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ari.joki: An allegory of the human condition by revealing one facet at a time through presenting a foreign, strange city with foreign, strange inhabitants.
P_S_Patrick: Thes two books are in some ways very like each other, and in some ways quite the opposite. In Mr Palomar various locations, things, and thoughts are described precisely with the utmost eloquence and detail, whereas in Invisible Cities, it is one place being described in many different ways, hazy, as if seen through lenses of different qualities, and warping mirrors. But the effect is much the same, both books give you something to think about, make you see things in different ways, and are a pleasure to read. Both books also contain no strong plot, and consist of many small and diverse sections, and in a way, could be dipped into. Where Palomar gets very much into the mind of the protagonist, and his fixed, elaborate, and definite interpretations of reality, Invisible Cities is similar in that the recollections are also told from the point of view of the narrator, but differ each time, none being tied to reality, all of them containing aspects of truth found through how you interpret them. If you enjoyed reading one of these books, you should enjoy the other.… (mehr)
Kolbkarlsson: Written in the same vein, The Book of Scotlands lists a series of alternative scotlands previously unheard of. Every Scotland is written in it's own style, but with similar wit and daunting imagination.
VanishedOne: One is systematic and compendious, the other flows freely from one impression to another, but both flit between windows onto imaginary vistas.
defaults: A series of descriptions of imaginary ancient Chinese paintings. Uncannily similar in tone, hieratic and surreal, rabbit-holes inscribed in rabbit-holes... and written several decades earlier.
hdcanis: A novel starring a historical person (Marco Polo or Sigmund Freud) exploring a city (Venice or London) in fragmentary manner, each fragment handling a different aspect of the city.
CGlanovsky: Little vignettes about places. Calvino's are more fanciful and there's a twist, while Schalansky's are little anecdotes based on actual bizarre and out-of-the-way places.
You can read this story by the Italian fabulist Calvino on two different levels. Ostensibly a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in which the adventurer describes 55 cities he has visited in the empire to the emperor, you can try to focus on the unique physical aspect of each city as described. This is interesting and has led to many different artists creating visual interpretations of the cities as described in the book. But that's not really what the book is about.
Each description of a city, 1-3 pages long each, takes one facet of the human experience and makes it the defining feature of that city. In Chloe, everyone is a stranger, no one ever greets anyone with recognition, and at each encounter with another person, one imagines a thousand different possibilities unfolding before quickly looking away. Perenthia was laid out in design to reflect the perfection of the firmament, to create heaven and utopia on earth, but gives birth to monsters. Octavia is suspended from a net stretched across a void between two huge mountains, buildings held up by being tied to the net above; life is less uncertain in Octavia, as inhabitants know the net will last only so long. Valdrada was built above a reflective lake, so that nothing that happens in the above ground Valdrada does not also happen in the Valdrada of the lake, and the inhabitants are so aware of their copied image that they take no action without taking special care of how that copied image will look (this book was published in 1972, well before Instagram!).
Halfway through the book, Polo tells Kublai Khan that in describing each city he is really describing his home city of Venice, describing some aspect of that city. But he is also describing some aspect of humanity in each description of a city. As Kublai Khan tells him in one of the dialogues that are placed between descriptions of cities, "I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again." Polo replies, "Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name."
Humanity, in other words, is more similar than the differences suggested by maps and human constructions. More durable as well. Travelogues are interesting but what they tend to describe is not lasting. "Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing."
Cosa si può scrivere de Le città invisibili? O di Calvino in generale? Se come me amate le prose senza fronzoli e di quella semplicità che riesce come nient’altro a raccontare la matassa inestricabile delle cose della vita e della morte, non mancate di leggervi qualcosa di Calvino.
Le città invisibili è una guida alle città dei territori sotto il dominio di Kublai Kan, che si fa raccontare da Marco Polo le loro caratteristiche. Nella lettura, è facile scoprire somiglianze con le nostre città e noi abitanti, in un intreccio che ci rivela parti di noi stessз, a loro volta riflesse negli spazi che abitiamo.
