See It, To Believe It

“No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it.” (Pg.61)

Filigree: (noun) ornamental work of fine (typically gold or silver) wire formed into delicate tracery.

Mullion: (noun) a vertical bar between the panes of glass in a window.

Raffia: (noun) a palm tree native to tropical Africa and Madagascar.

Mandrel: (noun) a shaft or spindle in a lathe to which work is fixed while being turned.

Lathe: (noun) a machine for shaping wood, metal, or other material.

Estuary: (noun) the tidal mouth of a large river, where the tide meets the stream.

Amethyst: (noun) a precious stone consisting of a violet or purple variety of quartz.

Fickle: (adjective) changing frequently, esp. as regards one's loyalties, interests, or affection. 

Cobblestone: (noun) a small, round stone of a kind formerly used to cover road surfaces.

Eccentric: (adjective) unconventional and slightly strange.

Haphazard: (adjective) lacking any obvious principle of organization.

Sojourn: (noun) a temporary stay.

Balustrade: (noun) a railing supported by balusters, esp. an ornamental parapet on a balcony, bridge, or terrace.

Wastrel: (noun) a wasteful or good-for-nothing person.

Gauge:  (noun) an instrument or device for measuring the magnitude, amount, or contents of something, typically with a visual display of such information.

Amid:  (preposition) surrounded by; in the middle of.

Pediments: (noun) the triangular upper part of the front of a building in classical style, typically surmounting a portico of columns.

Unreal Cities

The cities I have been reading so far seem realistic to me. One could believe that Marco Polo is actually describing a real city we are just not aware of. As I started reading the third portion of the book, I realized that the cities were no longer based on the real world. Armilla is a unique city that has no floor, ceilings, or walls, but instead is composed of water pipes.  Its architecture it’s not only completely different and unrealistic but the humans living on it are fiction. “…the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in the possession of nymph and naidas.” (Pg.50) Once again in Chloe, Marco starts describing unreal characters: “A tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral.” (Pg.51)

I find it interesting how it seems that we are entering another world, were its normal to see giants and nymphs. At the same time I can relate Chloe with Bogota: where everyone is a stranger. Bogota has become so big that you can now a day walk through the entire city and not come across into anyone you know. Some characteristics are believable, while others are not. Zobeide is the first city in which Marco Polo explains the reason for it was founded. “They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream.” (Pg. 45) The only reason the city was founded was to find the woman that ran through the dreams of all men. As they dreamt, they started modifying the city so that it would resembled to their dreams and maybe this way finding the women: “…and they changed the position of the arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.” (Pg. 46)

While reading this section I started thinking about Dante Inferno. Even though the topics are completely different, they both have the idea of dividing everything into sections.  In Dante Inferno that people that committed suicide would be placed in a different circle than the ones that committed fraud. The same happens in Hypatia: “…I would discover young and beautiful ladies bathing; but at the bottom of the water, crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides….” (Pg.47) It appears that every character is assigned to a certain place, just as in Dante Inferno.

I also found interesting the dialogue between Marco and Great Khan at the end of the section. Great Khan starts describing the city of his dreams, making us see that none of the previous described has meet his expectations. It seems as if he has lost hope through out the journey, but Marco Polo assures him that his dreams are going to become a reality.

Past, Memories, Future

What if? A question that appears on our daily lives and that Marco Polo asks himself. “…he could now be in that man´s place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square.” (Pg.29) Our past is what defines our future and is something that no one can change. I found this dialogue very interesting because I have always seen Marco´s Polo journey with one mainly goal: to explorer new lands, but after reading Khan´s questions I realized that it might be a journey to fix his past.

He starts describing Maurilia as the new city. Everyone has the chance to look at post cards and determine whether they preferred the old city from the new one. At the same time it is pointless to ask because the past has to stay in the past. The narrator also explains how the city changes without anyone noticing, creating a sense of nostalgia when people look back at the post cards.
I believe Fedora was going to be the utopian city, the one everyone liked, until it came to be what it is. Before visiting a new place, everyone starts imagining all kind of things: creating their own utopia. Some people are satisfied when they see the reality, while others are let down. It all depends on the imaginary city each person was thinking of. It seems that Zenobia is the perfect society as they state: “But what is certain is that if you ask an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines….” (Pg. 35) I also found interesting how he divides the cities into two: the ones that continue to give their forms of desires and the ones that are slowly forgotten. This is one of the biggest obstacles that we have now days. Due to technology we start to develop really fast forgetting about the different cultures and traditions that others have. We are easily influenced by the new inventions that we forget of what we were before.

As I kept on reading the new cities I realized that it describes pretty much the cities in which we live now a days: boring, repetitive, and critical. “…sleep, make tools, cook, accumulate gold, disrobe, reign, sell, question oracles.” (Pg.34) We start seeing how Khan is only looking to accumulate wealth, just like now days where everyone wants to be more powerful. On terms of money and power the societies haven’t change at all. We are in a constant competition looking for ways to bring others down. 

A New Beginning

Reading a book is simple. You open the first page and continue passing the pages until you reach to the end. It´s actually pretty simple. When I opened Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino I realized that there were two ways of reading the book: you could follow the order of the pages or you could read it in the order of the chapters titles. I decided to read it from the first page to the last one, as any other book, because I believe that Italo had a purpose for writing it in that order. If he wanted for us to read by the chapter’s titles, then he would have placed them one after the other, right?

As I started reading the first pages, I realized that it was going to be a difficult book to understand. The setting of the book is different, since he is constantly describing another city: some more than others. He also uses a technique that we don’t see often, which is that he jumps straight to the action. He doesn’t provide us much background about Marco Polo, Italo just starts describing different cities. He jumps from first person narrator to second, making me realizing that he is describing the cities from his point of view. What he might see as beautiful, other might see it as ugly. What I also saw was that he was only describing the cities from the outside, like judging a book by its cover. I found interesting how Zaira was the only city in which he used its past to describe its present. “A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira´s past.” (Pg.10) The architecture of the city will tell us about its history, just like the palms of our hands. Every palm is unique and different, but it can only help to identify a person yet it doesn’t help you to see the characteristics of the person.

Italo Calvino uses some irony when describing the city of Zora. At the beginning he states: “Beyond six rivers and three mountain ranges rises Zora, a city that no one, having seen it, can forget.” (Pg.15) As he kept on with his description, I realized that it was like any other city. It had nothing special, “…though nothing in them possesses a special beauty or rarity.” (Pg.15) Why would then people remember this city if it didn’t had anything unique? He finishes describing this city stating, “…Zora has languished, disintegrated, disappeared. The earth has forgotten her.” (Pg.16) I ended up having lots of questions about this city, since I am sure that there’s more to it for why everyone remembers it. 

With all of the descriptions I have read so far I noticed that the author only focuses on small details of the cities, such as doors, windows, statues, etc. At the same time he usually names valuable things that the city posses. "Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower.” (Pg.7)