4/7 Invisible Cities

As you read, consider the "ageographical" elements of space that are evoked in the book. What features of space does Calvino consider in the various cities Polo narrates? Pick at a city to focus on and consider the defining features of the city according to its description. What facets of urban space does it suggest are important? How do travel and movement function in this definition of space?

Consider the following questions as you read

1.      How would you characterize the structure of Calvino’s Invisible Cities?Does it seem to fit into your definition of a “novel”? Why or why not?   Describe its form and consider the way it develops our understanding of urban space.

Invisible Cities is composed of a series of concise short stories of individual cities. There is no particular chronological order that can  be applied to the sequencing of the cities. However, the only chronological parts are at the beginning and end of each section- where the Khan and Marco Polo converse. The way all of these stories of the city are scattered emphasizes how there is no order to places. Each place exists in its own time and at the same time, there is no chronological order that may be applied. 

1. The cities Marco Polo describes fall into eleven categories (e.g. “Cities and Memory,” “Cities and Desire”). How are these categories reflected in their descriptions? What connections can you make between cities that fall under the same category?
   As one can learn from the categories, there is always a dominating trait that governs the description of the city. Cities that fall under the same category are always related to this descriptive word, though they may be related in diffrent ways. For example, "CIties and Memory" can refer to a city that is always dwelling on its past, or a city that evokes new memories each and every day. 

•       A dialogue (between Polo and Kublai Khan) begins and ends each section. How do they function in the work? How do they frame and/or inform each section?
  
  The dialogue between the two characters pull the reader back to a chonrlogical logic to the flow of the story. Through describing various distinct and separate cities, the beginnings and end of each section sets a rythmn back into the novel. Furthermore, the insightful conversation between the two further illustrate the mythical and magical quality of the city stories.  

•                 Do the cities Polo describes have a temporal or spatial locus? How does this inform your reading of the cities?
  
  I think Polo's descriptions satisfy both temporal and spatial aspects. Although the stories seem abstract and conceptual, there is a grain of reality behind what could be metaphorical comparisons of the city's traits. At the same time, spatially, the descriptions of the city successfully carry out tours and or maps of the space. 

•    In his description of “Olivia,” one of the “Cities and Signs,” Polo says a city should never be “confused with the words that describe it” even though there may be a connection between the two (61). How would you interpret this statement, and how does this inform your reading?
  
  Polo is drawing a distinction between what the city really is, and how it can ever be described in plain language. A city consists of much more than a map, list, or items. Every city has its own life and atmopshere. This may be why Polo always describes the cities through concepts, and the cities are sorted into categories. Words inform what a city is, but can only attempt to come close to its true essence. 

•    Polo says, “[c]ities, like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspective deceitful, and everything conceals something else” (44).  How does this inform your understanding of cities, in general, and Polo’s concept of the city specifically?
  
  Polo is outlining the complexity of the characteristics of a city. A city houses a large group of people, and the "desires and fears" of these people are directly reflected in the city's apperance. People define a city. With all the interaction and overlap between people, there are several layers of meaning and "concealment" in each city. 

•     Calvino summarized Invisible Cities as a book that offers more questions than solutions. He also maintains, in his essay “Exactitude” that it is the book

in which I managed to say most . . . because I was able to concentrate all my reflections, experiments, and conjectures on a single symbol [the city]; and also because I built up a many faceted structure in which each brief text is close to the others in a series that does not imply logical sequence or a hierarchy, but a network in which one can follow multiple routes and draw multiple, ramified conclusions. (103)

What kinds of questions does the book raise for you and what networks of connections  and conclusions can you draw from its texts?

Networks of connections are particularly drawn through the categories of cities. I recall flipping back and forth between cities from the same category, trying to find out what the connection was between them. Calvino's style of writing here creates a web that connects all these spaces which overlap, intersect, connect etc. These connections further clarify definitions of specific categories. 

•         What connections can you make between any of the work we've looked at in class so far? Be specific.
  
  Calvino's writing relates to de Certeau's interpretation of spaces, as in de Certeau's 'walking in the city". De Certeau illustrates the difference between voyeurs and walkers, and how these two serve as the language and speech of a city. Simiarly, Calvino tells stories from both of these perspectives, outlining the language of each city.