Symbiosis also returns in some of the cities that are described, an upper- and lower city existing only in relation to each other. Paradoxes are everywhere, as in when a city is preserved in most details it dies as a living, breathing thing. The interrelation between things and people is another topic Calvino comments upon in Invisible Cities.

The ending is hopeful, focused on finding the goods in potential cities and how this can be brought to our society. A delicious, hallucinogenic book, that feels like your siting with friends next to a fire while tackling the most deep philosophy. Go read this!

Dutch Quotes and thoughts:
Dat de triomf over de vijandelijke vorsten ons tot erfgenamen maakt van hun lange verval.
Verwachting versus werkelijkheid

De vorm van dingen onderscheidt je beter uit de verte

Is een stad fysieke dingen of mensen (of, waarschijnlijker de unieke combinatie van beide)

Perfectie die niet kan bestaan zonder uitbuiting of minstens het besef van mogelijk verval

Paradox dat een stad die alles van zijn verleden behoudt geen werkelijke stad die leeft en ademt meer is

De welvaart van Leonia wordt, meer dan aan de dingen die elke dag gefabriceerd, verkocht, gekocht worden, afgemeten aan de dingen die elke dag weggegooid worden om plaats te maken voor nieuwe.

Abstractie en detail in relatie tot het waarachtig afbeelden en waarnemen van het object

Zoektocht naar een onderliggend verklarend systeem van opkomst, bloei en verval

Hoe de waarnemer het waargenomen object beïnvloedt

de stad waarin je voor het eerst aankomt is er één, een andere de stad die je achterlaat om er niet terug te keren; elk verdienen zij een andere naam; misschien heb ik het al over Irene onder andere namen gehad; misschien heb ik het wel alleen over Orene gehad.

Een stad die altijd in aanbouw is, een stad gevestigd in een enorm spinnenweb over een ravijn, compleet hangend.

Het verhaal wordt niet geregeerd door de stem: door het oor.

De mens als plofkip, altijd verbreidend, opgesloten in zijn omgeving maar ook die omgeving vormend

Heden en verleden en toekomst (in al zijn potentieel) bezetten tegelijkertijd dezelfde fysieke ruimte

Hoopvol einde, gericht op het zoeken van het goede en dat bevorderen in onze samenleving en steden

Theories.
One could easily declare that the protagonists of this book are the cities, which are different versions of the same city that doesn’t really exist, only maybe in the writer’s mind. Either Venice or Paris, Calvino’s cities are a trip through imagination to lives never had, doors never opened, people never met.

Someone else might appoint the reader as the real protagonist of Calvino’s book for he becomes the traveler who visits these cities mentally, which are nothing else than representations of his current mood, his past experiences and his unverbalized longings. The cities change shape and adapt to the traveler’s desires, they blend together into that tenuous moment between sleep and waking, the split second when dreaming occurs.

The interpretation of a third reader might allude to the allegoric meaning of the interludes between the extravagant descriptions of the cities where Marco Polo proves the deceitful nature of language to the Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan through silent gesticulation. The Venetian merchant
smuggles moods, states of grace and elegies instead of material riches, maybe as a metaphor to show the Chinese ruler that conquering cities is like accumulating empty shells, a nothingness that lacks cohesion, for their true wealth is to be found in their people, not in the physical space they inhabit. How does one imprison souls?

Free style.
Truth is I am unable to tell you what this book is about. It’s certainly not about what I wrote above. But maybe it is. Every reader will discover its meaning in the surrealistic patterns of titles and alternating themes that give shape to an unrepeatable skyline, a personal print that will only fit the soul of each traveler.

To me, Calvino’s cities represent the deadlock between dreams and reality and the way we connect them in our minds to dominate the pulse of time. Unsought memories carry the heavy load of past experiences, and that burden of nostalgia opens the door to unfulfilled desires that materialize into the tangible futures we will never own. How many lives can the keen observer recreate in his mind? How many times can we alter the past in mental recreation, bring the dead back to life by thinking of them? But remembering doesn’t come face forward, it ambushes you around sideways and oftentimes traps you in a deadly embrace, and the reflected image may replace the original thought.

