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.