Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

INVISIBLE CITIES
BY ITALO CALVINO
MANN RENTOY

INVISIBLE CITIES
BY ITALO CALVINO
& THE MAGICAL DISAPPEARANCE OF PLOT
AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN THIS
WEIRD, AWESOME UNFORGETTABLE
NOVEL (?)
MANN RENTOY

ITALO CALVINO
15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985

Italian journalist and writer of short stories
and novels
was the most-translated contemporary
Italian writer at the time of his death, and a
contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature

fantasy, comedy and fable
He was associated with the Neorealism
school of literature.

was born on October 15, 1923 in Cuba.
Both his parents were botanists who
returned to their native Italy soon after
the birth of Calvino

Calvino entered the University of Turin to
study science after completing preparatory
school but dropped out to join the Italian
army during the German occupation of
Italy.

For two years, Calvino fought German as well
as Italian fascists.
He went back to the university in 1945 when
the war ended. However, he did not continue
studying science and entered the Faculty of
Letters instead.

He began writing a collection of stories based on his
experiences during the war. The stories eventually
formed into his much appreciated novel, The Path
to the Nest of Spiders (1947).

During the 1950s: comedy and fantasy, likeThe
Cloven Viscount (1952), The Nonexistent
Knight (1959) and The Baron in the Trees
(1957).
By the mid 1950s, Calvino spent most of his
time in Rome. Tired of writing for Communist
publications and disturbed by the Hungarian
Revolt of 1956, Calvino resigned from the
Communist Party.

In 1956, published Italian Folktales. The
collection of 200 authentic folktales from all
regions and dialects of Italy
moved to Paris in the early 1960s where he
published The Watcher in 1963.

In 1964, married Chichita Singer, an
Argentinean woman.
Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), The
Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973) and If on a
winter’s night a traveler (1979).

- returned to Rome with his family in 1980
at Pinetta Rocca Mare.
- wrote Mr. Palomar in 1983.
- in the United States in 1975, he was given
an honorary membership of the American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 1984, Mount Holyoke College awarded him
an honorary degree
Italian Folktales was included in the American
Library Association’s Notable Booklist in 1980.
Italo Calvino died from cerebral hemorrhage on
September 19, 1985 at the age of 61 in Sienna

Novels
The Path to the Nest of Spiders
The Cloven Viscount
The Baron in the Trees
The Nonexistent Knight
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
Invisible Cities
If on a winter's night a traveler
Mr. Palomar

* is so called because it asserts that
what makes up a city is not so much its
physical structure but the impression it
imparts upon its visitors, the way its
inhabitants move within, something
unseen that hums between the cracks.
This, however, has in no way dissuaded
people from attempting to give form to
his works.

“… an exploration—, sometimes playful,
sometimes melancholy—, of the powers of
the imagination, of the fate of human
culture, and of the elusive nature of
storytelling itself. “
- Patrick Kennedy, literatureintranslation.com

As Kublai speculates, "perhaps this dialogue
of ours is taking place between two beggars
named 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."

not truly a novel.
There is no plot or character development
it is a collection of about fifty-five short, highly
impressionistic pastiches of arbitrarily named
fantastic cities placed in a structure that is quite
meticulous, yet rambling, that nearly mimics the
structure of a full commercial novel.

The stories are set within the framework of a very
loose dialogue wherein the famous Venetian
explorer Marco Polo comes to the court of the
legendary emperor Kublai Khan. While there, Polo is
instructed to travel the empire and gather not gold
or treasure but stories with which to regale the
aging, and frequently impatient, conqueror with
descriptions of every city he has visited on his long
peregrinations through the Mongolian realm, as
Khan is bored with his own messengers’ stories.

Every interlude between Khan and
Marco Polo is a thought
experiment about powerful
structures—empires, governments,
languages, lands, tales.

Throughout the dialogue—and a true dialogue it is,
as Khan and Polo are the only two characters in the
work (although a case could be made that each city
is also its own character)—the emperor expresses
his belief that Polo is merely describing his home
city of Venice in different and fanciful ways, ways
that Polo could not use with honesty or impunity in
his own land. Khan also occasionally believes that
the cities Polo is describing do not exist at all, except
in the Venetian explorer’s imagination.

Over the 9 Chapters, Marco describes a total of 55 cities, divided into eleven
thematic groups of five each

THREE DIFFERENT LEVELS:
the verbal pictures of the cities,
the philosophical interpretations
and the artistic reflections

The City of Melania
* among the “cities of the dead”
* inhabitants are not living human beings
but unknowing representatives of the stock
types found in literature: the hypocrite, the
sponger, the king’s son fallen to low estate
and awaiting recognition.

All the residents of the city play roles, and
while the roles gradually shift and might
multiply, they remain static and
stereotypical, and thus, dead.
“Melania’s population renews itself: the
participants in the dialogues die one by one
and meanwhile those who will take their
places are born, some in one role, some in
another.”

Theodora, on the other hand, is among
the hidden cities, and what was long
concealed in its memories and libraries
is unwittingly revealed by the actions of
its citizens. Determined to rid their
homes of vermin, they painstakingly
eradicate all pests—rats, fleas, spiders.

No sooner is this accomplished,
however, than “the other fauna” come
back to light: “Sphinxes, griffons,
chimeras, dragons, hircocervi, harpies,
hydras, unicorns, basilisks were
resuming possession of their city.”

A reproach to the modern cities

A commentary on environmentalism
advocacy?

Seeing what we want to see,
not so much what is being shown to
us…

My favorite of the “interludes”

THEME
the concept of living in a city,
the concept of home, and
perhaps even the concept of
belonging somewhere

THEME:
THE QUESTION THAT CALVINO SEEMS TO BE ASKING
IS A BIG ONE: HOW SHOULD WE LIVE?

It's best, I think, to read Invisible
Cities like a traveler — slowly,
luxuriously, as if you have all the
time in the world.

"You leave Tamara without having
discovered it." So it is with Invisible
Cities. I leave it, again and again, and yet
never discover it — never really know it.
That is precisely what keeps drawing
readers back to this strange and
wonderful little book.

Calvino’s fiction isn’t a story; it’s an ordering
and reordering of the emotional and
philosophical reverberations of our civilized
world, our human condition.
- Stephen O’Connor, http://www.theliteraryreview.org/issue/invisible-
cities/

A book for anyone who
loves imagination and
story-telling

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

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