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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
lighthearted
In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they walk in the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the river and press their fists to the temples. In the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins. At the workbenches where, every moment, you hit your finger with a hammer or prick it with a needle, or over the columns of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants and bankers, or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of the wineshops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim gaze. Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter to learn this: in the summer the windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes.
And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, "Darling, let me dip into it," to a young serving maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: "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."
And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, "Darling, let me dip into it," to a young serving maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: "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."
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Wonderful.
This is a book that needs to be consumed slowly, not devoured in a rush, in order to be fully appreciated.
I am sure I'll love it even more on a reread.
My favorite city was Tamara. I also loved the interactions between Marco Polo and Kubliay Khan.
Highly recommended if you love Jorge Luis Borges.
This is a book that needs to be consumed slowly, not devoured in a rush, in order to be fully appreciated.
I am sure I'll love it even more on a reread.
My favorite city was Tamara. I also loved the interactions between Marco Polo and Kubliay Khan.
Highly recommended if you love Jorge Luis Borges.
I remember this was the first Italo Calvino book I grasped onto. I felt this sweeping sense of s city as a place with a story..almost in some senses its own entity...living breathing and just as human as the beings housed inside it. Calvino's creativity and sheer imagination come into place with all kinds of varied descriptions of cities...names unfamiliar but by the end of even the shorter passages, you feel you've been there. This makes great late night reading.
二读。这次的新发现（或者说第一次读完以后忘记了的东西）：
1. 城市都以女性的名字命名；
2. 卡尔维诺觉得闪光的部分是写轻盈的部分，我觉得最好的部分是写死者的部分，其次关于神灵的也很喜欢；
3. 有很多哲学性的思考融入在马可波罗和忽必烈的对话中，非常简单直白
4. 对城市同质性越来越强的考虑。
1. 城市都以女性的名字命名；
2. 卡尔维诺觉得闪光的部分是写轻盈的部分，我觉得最好的部分是写死者的部分，其次关于神灵的也很喜欢；
3. 有很多哲学性的思考融入在马可波罗和忽必烈的对话中，非常简单直白
4. 对城市同质性越来越强的考虑。
Very poetic prose, like reading little gems & polished stones from a beautiful kaleidoscope. Imo, this book makes more sense & may have more beauty if you read it after reading [a:Marco Polo|9262|Marco Polo|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1246069644p2/9262.jpg]'s book; I think by reading Polo followed by Calvino, you get a lovely juxtaposition of described cities, real & imagined, ugly & beautiful, familiar & esoteric.
There has always been debate over whether or not Polo made his trek or if he was just a good storyteller (aided by his prison cellmate/scribe, a writer of adventure tales). I am wondering if Invisible Cities is Calvino's vote on the controversy. Invisible Cities describes many cities, yet, ultimately describes one city... Venice. So, is Calvino saying that Polo's account was the product of a good storyteller, one who was just presenting different facets of his home city, perhaps someone who never traveled very far at all yet could spin a good yarn?
I think this book would make fascinating, if unusual, reading for college students going into urban planning & development.
Unique & worth reading, especially if you have read Marco Polo's book.
There has always been debate over whether or not Polo made his trek or if he was just a good storyteller (aided by his prison cellmate/scribe, a writer of adventure tales). I am wondering if Invisible Cities is Calvino's vote on the controversy. Invisible Cities describes many cities, yet, ultimately describes one city... Venice. So, is Calvino saying that Polo's account was the product of a good storyteller, one who was just presenting different facets of his home city, perhaps someone who never traveled very far at all yet could spin a good yarn?
I think this book would make fascinating, if unusual, reading for college students going into urban planning & development.
Unique & worth reading, especially if you have read Marco Polo's book.
Sometimes you end up at the top of a building, its been a bad day.In one hand you have a pen and an empty sheet of paper.You can write all your fears and trepidations into that sheet and it will all be fine.On the other hand you have a box of military grade freshly supplied mint condition Acid used to knockout rogue horses.
