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Invisible Cities

by Italo Calvino, William Weaver (translator)

4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 · rating details · 16,429 ratings · 1,187 reviews

Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal). Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Paperback, 165 pages

Published May 3rd 1978 by Mariner Books (first published 1972)

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Sep 09, 2011 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, favorites

This is the third book that I have attempted to write a response to this week, and failed. I think I am going through a very internal, sponge-like phase. To say that I haven't been going out much would be a ridiculous understatement. I hole up in my bed, finish a book, set it down and grab another almost instantly, comparing the smell of the old to that of the new, then dive straight in, surfacing only rarely for air. I haven't felt up to hammering down my feelings about these things that I have...more This is the third book that I have attempted to write a response to this week, and failed. I think I am going through a very internal, sponge-like phase. To say that I haven't been going out much would be a ridiculous understatement. I hole up in my bed, finish a book, set it down and grab another almost instantly, comparing the smell of the old to that of the new, then dive straight in, surfacing only rarely for air. I haven't felt up to hammering down my feelings about these things that I have been absorbing (more accurately: "lapping up"). I want my thoughts to take a sort of anti-shape through the inaudible whispers of apparitions, and so need a book which tells me by taking me away. There is mention in one of these majestic prose poems of the fact that a thing can be seen much more clearly, its actual shape discerned, if you move a great distance from it...insinuating that close scrutiny and over-thinking can be horribly counterproductive when exploring the depths of oneself. These stories take you to space, to floating crags on a darkened sea, shifting your perceptions about life, identity, desire, denial, and death much like Calvino's cities tend to morph and bend and burst and reform. Depending on the placement of your feet at the period of your life which you read this, you may experience several very different books. This was what I needed right now, something which aids you, all at once, at both escaping and embracing the things knocking around your skull, hearing some harsh words in a voice hauntingly soothing and so easier to really hear and...does this make any sense? What? This review has been brought to you buy severe insomnia, and the benadryl it is too powerful for.

*Also, there are simultaneously beautiful and horrifying scenes aplenty in this book, balanced in the same way that made me love reading Greek and Roman mythology as a child. If you are a sucker for that stuff like I am/was, give this little guy a try. There are a lot of fantastical creatures in Escher-like scenery behaving in ways as indiscernible as dreams. You don't have to be having some epic fit of self destruction and reconstruction to enjoy the damned thing, is what I mean to say. Monsters and unicorns and ghosts and shit are pretty awesome, too. (less)

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Jun 25, 2012 Riku Sayuj rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Invisible Cities; Imagined Lives

Marco Polo was a dreamer. He had great ambitions - wanting to be a traveller, a writer and a favored courtier. He wanted to live in the lap of luxury in his lifetime and in the best illustrated pages of history later. But he could only be a dreamer and never much more. Was it good enough? He never travelled anywhere and spent his life dreaming away in hisVenice and is remembered to this day as the greatest explorer and travel writer of all time. How did that come...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Shan Jago rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My attempt at a City -

Cities & Memory/Desire

Travelling west beneath the hooded peaks you will see, tangled in the great beard of the mountain, colossal figures of painted wood peering down from between the trees. There are signs of welcome and invitation. There are rides for the whole family. You know that soon you will be in the city.
In your mind it floats on a lily pad, riding a wave of whiteblue water that reflects a shower of meteors, and of course the city itself – the towers, a chia-...more

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Apr 18, 2013 [P] rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust.

What is it?

A short Borgesian novel in which Marco Polo describes a series of [mostly fantastical] cities for the Kublai Khan.

What's it all about?

It may sound like an odd, even petty, thing to say but Invisible Cities, as a novel to read from cover to cover, suffers from a surfeit of ideas, is too open to interpretation. My main gripe being that I, at least, was never certain of what...more “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust.

What is it?

A short Borgesian novel in which Marco Polo describes a series of [mostly fantastical] cities for the Kublai Khan.

What's it all about?

It may sound like an odd, even petty, thing to say but Invisible Cities, as a novel to read from cover to cover, suffers from a surfeit of ideas, is too open to interpretation. My main gripe being that I, at least, was never certain of what Calvino's point was.