È per questo che ogni rilettura de Le città invisibili ci dirà qualcosa di diverso: in momenti diversi della nostra vita avremo bisogno di concentrarci e riflettere su fili diversi della matassa e sentiremo più vicina quella o quell’altra città, quello o quell’altro scambio tra Kublai Kan e Marco Polo.
A questo giro non ho potuto fare a meno di essere colpita dalle possibilità perse, dalle città malate e dall’importanza di vedere gli sprazzi di luce e farli brillare nonostante il fumo acre degli incendi.
Solo se conoscerai il residuo d’infelicità che nessuna pietra preziosa arriverà a risarcire, potrai computare l’esatto numero di carati cui il diamante finale deve tendere, e non sballerai i calcoli del tuo progetto dall’inizio.
When Marco Polo first meets Kublai Khan they do not speak the same language. Of the many hundreds of languages in the Khan's empire they don't have even one in common. Instead Marco Polo uses a number of small objects to indicate certain ideas, and a dialogue using these symbols is born. Eventually the two of them develop a lingua franca of whatever words in common they pick up and their own mutual experience with each other. This communication is forever anchored around the initial experience with the objects. "Each piece of information about a place recalled to the emperor’s mind that first gesture or object which Marco designated the place. The new fact received a meaning from that emblem and also added to the emblem a new meaning. Perhaps, Kublai thought, the empire is nothing but a zodiac of the mind’s phantasms." Guuuuuh that's so fucking rad. ( )
I often feel that Calvino could have written about a slice of cheese and would have made it interesting. William Weaver's translation is superb (at least as far as reading experience goes--I have not/can not compare it to the original). The book is full of metaphor, but instead of feeling tedious, we start to understand the metaphors as truths and not just mere symbols. The context is a fictitious conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the founder and first emperor of the Yuan dynasty of China, and the subject of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem. Rather than set it completely in dialogue, however, the book offers vignettes of these "invisible cities" to which Marco Polo has "traveled"--the scare quotes will have to suffice here as I do not wish to offer spoilers. Occasionally dialogue from Khan and Polo interject to wax philosophical, but it is far from gratuitous. For those new to Calvino's writing, it is a great entry! It did not take me ten years to read this book---I just started it on my Kindle ten years ago and put it aside for awhile. ( )
Es ist nicht gesagt, daß Kublai Khan alles glaubt, was Marco Polo erzählt, wenn er die auf seinen Sendreisen besuchten Städte schildert, aber der Tatarenkaiser hört dem jungen Venezianer nach wie vor mit größerer Wißbegierde und Aufmerksamkeit zu als jedem andern seiner Sendboten oder Kundschafter.
Zitate
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,
their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.
Letzte Worte
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
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Google Books — Lädt ...
(4.14)
2
Each description of a city, 1-3 pages long each, takes one facet of the human experience and makes it the defining feature of that city. In Chloe, everyone is a stranger, no one ever greets anyone with recognition, and at each encounter with another person, one imagines a thousand different possibilities unfolding before quickly looking away. Perenthia was laid out in design to reflect the perfection of the firmament, to create heaven and utopia on earth, but gives birth to monsters. Octavia is suspended from a net stretched across a void between two huge mountains, buildings held up by being tied to the net above; life is less uncertain in Octavia, as inhabitants know the net will last only so long. Valdrada was built above a reflective lake, so that nothing that happens in the above ground Valdrada does not also happen in the Valdrada of the lake, and the inhabitants are so aware of their copied image that they take no action without taking special care of how that copied image will look (this book was published in 1972, well before Instagram!).
Halfway through the book, Polo tells Kublai Khan that in describing each city he is really describing his home city of Venice, describing some aspect of that city. But he is also describing some aspect of humanity in each description of a city. As Kublai Khan tells him in one of the dialogues that are placed between descriptions of cities, "I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again." Polo replies, "Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name."
Humanity, in other words, is more similar than the differences suggested by maps and human constructions. More durable as well. Travelogues are interesting but what they tend to describe is not lasting. "Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing."
It's a hopeful vision. (