You can only choose one
Italo Calvino chose both
You can only choose one
Italo Calvino chose both
The book is a series of vignettes in which Marco Polo describes strange and imaginary cities he has visited—or maybe it’s better to say imagined—to Kublai Khan. The cities are diverse and extraordinary including cities where they hang up strings of different colors from door to door to represent different social relationships, cities hanging on spiderwebs of cables and rope, cities surrounded by rubbish heaps of its past that threatens to fall upon it like an avalanche, cities of the dead where people occupy the same roles and jobs underneath cities of the living, cities where men fight endless wars with insects and vermin and commit genocide against them, cities where each group considers itself more righteous than the next,
cities hidden within cities, cities with no boundaries which stretch everywhere and nowhere, cities that cannot be found except at a distance.
Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan about different cities draws a parallel to Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights. Just as stories stave off death and bring about new relationships, the cities bring about philosophical pondering about the meaning of life, our choices, and the human experience.
At one point, Marco Polo tells Khan that every city he describes is really in some way about Venice, his home city. We are always a product of where we came from and it always colors our perspective. Meanwhile Khan embodies the irony of controlling a vast empire of cities and cultures, yet never fully possessing them since he has never seen them in person and only hears of them secondhand through others’ reports or stories. Indeed, he feels an intense existential angst over his ability to finally possess his empire, finally come to understand it. He also feels angst over trying to understand if the cities Marco Polo tells him about are real or just imaginary.
Kublai Khan comes to think that chess is a metaphor for grasping the meaning of life, but then Marco Polo begins discoursing on where the wood came which hints and refers to other stories, things, and ideas. When we think. We have finally pinned down a thing, come to its ultimate meaning, it eludes us in the end.
“ The quantity of things that could be read in a little piece of smooth and empty wood overwhelmed Kublai; Polo was already talking about ebony forests, about rafts laden with logs that come down the rivers, of docks, of women at the windows. . . . (132).”
The many cities contain endless paradoxes and contradictions. The boundaries are amorphous just like life and meaning, every final determination is elusive.
A city’s past can only be understood by its present, while its present can only be understood by its past. So it is with our lives. Cities represent possibilities. They symbolize the choices we make. One choice prevents the possibility of other choices and the existence of other cities. The study of cities is really the study of people and their stories, and the study of ourselves. They represent what is the same and different among all people. They represent the imaginary and the real. They represent what could have been, what actually is, and how we experienced it. They represent the past, present, and future.
In a typically Calvino way, the tale also raises the issue of the boundaries between the imaginary and reality. The frame story itself ends up being a philosophical debate about imagination and storytelling. Kublai Khan and Marco Polo begin to wonder if their refuge where they talk about strange imaginary cities away from war and the everyday concerns of being a merchant are an imaginary refuge they each use to shelter themselves from the harshness of their real lives, an escapism, or if their life of battle and being a merchant is the imaginary fiction and it is their sheltered refugee that is real. It plays with the boundaries of what is real and what is imaginary. Are our real lives really a series of fictions in which we only remember certain details and embellish others to give it meaning? Thus what is real is often more imaginary then we give credit.
The ending turns to city as metaphor for the future. What future cities will arise? Kublai Khan fears we are destined for an infernal city—for hell. Marco retorts that there are two choices: most will choose the first and become accustomed to evil and suffering, learning to no longer see the infernal city, but others will find what is good in the world and society and this can be cultivated and increased so that the future is a brighter place.
cities hidden within cities, cities with no boundaries which stretch everywhere and nowhere, cities that cannot be found except at a distance.
Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan about different cities draws a parallel to Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights. Just as stories stave off death and bring about new relationships, the cities bring about philosophical pondering about the meaning of life, our choices, and the human experience.
At one point, Marco Polo tells Khan that every city he describes is really in some way about Venice, his home city. We are always a product of where we came from and it always colors our perspective. Meanwhile Khan embodies the irony of controlling a vast empire of cities and cultures, yet never fully possessing them since he has never seen them in person and only hears of them secondhand through others’ reports or stories. Indeed, he feels an intense existential angst over his ability to finally possess his empire, finally come to understand it. He also feels angst over trying to understand if the cities Marco Polo tells him about are real or just imaginary.
