Name: Invisible Cities
Rating: 4.167741935483871 (155 reviews)
ISBN: 9780436082207

Italo Calvino

William Weaver

Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. " Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant" (Gore Vidal). Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Invisible Cities

Conor Murphy

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

taylor miles hopkins

“You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.”

Invisible Cities (Vintage Classics) (pp. 84-85). Random House. Kindle Edition. 

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 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.

Invisible Cities (Vintage Classics) (pp. 37-38). Random House. Kindle Edition. 

…has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing:…All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

Your gaze scans the streets as if they were writ ten pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you be- lieve you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the namnes with which she defines herself and all her parts.

This city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remnember: names of famous men, virtues, numbers, vegetable and mineral classifications, dates of battles, constellations, parts of speech. 

Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.

the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities. the more one understood the otber cities be had crossed to arrive there;…”Does your journey take place only in the past?”

he must go on to another city. where another of his pasts awaits him. or something perhaps that bad been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.

At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place.

The one contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later, is possible no longer.

It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.

…cities resembled one anotber, as if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absard, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

"Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know”…There is no language without deceit.

…the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.

At times the mirror increases a thing's value, at times denies it.

In Kublai Khan's garden, at sunset, the young Marco Polo diverts the aged emperor from his obsession with the impending end of his empire with tales of countless cities past, present, and future

Tim Pendry

I am really struggling with Calvino. For some absurd existentialist reason, I am working through his texts in the perhaps vain hope of finding something that is truly interesting in his work. This is supposed to be one of his greatest texts and one suspects that it might have been revelatory in some way at the time of writing but, increasingly, one's impression is that Calvino represents a moment in history when all the talk was of semiotics and not of substance. Calvino seems to represent an experimentation that is heading nowhere. He is clever but he is dull. He expects us to engage intellectually with his thought processes but it all seems scarcely worth the effort since much of what substance there is represents a philosophical platitude. The contrast with the subtleties of Di Lampedusa are striking and the revolt against the bourgeois novel only appears to have led to an incomprehensible bourgeois experimentation. It is fair to say that Calvino, when he chooses to be lucid, can write brilliantly on occasions and those moments keep this book in the library - whereas his 'Castle of Crossed Destinies' is now on the pile for the second hand bookshop. Perhaps he is best seen as a prose poet and coherence not expected of him - in which case, I am, sadly, the wrong reader for him since I like discipline and clarity rather than the second-guessing of another mind or the performance art of reading a book as if I were writing it. There is one other thing to say in his favour. He does have a fertile imagination for the unusual concept or image - it is understandable why he is respected as creative in fantasy circles but what the reader begs for is that these remarkable short prose poems to be turned into narrative. I shall persist with perhaps two more texts ... I like to give a man the benefit of the doubt but this is becoming tiring.

laika rockaway

gullivers travels for the hopeless and desperate

“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.” — from Invisible Cities In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo — Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear. “Invisible Cities changed the way we read and what is possible in the balance between poetry and prose . . . The book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island.” — Jeanette Winterson

the dreamlike, occasionally repetitive nature, of this book really made me encapsulated the feeling of travel for me, but it also encouraged me to look at the city around me and at myself with more thought and care (particularly the city on justice). looove calvino's poetic prose and the mathematical structure of this book; i loved how each city echoed itself or another and all echoed [venice, a city i've never visited yet have seen represented as memory or lost glory or atmospheric happiness in literature and paintings (hide spoiler)]. each interlude packs a punch.

alice

. this website allows you to reorganize the chapters by theme, search the entire text through content or tags, includes graphics for every city, and (best of all), a note-taking feature with thoughts from the website's developer and other users of the website

smile??

highly recommend looking at the invisible cities website by claire. this website allows you to reorganize the chapters by theme, search the entire text through content or tags, includes graphics for every city, and (best of all), a note-taking feature with thoughts from the website's developer and other users of the website

not the best of calvino i read. some poignant, some loose, like memories destined to fade. in a way it orientates toward the general idea of travel and discovery. gone so far, blurred images. gone nowhere, miniscule detail. is it real or is it fantasy?

solitones

Such a gorgeous, gorgeou novella. It is a description of many cities that is the description of one city and all the layers that make it up presented in a way that feels like a fairy tale, almost magic. There is something incredibly melancholic and full of longing in Calvino's writing here that touched me deeply.

And Polo said: Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice. (…) To distinguish other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.

Yanks

wow this is a thought-provoking read, the kind of book that you wished you had a buddy read so you could discuss the content immediately. thankfully there’s a lot of discussion on the internet where i could find and delve deeper into the the meaning of these stories.

