Is This The Real Life..

Calvino has touched the topic of reality on several occasions in the book. First of all, his cities (or Marco Polo's cities) don't seem very realistic at all, to be honest. Who would believe that a city where "there is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks" exists, especially in the eleventh century or whenever Marco and Kublai Kahn lived? (75) This takes me to think that these cities are made up, or are a product of the emperor's or the merchant's wildest dreams. After all, Kublai and Marco do tell to each other of cities they saw in their dreams many times throughout the book.

The part of Invisible Cities where reality is most played with is in of the encounters between Polo and Khan. The dialogue between both characters shows they start to question if they really do exist, if the things surrounding them are really there. Kublai says: "I, too, am not sure I am here, strolling among the porphyry fountains..." to which Marco replies: "Perhaps this garden exists only in the shadows of our lowered eyelids, and we have never stopped:.." (103). As seen, Calvino expresses the idea that our lives, the world we know, might only be a dream of ours; and that maybe, one day, we will wake up from it and live an entirely different life. 


Reality sometimes can seem like an illusion, an illusion created by our own stubborn minds. We chose what we believe in just because we don't want to believe in anything else than our own views. This is seen in Invisible Cities in a conversation between Kublai and his loyal companion, Marco. Kublai starts to list different things that undoubtedly exist in his empire, such as stonecutters, rubbish collectors, and many other things. He then says he never thinks of them, to which Marco responds "Then they do not exist" (117). This conversation shocked me quite a bit. It made me think of my own perspective on what the reality I am in is.  This is a very deep analysis on society and human behavior. In some ways, our reality is like a  very big video game with almost infinite levels. We chose where to go, what to do, and that is what we think the game is all about. But what we don't notice are the things we don't do, the places we don't visit, so we don't count them as a part of our reality. That is why we have to take into account the things we don't see or experience ourselves, just for the knack of knowing our environment better.

So Much Pressure

A recurring theme in Invisible Cities is the role that decisions take in our world. We make decisions that cause an impact on our lives and other's lives every second. Sometimes we think some events are insignificant, but even the smallest of our judgements can change a lot in the world. This is what I interpreted that Calvino wanted to say in some parts of the book. 

In one part of the story, Italo Calvino imagines Marco Polo in an event that happened to him on his journey. He was on a city square, looking at someone that was "living a life or an instant that coud be his; he could now be in that man's place"(29). He continues to describe that if Marco Polo had "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". This is the importance of decisions. If even the smallest of Marco Polo's paths in life had gone just a bit different, he could have ended up in the position of that man in space and time, or even in the position of any other person in the world, or another entirely different position. There are stories of people who decided to wake up two minutes late on a work day and if it hadn't been for those two minutes, they would have been in the site of an accident, or people who missed a speeding bus by an inch, an inch they had lost while tying their shoes. These decisions saved these people's lives, and Marco Polo's decisions made him stand where and when he was that day. This is what Italo Calvino is expressing here: the impact of our decisions, no matter how small, can go a very long way.

This theme is also seen in a description of a city, Fedora. Marco Polo describes the globes in a building in the center of Fedora:

Looking into each globe, you see a globe city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today... every inhabitant visits it... imagining his reflection on the medusa pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up),... (32)

 The role of decisions is perfectly portrayed in this book. The globes with the other Fedoras represent roads not taken, paths that could have been but aren't real because of some thing or another. This is exactly what decisions and judgements are. I believe the building with the globes are an excellent metaphor for looking at the decisions we have made. We must stop and ponder at the globes with the realities that could have been if we would have taken another road, but we must live in the present we chose, because it is the one that convinced us most. We can not live in the past, it is another reality than what is occuring around us. 

