Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities

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

Conor Murphy

“I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate later in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”

“What meaning does your construction have?” he asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?"

 "We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now," they answer. 

Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.

Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes.

It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought that you can measure Leonia's opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new. So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. 

They grabbed everything that could be taken from where it was and put it in another place to serve a different use: brocade curtains ended up as sheets; in marble funerary urns they planted basil; wrought-iron gratings torn from the harem windows were used for roasting cat-meat on fires of inlaid wood. Put together with odd bits of the useless Clarice, a survivors' Clarice was taking shape, all huts and hovels, festering sewers, rabbit cages. And yet, almost nothing was lost of Clarice's former splendor; it was all there, merely arranged in a different order, no less appropriate to the inhabitants' needs than it had been before.

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone. 

"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks.

"The bridge is not supported by one stone or another," Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they form." 

Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? lt is only the arch that matters to me." 

Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."

This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumbwaiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children's games, cable cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants. Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia's inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.

Valdrada's inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness. Even when lovers twist their naked bodies, skin against skin, seeking the position that will give one the most pleasure in the other, even when murderers plunge the knife into the black veins of the neck and more clotted blood pours out the more they press the blade that slips between the tendons, it is not so much their copulating or murdering that matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves.

Marco Polo imagined answering (or Kublai Khan imagined his answer) that the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there; and he retraced the stages of his journeys, and he came to know the port from which he had set sail, and the familiar places of his youth, and the surroundings of home, and a little square of Venice where he gamboled as a child.

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.

The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat’s progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock.

Rebecca Lum

Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all sides, wherever the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as che city extends, and no farther. Its green border repeats thebaild dark outline of the buried lake; an invisible landscape conditions the visible one; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky.

The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind […] Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist. 

“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

taylor miles hopkins

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

seed ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment; and the natural desire of revenge on the unjust is colored by a yearning to be in their place and to act as they do.

recognize one another by their way of speaking, especially their pronunciation of commas and parentheses;

Man had finally reestablished the order of the world which he had himself upset:

Perhaps every thing 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, trarsparent as a dragonfly. But everything must happen as if by chance, without attaching too much importance to it, without insisting that you are performing a decisive operation,

Cities have no name for me: they are places without leaves, separating one pasture from another, and where the goats are frightened at street corners and scatter.

but the more they sharpen their eyes, the less they can discern a continuous line.

The catalogue of forms is endles: until every shape bas found its city, new cities will continue to be born.

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost:

It is not the voice that commands the story: it i the ear.

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.

logan chung

i was puzzled, then bemused, then delighted, then adoring

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

cenk karagören

Kitabı bitirir bitirmez dönüp tekrar okumaya başladım. İlk seferde anlaşılacak bir kitap değil, ya da ben tek seferde anlayabilecek birikime sahip değilim. Kitabın; anlatım biçimlerini kurcalamayı seven, şahsen hayran olduğum Orhan Pamuk gibi yazarlar üzerindeki etkisini bilmem kitabı anlama çabamdaki en büyük etken oldu. 

Ben kitabı kendimce bir “Lego roman” olarak görüyorum. Kitap Calvino’nun olası tüm ihtimalleri içeren sonsuz bir labirent tasarımı. Bu da aklıma Borges’in Yolları Çatallanan Bahçe öyküsünü ve Charlie Kaufman’ın Synecdoche New York filmini getiriyor. 

Romanın çok katmanlı bir yapısı var. En kolay anlaşılan, belki de kurgunun temelini oluşturan bölümler Marco Polo ile Kubilay Han arasında geçen diyaloglar. Belki diyorum çünkü bu bölümde birbiriyle konuşan karakterler bile kendi varlıklarından emin değil. Olay akışının öne çıktığı bir kitap değil Görünmez Kentler. Ancak bir olay akışından söz etmenin mümkün olabileceği tek yer, Marco Polo ile Kubilay Han arasındaki diyaloglardan oluşan bölümler. Marco Polo bu bölümlerde Kubilay Han’a onun görmediği kentleri anlatır. Kentlerin hepsi birbirinden doğar. Anlattığı kent, anlatacağı bir sonraki kentin hem sebebi hem sonucudur. Zaman geçtikçe Kubilay Han kentlerin gerçek olmadığını farkeder. Ama Marco Polo onları öyle güzel öyle gerçekçi anlatır ki, en sonunda Kubilay Han varolanların kentler, varolmayanların ise kendiler olduklarına inanır. 

Kitabın en ilginç kısmı ise kentlerin anlatıldığı bölümler. Bu kısımlar; Kitabın kurgu oyunlarını takip edemeyen, ya da bu oyunlardan zevk almayan okuyucuların bile okumaya devam etmesini sağlayacak özgünlükte. Anlatılan kentlerin hepsi kendi içinde sonsuzluğu temsil eder. Sözgelimi; Eutropia kenti birbiriyle aynı birçok kentten oluşur. Eutropia bunların toplamına verilen addır. Bu kentin sakinleri yaşamlarından sıkıldıklarında, boş olan kente giderler. Burada herkes kendine yeni bir iş, yeni bir eş yani yeni bir yaşam bulur. Bu döngü sonsuza kadar devam eder. Valdrada kenti ise bir göl kenarına kurulmuştur. Yansımasıyla birlikte varolan bir kenttir burası. Ancak burada yapılan ve bulunan hiçbir şey simetrik değildir. Yapılan ve bulunan şeyler, yansımalarına söz geçiremez. Yansımalar dünyasının kendine ait, gerçeklerden başka bir düzeni vardır. 

Bütün kentler bir kentin parçalanıp yeniden farklı bir biçimde birleştirilmesiyle oluşur aslında. Ama kurgudaki çember yapı nedeniyle “ilk” ya da “son” yoktur. Bu hayali kentlerin “hayal edilmesinde” bir gerçek kentin etkisi vardır, o da Marco Polo’nun doğup büyüdüğü kent olan Venediktir. Marco Polo zihninde kentleri oluştururken, kendi zihninde yer alan Venedik imgesini parçalara ayırır. Her bir parçasının etrafına, görünmez kentlerin döngüselliğinde yer alan kent parçalarını yerleştirerek yeni bir görünmez kent inşa eder. Bu da “diyaloglar katmanı” ile “görünmez kentler katmanı”nın kurguda buluştuğu noktadır. 

Gizlerle dolu, her okuyanın kendine göre bir çıkarım yapabileceği bir metin bu. Kuşkusuz her kitabın okuyucunun zihnindeki izdüşümü farklıdır, bu nedenle okuyucu sayısı kadar o kitabın yarattığı gerçeklik vardır. Ancak bu metin bunu ileri taşıyor, bu tasarım da metnin üçüncü katmanını oluşturuyor. Yani Marco Polo ile Kubilay Han’ın diyaloglarının olduğu bölümler birinci katman, görünmez kentlerin hikayelerinin anlatıldığı bölümler ikinci katman olarak düşünülürse; bu katmanların ve katmanlar arasındaki bağlantıların her okuyucunun zihnindeki birbirinden farklı izdüşümü üçüncü bir katman oluşturuyor. Bu da birbirleriyle sürekli etkileşime sahip, döngüsel bir devinimi olan her bir katmandaki bir değişikliğin bütün yapıyı değiştirmesine olanak sağlıyor. Katmanların her birindeki sonsuzluk, bir üst kurguda birleştirilerek, içinde olası her ihtimalin bulunduğu bir labirent kuruluyor

Kwan Ann Tan

this was SO GOOD! Calvino somehow manages to balance the desire/envy of travel so well & I really do wish that this was longer...

Invisible Cities

Reviews

Highlights