Calvino's Invisible Cities

            Invisible Cities written by Italo Calvino takes place in the present with two men, emperor Kublai Khan and the young Macro Polo, emperor and traveler, are sitting in a garden discussing the art of traveling and Macro tells the emperor tales of all the cities he has visited. It is not the short descriptions and anecdotes that Marco shares with Kublai that matter, but it is how Marco shares of his travels that make a difference. Calvino writes this novel jumping city to city and then inserts Kublai and Marco’s discussion in between Marco’s recollection and sharing of what each city is like. All the descriptions of the cities eventually run together and the reader is left grouping all these cities into one larger city, but that in my opinion is the point of Calvino’s novel. It is not the descriptions of the cities that matter, but the conversation that the two men have about the descriptions of the cities.

            Descriptions of cities and one’s adventure in them are an individualistic opinion.  Macro describes the fourth city by saying, “Zora’s secret lies in the way your gaze runs over patterns following one another as in a musical score where not a note can be altered or displaced,” (15). Each city has a different structure and landscape, a different smell and different relationships. It’s not these things that matter, but it’s the visitor’s interpretation of how these things make up this city that matters. While describing Hypatia Macro says it’s not the words, which are the descriptors of the city that matter, but it is the things that make up the city that matter (47). These two cities may be described with different words so they appear to be different, but this is not what makes the cities two cities. It is instead the things such as what I listed above that make them their own cities.

            Macro also says, “The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between measurements of its space and the events of its past,” (10). A city is a city because of its inhabitants and how time passes and events are associated with cities. It’s not the city that can tell its past, but the people (11).

            Calvino creates only two characters in this novel and the interactions between them are short and the rest of the novel is description followed by another description. What is his point of writing this way, in limiting the characters and just using descriptions? I think he uses this technique to force the reader to put emphasis on the interactions between Kublai and Macro instead of on the cities. The title of this novel is Invisible Cities, and after finishing the novel it’s not meant to be written literally about invisible cities but about how each city is different to each visitor or local. The city exists but as Macro says, “The city exists and it has a simple secret: it knows only departures, not returns,” (56). People create a city and make it come to life.

            The descriptions of the cities complete this novel and are necessary, but Polo is making a specific point that an individual creates the city they live in and that The Great Khan can still do the same without looking at the atlas time and time again towards the end of the novel. So, the point becomes how to form and create a city that is not an inferno but realistically an individual cannot design one city for everyone.