In the end, amidst a labyrinthine maze of canals, ancient Gods of locals and foreigners clinging to the threshold of upside down doors and black-and-white strings attaching relationships between the inhabitants of a spider-web city, I couldn’t resist the allure of Maurilia. This was the city where I could finally put my discombobulated mind at rest. The comfortable safety of its sepia postcards brought me back to the cozy evenings with granny when I had only to concentrate on the invisible map her bonny fingers scratched gently on my back after a tepid day at school. Calvino led me to here and now to type these words that make her precious presence more real than ever. I can even delineate the shape of the sound of her fluttering voice clearly in my head. Hello, Granny. Thank you, Calvino.

The soul of Architecture; the architecture of the Soul.

Calvino's "Invisible Cities" is a magnificent, melancholic allegory: the architecture of civilisation.
Architecture is certainly not the urban landscape in which fancy designers and capitalist sharks shake hands in order to confine us into a waste land of shabby outskirts and futuristic ziggurats of glass and steel; neither it is the post-atomic desert of most dystopian literature; not even the frantic alienation of some nightmarish Metropolis. These are mere 'topoi', sadly turned into clichés by literature and film industry. Architecture is neither the deafening bulldozers and cranes scattered in our cities nor the silent dust whirling over Hiroshima.
That's only the surface.

Architecture is the naive enthusiasm of the Futurists; it's Albert Speer's demented grandeur; it's the astrological obsessions of the Egyptian engineers; it's the Aztec nightmarish temples for antropophagic deities; it's the aesthetic genius of a thousand peasants dreaming in front of a thousand gorgeous Alhambras and multicolored Russian domes. It's the shape our civilisation gives itself.
Civilisation is not a product of our hands, it's a product of our collective mind. Sometimes that collective mind works and we build the Taj Mahal, sometimes it goes astray and we build Treblinka.
Architecture is the attempt to give mankind's sensitivity a tangible, visible shape; a shape that can only be metaphysical in its inner nature.
In fact what Calvino does in this amazing book has more to do with visual art than literature, as though his beautiful prose were a means to convey an exquisitely sensuous and intimate feeling of introspection, silent contemplation... and disquiet.

This book is a collection of prose-poems talking about cities as archetypes. Structured as part of an imaginary dialogue between Marco Polo (a 13th century Venetian emissary who travelled to the Far East) and Kubla Khan (see Coleridge...), its short chapters are poetic, delicate descriptions of cities beyond time and space. All of them have unusual female names, mostly borrowed from Greek amd Latin myths and literature. These dreamscapes are classified in eleven threads, although the author doesn't follow any regular sequence other than the one suggested by random inspiration.

1) Cities and Memory:
Cities in which the present wanes, stuck as it is between a forgotten past and a still unknown future; Dorotea for instance, "where desires have already turned into memories".
2) Cities and Desire:
Cities living out of men's expectations and hopes; Anastasia, the City of Sin, where pleasure is delusional and the inhabitants are unconsciously enslaved by their own desires.
3) Cities and Signs:
Where reality is pure epistemology; in Tamara, the city of ubiquitous advertisement and representation, "the eye doesn't see things but the image of things meaning something else." In Ipazia, the meaning of things is to be found in their opposites.
4) Thin Cities:
Their surreal texture eludes any reference to reality. 'Thin' as 'spiritual', airy places such as Octavia, the Cobweb City hanging above the abyss.
5) Trading Cities:
Where life means restless exchange: of stories, feelings, money, experiences, failures. It's the most social dimension of civilisation.
6) Cities and Eyes:
They're reflections of the inner life of their population; Valdrada, the city living in symbiosis with its reflection mirrored by the lake; or Zemrude, taking the shape of its inhabitants' moods.
7) Cities and Names:
Conceptual cities in which reality is determined by language and conventional memories, such as Irene, talked about all the time but only seen from a distance.
8) Cities of the Dead:
Reminding of A. Böcklin's imagery. One of these cities is Eusapia, modelled on its underground 'double' in which the dead are supposed to dwell, sort of a grotesque, tragi-comic necropolis.
9) Cities and the Sky:
Earthly projections of the universe, built to fit constellations and planets (seen as the symbol of order and perfection). In Perintia something went wrong, though: its popolation is monstrously misshapen and chronically ill. Did they botch their calculations? Or maybe that's the true order of the universe?
10) Continuous Cities:
They keep growing uncontrollably to the point of destroying themselves, like tumors; as in the case of Leonia, surrounded by huge junkyards threatening to bury the whole city in its own decay.
11) Hidden Cities:
Parallel universes flourishing beneath the surface of cities like Theodora, forever struggling against rats, vermin, vultures and any sort of parasites living their own 'urban' life in the grooves of our existence.

