Italo Calvino was a 20th-century
Italian writer, who on the basis of this piece of work was post-modernist to
the very core. Invisible Cities is
not a novel – at least, not one in any conventional sense of the term. What it
is instead is a collection of short case-by-case commentaries on the nature of
human cities which, when taken together, serve as a remarkable deconstruction
of civilisation. It makes me salivate just thinking about it.
There
is no real story, no plot, and not really any characters either, so the only
thing that can be done here is for me to describe simply what it is. Kublai
Khan was a 13th-century Mongol ruler of China and grandson of
Genghis Khan, who famously played host to the Venetian trader Marco Polo who
spent much of his life travelling the far east. The book explores the strange
and fragmentary conversations these two historic figures have as they struggle
to communicate, and in between these chunks of philosophical dialogue are a
number of short descriptions of various fantastical cities that Marco Polo
claims to have visited. Each city-section is titled by assigning it into one
category or another: ‘Cities & Desire’, ‘Cities & the Sky’, ‘Cities
& Memory’, ‘Thin Cities’ etc., and any combination of these categories can
be found between the dialogue.
There
are nine ‘chapters’ in the book, each one beginning with a short dialogue
section containing our mates Kublai and Marco which is identified by its being
printed in italics (Italo the Italian
writes in Italics), which is then followed by five or more city pieces,
each one describing some weird and fantastical city in a delectable choice of
words, before the chapter is rounded off with another italic dialogue section.
That is the essential structure of the book. The content of the book will be a great deal
harder to relate.
When
I say the cities are described in a fantastical sense, I only mean that
literally. If one is to look below the actual words for just a fraction of a
moment, one will see that they are in fact metaphors, used to present the
painfully complex notion of ‘what is a city?’ in numerous different lights and
guises. The metaphors are not mind-numbingly obvious so as to make reading them
a degrading experience, but nor are they too abstract or disguised enough to
make most of them impossible to work out given a few seconds of consideration.
I’ll have you know that I, as dumb-witted as I am, understood many of the
allusions the writer was getting at. And by understood, I mean only so far as
my own interpretations went. There are no definitive right answers here; no
page at the back of the book printed upside-down explaining what the author was
getting at. It is up to the reader to decide what they are able to take away
from it.
That’s
the beauty of this writer. Somebody once recommended this book to me as a way
into post-modernism or post-structuralism, and though I cannot possibly communicate
what precisely this wacky system of thought actually is (Wikipedia is no help
here, trying to logically describe a system of thought that chucks conventional
logic out the window), I can tell you that reading this book reveals its
workings more effectively than any teacher or commentary possibly could. The
way I think of it is this; reality is a great deal more complex than our
traditional media actually shows; there is no such thing as a beginning, a
middle or an end – there is no happily ever after, and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are
ultimately a matter of perspective. Most works of literature then are artificial,
unable to properly relate the messages that they hope to without
dangerously oversimplifying them, or else sticking to very narrow views of the
world and hoping that everything holds up on its own by maintaining one flimsy
little support beam. ‘What is a city?’ asks Calvino, and rather than try to
provide one single answer he instead shatters the concept of a city into
fifty-five separate fragments, each with its own different answer, and displays
them all in this thing we can at least still refer to as a book.
What
we have then are fifty-five short stories which can be enjoyed separately or as
a whole, framed by the delightful conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco
Polo as they discuss the nature of reality. I am not the sort of person to engage
in the heathen practice of reading on the toilet, but I can imagine that this
would be the perfect sort of material to accompany your bowel movements –
absorb different weird ideas about what makes up a human settlement whilst on
the comfort of your own bog, enlighten yourself and expel waste all at the same
time. These ideas require pondering, so best to do it when you’re in a
pondering state of mind. If you have any love of language (and who doesn’t, as
you speak with language every day) then you will enjoy this little pot-holing
expedition into language’s more exotic depths.
Because
I have to stress that this book is beautiful. Though originally written in
Italian, the translator has done a wonderful job in presenting it in English so
that the language loses none of it subtlety. The sentences flow gorgeously
along like water, conveying ideas with delicacy and finesse more akin to poetry
than prose – though it must be made clear that it is always prosaic, never
descending into verse, which is one of the things I like most about this book.
It’s like poetry, but they don’t skimp too badly on space. The ideas are
delicious, some of them disturbing, most of them profound, and maybe even a
little inspiring.
I
recommend this weird little book to you with every fibre of my being. It is
very short and, like I say, it can be enjoyed in bed, on the move, or on the
toilet. No prior understanding is needed to appreciate what Invisible Cities has to say, and you
will find your own unique way into its complex and delightful view of the
world. It can be re-read for further yumminess, and can be dived into and out
of with ease and convenience.
And
if I ever see any more of Italo Calvino’s work floating about, I’ll be sure to
capture and examine them for your pleasure.
Bibliovisity
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Vintage: Reading.
(1997 [First Published 1972])
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