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)