Invisible Words

Here are the words I don't understand from the book, along with the page number they are in and their definitions:

1. Braziers: a metal receptacle for holding live coals or other fuel, as for heating a room. (5)
2. Beseech: to implore urgently. (5)
3. Scepter: royal or imperial power or authority; sovereignty. (5) 
4. Chalcedony: a microcrystalline, translucent variety of quartz, often milky or grayish.(12)
5. Languish: to lose vigor and vitality. (16)
6. Jutting: an extension beyond the main body or line. (53)
7. Stridor: a harsh, grating, or creaking sound. (21)
8. Quarry: an excavation or pit, usually open to the air, from which building stone, slate, or the like, is obtained by cutting, blasting, etc. ( 47)
9. Chaste: refraining from sexual intercourse that is regarded as contrary to morality or religion; virtuous. (52)
10. Balustrade: awkward or unwieldy. (73)
11. Estuary: that part of the mouth or lower course of a river in which the river's current meets the sea's tide. (61)

Brazier

Tricky Language

I have noticed that language has been brought up several times in chapters two and three of Invisible Cities. Marco Polo, at first, doesn't know neither the language spoken by Kublai Kahn nor the languages spoken in the cities he has visited. He tried very hard to learn Kublai Kahn's language but as seen in page 39: 

"... and yet when Polo began to talk about how life must be in those places, day after day, evening after evening, words failed him, and little by little, he went back to relying on gestures, grimaces, glances." (39)

Here is the issue with language. There has always been the idea that spoken dialects like ours can't describe ideas, situations, objects, etc. entirely and with very accurate perspectives. That is why there are so many languages: humans can not settle for one and continue to develop new tongues in order to get a better grasp on the description of things. The use of language depends on perspective; you will never find two people's description of an object the same. This is hinted at in the book when Marco Polo says:

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

Marco Polo says this because the description he gives and the words he chooses have nothing to do with the object (the city). He described the city of Olivia in one way, and when Kublai Kahn or anyone else travels to that city, they will draw their own conclusions about it and explain it in other ways. 


The perfect description does not exist. It is so hard just to find the words to write this, even harder for a poem or to explain how something works or how a person looks like. Language will always be an illusion; it doesn't exist but it helps us understand the world around us. 

The Not-So-Barbarian

I have started to read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, a Cuban storyteller that was raised and lived almost his entire life in Italy. So far into the book, it is a series of very short descriptions of many different cities, all of them unknown (to me, at least). But the part that caught my attention the most was the prologue, where Calvino talks about Kublai Kahn and his reunion with Marco Polo.


Kublai Khan was born in the empire of Mongolia in the year 1215. Being the grandson of the infamous Ghenghis Khan, logic would say he was a cruel and violent barbarian. Think again. Kublai Khan rose to power after his brother was killed, and he was characterized for being a very benevolent ruler. His clan, the Mongols, had conquered China and they managed it, as historians say, with land- hungry, apathetic rulers. Kublai Kahn was the exception.

Kublai Kahn

He was a ruler that broke the mold of his predecessors. He understood the people he leaded. He won the right to rule after defeating his younger brother in battle, and he was established as the fifth Great Khan in 1260. The fifth Khan changed his role from conqueror to ruler, and with that changes came many advances in culture in his empire. One of the great changes he made in the Mongol Empire was that he surrounded himself with advisers from different religions that were in his territory. This established religious freedom for all his subjects. He also created aid agencies, encouraged the use of the postal service, established paper currency, upgraded the roads in his empire and expanded waterways.  




His reign over the Mongol Empire coincided with Marco Polo's journey toward the East. Marco Polo was a young merchant from Venice who traveled with his uncle and father to China, where he met Kublai Khan. The details about his visit are very unclear, but it is known that Kublai Khan grew very close to Marco Polo and used him as a military advisor. At the same time, Polo took advantage of this opportunity and soaked in the cultural, economical and political advances from the Mongolian Empire. Unfortunately, Marco Polo's stories about China were not very well received in Italy; many people thought they were mad man's tales. 

Marco Polo and Kublai Kahn

The relationship between the Venetian merchant and the Mongol emperor is a very unexpected relationship, but it seems as if they trust each other a lot. They share everything with each other, including hopes, fears, dreams, anything that comes to mind. Their friendship will be something to follow throughout the book.