These are Calvino's Cities.
Invisible Cities indeed... why do they look so familiar then?

There's neither a Marco Polo nor a Kubla Khan really; this is not a dialogue, it's a vision, a dream, a shadow - or rather a twilight, an emperor's last glance on his dominion falling to pieces. Any attempt to ignore the metaphorical meaning of these characters would be pointless and misleading. The author himself unveils the truth in chapter 7, when the protagonists ask each other whether they really exist or not. After all, Calvino's Marco Polo talks about trains, ferries, airports... who could ever be so blind not to figure it out from the very beginning?
It's less a dialogue than a monologue on the City as the only dimension in which mankind can live as such: in a nutshell, civilisation. Hallucinated, dreamy, pragmatic, delusional, liberating... human. Whether it is Heaven or Hell we're headed to, it's up to the reader to decide, given that:

" The inferno of the 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 inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. "

Although Calvino is far from being among my favourite authors, I adored this book. There's a strange magic in any single page, paragraph, sentence, word. Any short chapter is a stand-alone piece of poetic prose, an enchanting picture painted with the most delicate touch. I shouldn't be talking about prose actually; I compare prose to artistic photography, whereas this is a hologram, a Fata Morgana, a lantern show...
A multifaceted reading experience.

To be tasted at sunset, peacefully, slowly, like the most exotic fruit of Calvino's orchard.

Peculiar, raro, maravilloso, repleto de imaginación en cada párrafo... un libro lleno de infinidad de historias, de universos y fantasía desbordante. No es un libro para leerte del tirón, sino para acudir cuando estés falto de imaginación y necesites un chute de originalidad en vena.

You landed in my world on a calm, dewy evening
And struck was I with a song I was about to sing;
A song that lay hidden in the silhouettes of each letter
That protruded from the cover, all poised to embitter.

But waited I, patiently, under the light of the mundane day;
You see, Mr. Calvino, I had a knack of seeing your way.
Fusing the curious with the depth, and peppering them with some humor too;
All too often, you had served, a world that was both fictional and true.

So, on a fine evening, when all your cities rose, at once, to a noisy chatter,
I exited my world and entered yours, as it was now, an urgent matter.

Welcome!, said Kublai Khan, The Imperious Chinese Emperor,
Even as he kept his gaze fixed at one particular Conjurer.
This particular Conjurer bore remote resemblance to the mighty Apollo;
Ah! He had his name! ‘Step in.’, said the Venetian, Marco Polo.

And so, with his highness Khan, I embarked on a tour of his empire,
Ably recounted for us, through the dazzling eyes of his humble sire.

While Isidora dyed me old even as my dreams kept fluttering in their youthful room,
Anastasia set my desires and memories in a vicious cycle, not knowing who fuels whom;
Zora pumped heavy sighs from the womb of forgotten cities,
As Mauralia lulled me into a nostalgic film of small felicities.

