"Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno..."

Invisible Cities. Two words that are hard to make sense of when put together, even after reading 165 of a book with this title. Despite this, it is much clearer than it was a week ago, when I was only able to stare at the cover and wonder how cities could be invisible. In Invisible Cities, cities represent aspects of humans and life, as I said in my past blog and Yvette  stated in hers as well. If this is so, then the title would be something along the lines of "Invisible Aspects of Humans and Life" and this could possibly be what Calvino is trying to show. He might be trying to reveal the aspects that so many people aren't aware of or simply ignore.

I have yet to discover or decide if Calvino uses this book as a way of merely revealing different aspects, or of criticizing them as well. Is he referring to the cities as utopias or dystopias? In "Cities & Memory" he does portray citizens as people stuck in the past, ungrateful for what they have and unable to take advantage of the present. In "Cities & Desire" he does the same, except that instead of being too busy reminiscing, people are too busy longing for things they could have, or acquiring new things they will never appreciate.

Throughout his book Calvino also assesses religion, stereotyping, consumerism, and conflicts between people. I take it that he's criticizing all these, since the way he refers to them ins't a glorifying one. When writing about Chloe, for example, a city where nobody speak,s he says "If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop." (P. 52) I interpret this quote as a way to make fun of society, implying that by just opening our mouths to talk, we begin conflicts. I take this as a satirical way of saying everything would be much better if we just kept quiet, but then again it could be just me. Maybe this is not a dystopia and it's me interpreting it this way. Maybe he is praising it. Or maybe he is only portraying it and that's all.

"You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living."

By now, I believe I am being able to understand Invisible Cities symbolically. However, there's no way of knowing whether what I'm doing is right or wrong. Calvino even says so himself in the dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan: "The connections between one element of the story and another were not always obvious to the emperor; the objects could ave various meanings..." (P. 38) So I have reached the conclusion that the reader's understanding of the book might be psychological, it reflects what might be going on in their head or what they think about a lot. I won't give something a meaning that I never think of in my life, I will give it something that I believe is important, something worth writing of. Because of this, readers won't have the exact same understanding of the book, everyone will get at least one thing different from the rest.

To me, each city symbolizes an aspect of humans and how they live. Aglaura, for example, is a city that represents rumors and stereotype because everybody says the same things about it even when they know it's not true. Eusapia, on the other hand, represents dependence on the past. There is upper Eusapia (with the living) and lower Eusapia (with the dead) and sometimes "there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead" (P. 110) since the living will always mirror the dead. There are many other cities (Beersheba representing greed, Irene representing complexity of people, and Laudomia representing destiny), however the one I found to be a very important reflection of our own is Leonia. This is a city wholly based on consumerism. So they throw things away everyday to make space for even more. Calvino even says "...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 recurring property." (P. 115) This city seems similar to Anastasia (refer to blog titled "Falsehood is never in words, it is in things."). But not only to this city, though. Isn't it exactly what happens in our world today?

I find it incredible how this is a book open to analysis. There is no single meaning, Calvino allows the reader to interpret it as he desires, and is successful. Marco Polo is supposed to be speaking a different language from the one Kublai Khan does, and since Marco Polo is Calvino in Khan is us, then we are reading in a different language. When I first started reading I found this ridiculous. "He writes in English, we read in English, not much more to it," I thought. But I was wrong; there is so much to it. It's not the words that have a different meaning, it's the symbols. And because we don't know the "language" of symbols, we have to interpret them in any way we can and do our best to understand. It's very difficult, but I believe I might be finally getting this "new language", or so I hope.

"...Limpid and cold in the mirror"

Every book I recall reading has had a plot. I never imagined there could be a book that had no plot, but Invisible Cities demonstrates it's possible. This book has no plot whatsoever, it just describes cities by dividing them into different categories. He is able to concentrate on why every city belongs to the category it's in. However, there's no way that cities won't connect to others, since some categories are so similar. And so I noticed that more than once, categories merge.

In Isidora for example, although it is a city of memories, the man thinks about what he wants. It is the place where desires become memories. Similarly, Zoe is a city where "Thin Cities" merge with desires. There's no better way to put it than the way Calvino did: "Those [cities] 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."(P. 35) In "Trading cities" Chloe is one where people never speak, only look into each other's eyes, thus connecting "Trading Cities" with "Cities and Eyes." Yet, the theme that is mentioned the most throughout the book is memory. It merges with signs  in Zirma, where it is explained that memory is merely a way to repeat signs so that the city can exist. Later in the book, Euphemia is described as a city where memories are traded, this way combining both of these themes of the book.

It is interesting how Calvino is able to describe everything as if you were there. For example, when describing Euphemia, a place where memories are traded, he tells mostly of what you'd hear if you went there. Then, when writing about Chloe, he describes mostly the people seen there, since nobody speaks, just watches. "A girl comes along, twirling a parasol on her shoulder, and twirling slightly also her rounded hips. A woman in black comes along, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling." He never says who these people are, he just describes them physically, allowing the reader to judge on his own. It is through these descriptions that the reader acts as not only the audience, but also as a citizen of every city that is described throughout the book.

"Falsehood is never in words, it is in things."

"Cities and Desire." After reading these three words, I thought the cities in this category would be happy ones, unlike those in "Cities and Memory." I thought they'd be filled with what everyone wanted. But no, I was completely wrong.

In "Cities and Desire" people are not busy enjoying what they want and have, but instead, wishing for a lot more (which is similar to how they were in "Cities and Memory" where they were too busy thinking about what they used to have). This is especially evident in Fedora, where people spend their time at a museum looking at models of what their city could have been like. It is similar in Despina, where people arriving by ship would much rather have been in the desert the entire time, and people who came through the desert would much rather have come by boat. It is not only in this book that people want something different than what they have. It definitely happens in our society all the time. Isn't this what jealousy is?

However, it is not only what others have that we want. We just want more... all the time. "You believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only it's slave," writes Calvino on page 12. How awful to be manipulated this way, right? But it's exactly what happens in our society today. We buy and buy, believing it's the key to happiness. It could even be considered as a kind of competition amongst people, to see who is able to purchase the most items. Some even consider the victor to be the most powerful. Yet, in reality, while we believe we are the winners, we are being manipulated. By buying, we have become the slaves of consumerism, and the real winners are the ones getting us to buy everything. And it's working really well. Most of us are too busy wishing for what we don't have, and just keep on buying thinking our desires can someday be fulfilled.