One is told in one of the linking narrative sections that the two men don’t speak the same language, that they actually communicate via signs and objects. One imagines that as a consequence of speaking different languages, and the subsequent miscommunication between them, that both have a different conception/understanding of the cities being 'described.' The cities of the Khan’s mind, then, would be the invisible [non-existent] cities of the title, as he, unlike Polo, has never seen them but only 'heard' of them from someone else.

While this idea of an elaborate Chinese whispers appeals to me, I am not certain that there is enough evidence to support a claim that it was Calvino's intention to explore it. Indeed, that something, like a city, can exist in two different forms in the imaginations of two different men, that it can change in appearance as it passes from the mind of one person to the mind of another, throws up interesting questions about the nature and reliability of knowledge, and also, if one ignores for a moment the claim that the two men are communicating via signs etc, touches on the merits and otherwise of oral storytelling. Yet, it is Polo’s descriptions that are fantastical, we are not privy to Kublai’s interpretations. To give weight to the idea that this is really a book about communication, about building images in one's mind, there would need to be some sense that Polo's descriptions are at odds with his listener's understanding of what he is told, and there isn't.

One has to ask, then, that if Invisible Cities isn't a book about communication, about storytelling, what exactly is it? On the reverse of the novel itself there is a quote by Paul Bailey who claims that it is a paean to Venice, that the descriptions of seemingly distinct places are actually descriptions of that one city [indicating, of course, that knowledge of Venice would be necessary to understand or fully appreciate Calvino’s work]. But I don't quite buy this either, as it seems extraordinarily cheeky of a writer to expect his readership to hop on a plane to Italy in order to be able to make sense of his book.

My favourite interpretation would that Kublai Khan knows that Polo is not telling the truth when he recounts his tales of marvelous places, but prefers these wonderful imaginative cities to the actual cities over which he rules, that like Don Quixote this magical world is more appealing to him than the real thing. And yet, I am unconvinced of this too. Indeed, the thought that struck me with the most vehemence whilst reading it was that this is a novel about understanding the essence of cities, rather than their purely physical appearance.

So it is the case then that at the end of my review I am still unable to say what Invisible Cities is, to describe or understand it adequately, which, ironically, puts me in the position of both Polo and Kublai Khan. In fact, it occurs to me now that this review is essentially the outlining of a series of Invisible Novels. I hope one of them inspires you to read to Calvino's.(less)

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Apr 11, 2010 Δx Δp ≥ ½ ħ htgkvkkviholmvobsvzighxofyyzmw rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: i-me-mine, a-day-in-the-life

"Tidak mudah untuk menjelaskan isi novel ini. Setiap usaha untuk melakukannya tampaknya hanya akan berakhir sia-sia. Bukan semata karena gambaran kota-kota magis dan surealis yang ada di dalamnya, tetapi juga karena keindahan puitisnya. Inilah novel dimana kemustahilan imajinasi bertemu dengan pasangan sempurnanya : kefasihan bercerita "

Itu kata endorsementnya.

Tadinya saya mengira bahwa pujian untuk buku ini terlampau berlebihan. Tapi begitu habis bab-bab awal, saya sadar, pujian tersebut justr...more

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Jul 29, 2009 Bram rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, favorites

Given the subject matter—um, descriptions of cities—I wasn’t expecting this book to affect me on such a personal, visceral level. But during the final city description and again in Marco Polo’s closing dialogue with Kublai Khan, I got serious chills. And to put that in perspective, I was finishing it outside (90+ degrees) George Bush Intercontinental Houston, or whatever the hell that airport’s called. Now this effect may have been compounded by the fact that I was also listening to the Conan th...more

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May 18, 2013 vivliovision rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Σκέφτομαι ότι έγραψα κάτι σαν τελευταίο ποίημα αγάπης για τις πόλεις, τη στιγμή που γίνεται όλο και πιο δύσκολο να τις ζήσουμε." —Ι.Κ.