Cody Degen

need to find out the name of the microgenre of "now imagine a [x], how crazy would that be" short stories. i liked it a lot better in Ficciones when Borges did it with books than this with cities

I would maybe read something else by him because he writes in a way that I could see myself liking but would need it to be a more singular narrative

iamazoo

doesn't hit the same as it did when i was 18.

I read this this year! Why isn't it being added to my reading challenge?

Laura Mauler

This book is more of a thought experiment than a story. It reminded me very strongly of the book Einstein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman, which is a thought experiment about time, whereas Calvino's is about cities. Between the two I strongly prefer the former, although it's hard to say why.

Hannah Yang

Absolutely amazing -- a love letter to imagination. Invisible Cities is unlike any other book I've read both in format and content. It is immensely delightful to join Calvino/Polo/Khan in their journeys through fantastical societies and considering their corresponding new ways of being. Read anytime for a dose of escapism and profundity.

Another great read while traveling across several cities in Europe. Quick chapters, very poignant, punchy, and quirky points across each section (very Calvino style that I like). Almost perfect for me, but I’ve noticed Calvino can sometimes wade into repetitive territory (or maybe not edit enough? I think sometimes there are parts that just aren’t nearly as interesting or necessary as many of the other included pieces) that take away from the piece overall and become distracting. 

Overall, a wonderful piece that’s great as a travel book, and I’m excited to keep reading through the rest of his works.

Another great read while traveling across several cities in Europe. Quick chapters, very poignant, punchy, and quirky points across each section (very Calvino style that I like). Almost perfect for me, but I’ve noticed Calvino can sometimes wade into repetitive territory (or maybe not edit enough? I think sometimes there are parts that just aren’t nearly as interesting or necessary as many of the other included pieces) that take away from the piece overall and become distracting. 

Overall, a wonderful piece that’s great as a travel book, and I’m excited to keep reading through the rest of his works.

Michael Springer

Not to sound crass or anything, but this is perfect for the bathroom. 

A series of one-to-two page portraits, each one focused on a new fantastical city. Like Escher drawings, each city is impossible, yet reflects our real-world perception of cities we've been to. It's more a meditation on the city as a concept than on any of the cities actually discussed. Also, in some ways it feels more like the experience of reading a book of poetry than a novel. Although a theme holds this all together, every chapter can be taken in isolation. Thus, one loses nothing if they read this gradually, one chapter at a time. Like if they read it while pooping, for instance. 

The story, if you want to call it that, is about Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. At the twilight of Khan's empire, Polo arrives and tells him stories of the cities he has been to. The evolution of their relationship, and the evolution of how they communicate, is interspersed with chapters on surreal cities. This structure doesn't really create a linear tale. Fortunately, the book doesn't need one to be fascinating. 

Example chapter:

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is a wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.

Many of the chapters end with a sudden revelation that throws the entire city into a new light. Unfortunately, a lot of these revelations don't quite make sense, and one gets the feeling something was lost in the translation from Italian to English. Roughly half the stories had fascinating conclusions; most of the others had endings that felt like something was lost in translation; and a handful just felt like weak entries. Because so many chapters end with supercool revelations, the cities that turn out to be nothing more than fanciful and interesting to think about seem like let-downs. It's like if you think someone is setting up an elaborate joke, and the punch line is about to hit you in the gut, and then they say, "Cool, huh?" and you realize they're done and it was just a story, no punchline or conclusion. 

But despite the unevenness, I really enjoyed this, and plan on tracking down more of Calvino's books this summer. I'm especially hoping to find If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which I started reading in a book store months ago and had to tear myself away from. Calvino is experimental in a fun and non-snobby way, which is my favorite kind of experimental. This could be the beginning of a brilliant relationship.

And I promise the whole relationship won't revolve around bathroom trysts, Calvino. I know you're too good for that.

"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.

Katherine Yang

the stuff of dreams! this was assigned reading for an urban studies class and it was such a great thing to end on. i imagine that if i had read this outside of the class i would think it just pretty words (though i always love "just pretty words"), but after a semester talking about the many things a city is and the complexity of the life of one, the vignettes of these real-or-not cities read so strikingly. i love the brevity of the descriptions, like artful sketches that, with a few artful flicks of the wrist, give you bare outlines and a few identifying features and, already, impart upon you the whole spirit of the piece. i felt like i was floating through the constructed worlds, eagerly looking out for the next city to be revealed.
Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts.