Said Marco Polo, all cities are same – same in desire and dementia, promise and insipidity, joy and remorse,
n  “You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”n

I paused to ponder, questioning him aloud about the revelations he just made,
But he continued to lead me into more cities, bustling with myths, death and trade.
He played with my biases at Baucis where people resided on clouds instead,
He suspended my belief in Octavia where the entire city stood running on a net!
Hopping Hypatia, Armilla, Beershaba and Leonia, when I stepped into Thekla,
Marco Polo held back my hand, ‘Watch out, work is still on this messy land.’
n  ”Why the construction is still on?n I asked a peddler scurrying by,
n  “So that its destruction cannot begin.”n was his curt reply.
Walking gingerly in an air of puzzle, I witnessed Olinda and Procopia in a mild jostle,
One seemed to hold many cities in her womb and the other kept multiplying her people.

I stood there, letting the horses of my thoughts, to run amok these many cities,
To gauge what lied beneath this expedition, this mind-boggling imaginative treatise.
I opened my mouth to ask but Mr. Calvino, you appeared from nowhere,
‘The tour is over!’ is all you said, not paying heed to my nasty stare.

Here I am now, jumbling my geography and history, and a bit of memory as well
And filling mighty gaps that can serve as a decent rejoinder, I have this to tell -
Essential is not the fact whether these cities can be discovered on a map;
The essence lies, instead, in hunting for a common stamp.
A common stamp that shall impart an identity free of colour and creed,
Irrespective of our place of birth, shall bind us with the same deed.
Deed bellowing swirls of compassion, industry and honesty sans any chagrin
And a city of such deeds doesn’t lie outside but reigns unequivocally within.

Trust Mr. Calvino to show you, how subliminal accounting of life appears,
Follow Mr. Calvino to receive in your lap, sparkling wishes to last years.
Beware of his trap though! Don’t fall for his genius all too much,
Oh but this is futile warning, for there is no way to escape his touch.

----

The tour snippet is here! n  “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it 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 be 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.”n

Because in my book, both are paragons of imagination.

Em tempos de pandemia, de confinamento, afastamento social e recolhimento obrigatório fui turista destas 55 cidades imaginadas por Calvino. Que viagem incrível, que pretendo repetir com frequência.

Num jardim, ao pôr-do-sol, estão Marco Polo e Kublai Khan. O Imperador pressente o seu fim, o fim do seu império e das suas cidades.
Para desviar a atenção do Imperador Marco Polo conta histórias de cidades que viu. São cidades mágicas, invisíveis, fantásticas, sedutoras, estranhas, todas com nomes de mulheres, e onde nem tudo o que parece é.

Entrei em Hipácia uma manhã, um jardim de magnólias refletia-se em lagunas azuis, eu andava por entre os canteiros seguro de descobrir belas e jovens damas a tomar banho: mas no fundo das águas os caranguejos mordiam os olhos das suicidas de pedra atada ao pescoço e cabelos verdes de algas.
As cidades e os sinais

Cada cidade, como Laudomia, tem a seu lado outra cidade cujos habitantes se chamam com os mesmos nomes: é a Laudomia dos mortos, o cemitério.
As cidades e os mortos

Otávia, cidade teia de aranha. Há um precipício no meio de duas montanhas escarpadas: a cidade está situada sobre o vácuo, ligada aos dois cumes por teleféricos e correntes e passarelas.
As cidades subtis

As cidades representam ideias, experiências de pensamento.
De uma cidade não desfrutas as sete ou as setenta e sete maravilhas, mas sim a resposta que dá a uma tua pergunta.

Já no final Kublai Khan percebe que todas as cidades orientam-se para os círculos concêntricos do Inferno de Dante.

Diz: — Tudo é inútil, se o último local de desembarque tiver de ser a cidade infernal, e é lá no fundo que, numa espiral cada vez mais apertada, nos chupa a corrente.

