Ann Chai
Prof Sacha
Frey
Due April 14,
2014
How
does Calvino's Invisible Cities relate to de Certeau's "Walking in
the City"? Pick at least two cities to discuss and analyze (through close
reading) in your answer. Feel free to talk about the Kublai Kahn and Marco
Polo dialogues as needed.
“It is the mood of the
beholder which gives the city of Zemrude its form,” the experience of this city
is determined solely by one’s perspective on the city (66,Calvino). The two
perspectives Calvino outlines are from someone who walks through the city “whistling”,
and one who goes by “hanging your head”. The whistler will always be looking
up, seeing windows and scenery as they go. The one hanging his or her head will
always only see the ground, dirt, and gutters. Similarly, De Certeau describes
two kinds of perspectives, or people, as well. There is the walker and the
voyeur. The voyeur is someone looking from above, in de Certeau’s example, from
on top of the World Trade Cener. From this perspective, the voyeur sees
everything about the map of the city and its circulation. The walker is a wanderer
who travels within this map, focused on the immediate streets and paths. The
two different groups of people see the city completely differently, and Calvino
asserts, “you cannot say that one aspect of the city is truer than the other”
(66). There is no right or wrong in how to view the city, the two groups merely
illustrate two perspectives.
The voyuer’s role works
in parallel with the “whistlers” who are always looking up. These are the
people who see the city from above because they are aware of the larger picture
and the urban map. The walker’s role on the other hand is similar to the people
in Zemrude who are always looking down. Although in the city of Zemrude there
is a negative connotation in “looking at the gutters”, in relation to de
Certeau it is simply another perspective. These are the people who wander
through the streets and experience it directly as they pass through because
they do not look further than what is right in front of them. De Certeau
describes them as walkers “whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban
“text” they write without being able to read it” (93, de Certeau). Hence, the
walkers or ones who walk with their head hanging cannot read this urban text
they are outining, while the voyeurs or whislters are the ones who read their
movement. Yet, de Certeau also suggests that “the act of walking is to the
urban system what the speech act is to language (97). Walking is what brings
the city to life and reaffirms its purpose. Extending de Certeau’s metaphor, a
walker would be someone who is illiterate yet fluent in speech, and a voyeur would
be someone who is literate but mute.
In visualizing this
urban text, Calvino’s city “Ersilia” offers insight into how a city can be
mapped out. “In ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s
life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the house, white or
black or gray or black-and-white accoding to whether they mark a relationship
of blood, of trade, authority, agency” (76). When the city becomes obstructed
with an overflow of these strings, the city abandons its location. They move as
an entire city, taking away even the walls and leaving only the strings and
supporting poles. When a traveler encounters Ersilia, first they pass by the
multiple abandoned cities where nothing but the “footprints” of the connections
that once existed still remains.
The job of walkers in
de Certeau’s text is to create these connections, mapping out relationships and
interactions in the city down below. They are creating a “labyrinth of taut
strings and poles that rise in the plain”, a “spiderweb of intricate
relationships seeking a form”. What may seem like meaningless and chaotic
strings actually once represented important relationships. Like the citizens of
Erisilia, the walkers create these webs without realizing the spatial effects
they create on the city. They as “as blind as that of lovers in each other’s
arms,” they are more interested in marking out these relationships but do not
fully realize the spatial text they are writing (93, de Certeau).
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