Andrew Louis

5 stars (but with lots of cringing from the recurring "women as background decoration" trope)

Prashanth Srivatsa

This is the book you take on solo-trips to the mountains. Calvino describes cities with a wonder that toys with your head, making you want to pack your bags and walk out. The line between imagination and reality is blurry, with a dream-like sway between the two sides so that each city described is both recognizable as well as fantastic. Marco Polo's conversations with Kublai Khan in the midst of the travels question the philosophies underlying an emperor's reign, all the while hinting at the memory of leaving a loved city and the nostalgia accompanying a return to it.

This is only the second novel I've read of Calvino's, the first being 

. Something about Calvino's prose cuts to my core. His work is not the most digestible, and I oft find myself re-reading a section, dissecting the combination of words I have never seen before. How Calvino writes is how I'd hope to one day be able to find the balance between focal points and floweriness in my writing. He etches his thoughts in novel ways, always observing. It may be tempting to categorize his work as pretentious truisms if it weren't for the fact that his writing is not declarative. It is conversational. It's like each point is not a point but a prompt, inviting the reader to reflect on their own experiences. This short novel is a mosaic of takes on cities, cities that are imagined and yet perhaps not too far off from reality (if one cares to indulge in surrealism). It's at this point in my reviews that I tend to like to insert quotes, but I have too many tabs and annotations to pick ones that are representative of the work, since each micro-chapter is but a window in a building entirely made up of windows, and what you see through one is not exactly what you'd see through another, though they are very much part of the same structure. Still, I'll humbly try:

Deyana

This is only the second novel I've read of Calvino's, the first being If on a winter's night a traveler. Something about Calvino's prose cuts to my core. His work is not the most digestible, and I oft find myself re-reading a section, dissecting the combination of words I have never seen before. How Calvino writes is how I'd hope to one day be able to find the balance between focal points and floweriness in my writing. He etches his thoughts in novel ways, always observing. It may be tempting to categorize his work as pretentious truisms if it weren't for the fact that his writing is not declarative. It is conversational. It's like each point is not a point but a prompt, inviting the reader to reflect on their own experiences. This short novel is a mosaic of takes on cities, cities that are imagined and yet perhaps not too far off from reality (if one cares to indulge in surrealism). It's at this point in my reviews that I tend to like to insert quotes, but I have too many tabs and annotations to pick ones that are representative of the work, since each micro-chapter is but a window in a building entirely made up of windows, and what you see through one is not exactly what you'd see through another, though they are very much part of the same structure. Still, I'll humbly try:


Desires are already memories. (8)

"'Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and never will have.'" (29)

"'Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,' Polo said. 'Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.'" (87)

"...'It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.'" (135)

"'Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.'" (149)

Omar AlHashmi

This style of writing is interesting and I appreciate it, however I do not prefer it. I have previously read a book with a similar style called "Einstein's Dreams". The problem with these two books is that since each few pages talks about a different look on a similar theme. In this case the author talks about different cities. The problem with this is that some descriptions are really interesting and unique, while others are boring and you just want to get to the next one. I was close to giving this a 3 star rating, however the conversations that happen between the Khan and Marco Polo in the beginning and end of each chapter was really interesting. It was also beautifully written.

Fraser Simons

Not my thing, I guess. Found incredibly tedious and a bit pretentious. A good exercise to flex your prose on, if the reader is invested in the concept. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Jenna

I guess I just don't get Italo Calvino. I thought this book was incredibly boring. I kept trying to give it my all but I hated it. I generally don't like books without a plot, so maybe I should have known, but the reviews for this book gave me hope. Oh well.

Emmett

It is hard to describe what this novel is, and indeed it addresses the nature of ingraspability through an extended conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, a conversation possibly imagined to have taken place. Whether or not it does is equally hard to say. Like a desert landscape, the epistemological grounds of Invisible Cities constantly shift without warning; often times the reader finds the carpet laid out in the previous chapter pulled out from beneath their feet in the next one. Are these cities the same city? Are they all different? Have things changed or have they not? Do we know for certain what is it that we hear? What is the nature of the signs by which we ground ourselves and anchor our language, or do we speak a meaningless sequence of gestures, fingers pointing to symbols while the other one nods, all the while assuming that this conversation goes on without accident? These questions haunt the novel, and at intervals, at the appearance of a certain phrase or a picture, one hears a sigh from one or more of these many unanswered ghosts. The only consistent thing left to do is to appreciate the novel's breadth of imagination, and its deft, splendid poetry.

Claudia

i feel like i just read 100 prose poems about cities, memory, and civilisation and i don't quite have the words to describe how beautiful, insightful, and melancholic this is. (i also see hk in so many of calvino's descriptions .... aaaaaaah, if only i had the language to describe home this way). it can be a bit of a slow read if you really want to digest all the language and ideas in this novella but my god i can see myself recommending this until the end of time

Invisible Cities

Reviews

Highlights