Kublai Khan comes to think that chess is a metaphor for grasping the meaning of life, but then Marco Polo begins discoursing on where the wood came which hints and refers to other stories, things, and ideas. When we think. We have finally pinned down a thing, come to its ultimate meaning, it eludes us in the end.
“ The quantity of things that could be read in a little piece of smooth and empty wood overwhelmed Kublai; Polo was already talking about ebony forests, about rafts laden with logs that come down the rivers, of docks, of women at the windows. . . . (132).”
The many cities contain endless paradoxes and contradictions. The boundaries are amorphous just like life and meaning, every final determination is elusive.
A city’s past can only be understood by its present, while its present can only be understood by its past. So it is with our lives. Cities represent possibilities. They symbolize the choices we make. One choice prevents the possibility of other choices and the existence of other cities. The study of cities is really the study of people and their stories, and the study of ourselves. They represent what is the same and different among all people. They represent the imaginary and the real. They represent what could have been, what actually is, and how we experienced it. They represent the past, present, and future.
In a typically Calvino way, the tale also raises the issue of the boundaries between the imaginary and reality. The frame story itself ends up being a philosophical debate about imagination and storytelling. Kublai Khan and Marco Polo begin to wonder if their refuge where they talk about strange imaginary cities away from war and the everyday concerns of being a merchant are an imaginary refuge they each use to shelter themselves from the harshness of their real lives, an escapism, or if their life of battle and being a merchant is the imaginary fiction and it is their sheltered refugee that is real. It plays with the boundaries of what is real and what is imaginary. Are our real lives really a series of fictions in which we only remember certain details and embellish others to give it meaning? Thus what is real is often more imaginary then we give credit.
The ending turns to city as metaphor for the future. What future cities will arise? Kublai Khan fears we are destined for an infernal city—for hell. Marco retorts that there are two choices: most will choose the first and become accustomed to evil and suffering, learning to no longer see the infernal city, but others will find what is good in the world and society and this can be cultivated and increased so that the future is a brighter place.
It only occurred to me fairly recently what a beautiful thing a good translation is. Beautiful writing in one language is difficult enough, but to interpret into a new language and create beauty is just as wonderful. Here, the beauty is in the language, but also in the surreal and metaphorical imagery of the book.
Invisible Cities is built of Marco Polo's tales to Kublai Khan. He tells of strange, fantastic cities that are clearly impossible and yet oddly familiar. A city that is repeated all over the world, surrounding every airport, to greet you with sameness at the end of each flight. A city built by a series of architects, trying to fashion the perfect space where the one that got away, cannot.
Each city has a perfect surreal logic that gives the reading experience a dreamlike feel. You drift out of one and into another, without any connection other than beautiful absurdity.
Over time it becomes clear that every city in the book is Venice, but could also be any other city in the world. Each city is a perfect reflection of some element of cityness, and each one feels hauntingly familiar. The cities also come to represent more, standing in as structures of memory, desire, language, and humanity.
It's a beautiful book, and one that I recommend to everyone, city-slicker and bumpkin alike.
...
On an unrelated note, it was infuriating when I reached the section on a city whose description was stunningly like the subject of a story of mine. There's something discouraging about stumbling upon fiction with close parallels to my own when it's this well done.
Invisible Cities is built of Marco Polo's tales to Kublai Khan. He tells of strange, fantastic cities that are clearly impossible and yet oddly familiar. A city that is repeated all over the world, surrounding every airport, to greet you with sameness at the end of each flight. A city built by a series of architects, trying to fashion the perfect space where the one that got away, cannot.
Each city has a perfect surreal logic that gives the reading experience a dreamlike feel. You drift out of one and into another, without any connection other than beautiful absurdity.
Over time it becomes clear that every city in the book is Venice, but could also be any other city in the world. Each city is a perfect reflection of some element of cityness, and each one feels hauntingly familiar. The cities also come to represent more, standing in as structures of memory, desire, language, and humanity.
It's a beautiful book, and one that I recommend to everyone, city-slicker and bumpkin alike.
...
On an unrelated note, it was infuriating when I reached the section on a city whose description was stunningly like the subject of a story of mine. There's something discouraging about stumbling upon fiction with close parallels to my own when it's this well done.
reflective