"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.