E Polo: — O inferno dos vivos não é uma coisa que virá a existir; se houver um, é o que já está aqui, o inferno que habitamos todos os dias, que nós formamos ao estarmos juntos. Há dois modos para não o sofrermos. O primeiro torna-se fácil para muita gente: aceitar o inferno e fazer parte dele a ponto de já não o vermos. O segundo é arriscado e exige uma atenção e uma aprendizagem contínuas: tentar e saber reconhecer, no meio do inferno, quem e o que não é inferno, e fazê-lo viver, e dar-lhe lugar.

S e n s a c i o n a l

یک: آهنگ را پلی کنید

دو: آیا فرقی بین عکس بالا و پایین هست!؟

شهر در ورای آن سختی، آن آجر و سیمان حرف‌های ناگفته‌ی زیادی دارد...ریتم و آهنگ دارد...یک موسیقی است...یک هارمونی...از درون ناخودآگاه اجدادمان سر در آورده...از خواب‌ها و خیالاتشان...نامنتظره‌ترین خواب‌ها نیز معمایی است که میلی را، یا روی دیگر آن یعنی هراسی را پنهان می‌کند. شهرها هم مانند رویاها از امیال و هراس‌ها ساخته شده‌ند...و اینگونه آجر بر روی آجر...خانه‌ها ساخته شده‌اند...سپس میانشان کوی و برزن...حافظه سرشار است و نشانه‌ها را تکرار می‌کند تا شهر زیستن را آغاز کند

ریتم آنقدر نزدیک است که نمی‌دانم آیا عکس بالایی هورامان است یا عکس پایینی دلشاد سعید...او با ویولونش موسیقی فولکلور کُردی را دوباره زنده کرده؛ آنهم در اروپا...هردو می‌خواهند چیزی را بگویند...پر از اسرارند!!! گوش‌هایت را برای هردو تیز کن

لذتی که یک شهر به تو ارمغان می‌دهد، عجایب هفت تا هفتادگانه‌اش نیست، بلکه پاسخی است که به سوالت می‌دهد

Πεζογραφημενη ποίηση!!!!!!

"L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. 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. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e che cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio."

n  Oh,the city, city... the endless sea...
Fun and games on top, mud and filth beneath -
A beauty who smiles on the surface;
The mistress who wouldn't let you go...n

So wrote one of our poets.

You live in the city: and slowly, the city starts living in you. It takes on a life of its own in your mind. Once the city gets to you, it won't let you go. (I speak from personal experience. I spent twelve eventful years of my life in Cochin, and I carry that city with me, even here in the Middle East.)



Italo Calvino has immortalised the city in this slim volume of fantastical tales, told by Marco Polo to Kubilai Khan. Stories which may be distorted memories, fanciful imaginings or outright lies (Polo was not exactly truthful). There is no story as such. Vignettes of imaginary cities are listed, one after the other, in haphazard fashion, interspersed with conversations between the Khan and Polo. The pieces are absurd and surreal - one feels that if this book would have been illustrated, only Salvador Dali could have been entrusted with the task.

There are eleven "themes", of a sort:

1. Cities and Memory
2. Cities and Desire
3. Cities and Signs
4. Thin Cities
5. Trading Cities
6. Cities and Eyes
7. Cities and Names
8. Cities and the Dead
9. Cities and the Sky
10. Continuous Cities
11. Hidden Cities

...And five sketches under each, so there is a sort of mathematical precision. The themes are all jumbled together with no semblance of order. (After finishing the book, I made a discovery - one can cover the descriptions of the cities theme-wise, instead of sequentially, and get a totally different take on the book.)



Each of these vignettes can be analysed in depth, and dissected using Freudian psychoanalysis or Jungian metaphysics: but I will not attempt to do so. It would be spoiling the beauty of the narrative. Each reader can find his or her own meaning in these cities - and most likely, it would be the city buried deep in their psyche which would be talking to them.



So my friends, my only request to you is to come and visit these cities. You won't be disappointed.