Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: Book Review

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: Review

By Armando Ortiz

In Italo Calvino’s novel Invincible Cities we find Marco Polo sharing with Kublai Khan, former king of China and of the Mongols, his recollections of the cities he came across within the realms of the Khan’s kingdom and those on its margins. Marco engages the supreme leader of the steppe peoples in conversation over games of chess, while strolling through private gardens, and discusses ideas and theories over lavish dinners. In many ways Calvino takes us through cities that could not only exist in the realm of the material but also within the minds of our collective unconscious. The conversations are brief and what we are mostly treated to are descriptions of magical places that seem to just be suspended in a universe of imagination and possibilities. His cities have shadows, and those shadows also make a symphonic cacophony of life that exists there, be it a simple howling wind, the hustle and bustle of nameless bazaars, the smell of burning oil lamps, and the crashing of water onto the rocky coast of a city. Animate and inanimate mirages combine to become places where you find crystal palaces, cities that function as desert oasis to wanderers and travelers alike. The sewer systems of a city, its catacombs and chandeliers also become places where beings gather to create and imagine, and those people in many ways become reflections of other realities.

At one point Marco Polo reflects on the cities that he has encountered and comes to realize that quite possibly he’s been describing different facets of his own hometown, Venice. We might very well be from a place that we think we know well, but when we dissect its different realities we come to realize that maybe what we thought was our city is actually a collection of invisible experiences known to no one else but ourselves. Our backyard isn’t everyone’s block and neighborhood, but in fact just a spec of amazing orbits that make up a larger whole. At one point Polo describes a city that exists suspended in midair and in another recollection, the images that reflect off the water make up the independent realities that those reflections have independent of its originators. It is a world of unlimited possibilities, and through his novel we come to discover we might very well be living in an imaginary city ourselves.

The possibilities presented in Calvino’s book are the limits to our imagination and to our capabilities. Though we might be invisible to others, we still dream and if you imagine it may come to be, and if you desire to explore you might very well realize that this whole earth has been your realm of exploration, like an endless excursion of what has been and what is becoming. We not only are the traveler but also the lord of the things that transpire. Though not the Khan, Marco has managed to captivate the lord’s imagination whose only desire is to bring peace to its inhabitants and become familiar with his kingdom. All kinds of characters make their appearance in the novel and the mythical lives of spirits and gods are discussed, and yet at the end of the novel all we have are two characters one who recounts and tells of his travels, and the other who listens entranced by the tales entering and conquering his mind. Calvino takes us on a journey of dreams that become real and so to our dream can become invisible cities where anything is possible.