...
Στο σημείο αυτό ο Κουμπλάι Χαν τον διέκοπτε ή φανταζόταν πώς τον διέκοπτε, με μια ερώτηση σαν αυτή: «Μα προχωράς με το κεφάλι πάντοτε στραμμένο προς τα πίσω;» Ή: «Πώς συμβαίνει όλα όσα βλέπεις να είναι πάντα πίσω σου;» Ή ακόμα: «Το ταξίδι σου ξετυλίγεται μονάχα προς το παρελθόν;»

...
Τώρα πια, από εκείνο το αληθινό ή υποθετικό του παρελθόν, ο ίδιος είναι αποκλ...more "Σκέφτομαι ότι έγραψα κάτι σαν τελευταίο ποίημα αγάπης για τις πόλεις, τη στιγμή που γίνεται όλο και πιο δύσκολο να τις ζήσουμε." —Ι.Κ.

...
Στο σημείο αυτό ο Κουμπλάι Χαν τον διέκοπτε ή φανταζόταν πώς τον διέκοπτε, με μια ερώτηση σαν αυτή: «Μα προχωράς με το κεφάλι πάντοτε στραμμένο προς τα πίσω;» Ή: «Πώς συμβαίνει όλα όσα βλέπεις να είναι πάντα πίσω σου;» Ή ακόμα: «Το ταξίδι σου ξετυλίγεται μονάχα προς το παρελθόν;»

...
Τώρα πια, από εκείνο το αληθινό ή υποθετικό του παρελθόν, ο ίδιος είναι αποκλεισμένος· δεν μπορεί να σταματήσει· πρέπει να συνεχίσει μέχρι να φτάσει σε μια άλλη πόλη όπου τον περιμένει ένα άλλο παρελθόν του, ή κάτι που να ήταν ένα πιθανό του μέλλον και τώρα είναι το παρόν κάποιου άλλου. Ένα απραγματοποίητο μέλλον είναι μονάχα ένα κλαδί του παρελθόντος: ένα ξερό κλαδί.

...
Άλλη είναι η πόλη για όποιον περνά χωρίς να μπει μέσα, και άλλη για όποιον εγκλωβίζεται σε αυτή και δεν μπορεί να ξεφύγει· άλλη είναι η πόλη στην οποία φτάνει κανείς για πρώτη φορά, άλλη είναι εκείνη που αφήνει πίσω του για να μην ξαναγυρίσει ποτέ· η καθεμιά αξίζει ένα διαφορετικό όνομα

Η μετάφραση του Ανταίου Χρυσοστομίδη δίνει στην ελληνική έκδοση των Αόρατων Πόλεων ένα ισχυρό, συγκριτικό, πλεονέκτημα.

****************************

(less)

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Apr 02, 2011 Mon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-and-architecture

Invisible Cities: A Parody

Now i shall tell of the city of Yendys, which is wonderful in this fashion: though set on an even coastal plane with mediocre breeze and timid weather, the houses and decorated sheds are of bricks and corrugated iron, connected to each other with quiet courtyards split by pairs, surrounded with exotic, tidy bush of ginormous flowers, man-sized tin water tanks, weather vanes and shinny Japanese vehicles parked on dark grey gravel street that glistens under the sun.

No on...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Francesco Fantuzzi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

E Polo: - L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l'inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e che cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.
Vorrei parti...more E Polo: - L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l'inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e che cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.
Vorrei partire proprio da queste poche parole, la cifra conclusiva di questo breve romanzo, per metterne in luce le migliori sue qualità. Innanzitutto mi preme enfatizzare la dimensione etica di tale narrazione. La pericope citata rappresenta un monito all'uomo di sempre, sospeso tra bene e male, invischiato in una lotta nella quale è la parte peggiore quella che, apparentemente, sembra sempre avere la meglio. Questo monito ci parla ancora oggi (e più che mai), ci invita a non lasciare la parola definitiva sulla nostra esistenza a un abbrutimento, sebbene ci appaia soverchiante. Dare fiducia a quella beatitudine minoritaria, che appare schiacciata nel mondo d'oggi, può rappresentare una scommessa che vale la pena lanciare. E' bello sapere che, nel passato, abbiamo avuto scrittori e intellettuali capaci di slancio profetico, che non indietreggiavano davanti alla dimensione dell'etica. Purtroppo in tanta narrativa di oggi mi pare ci sia piuttosto quell'adeguarsi all'inferno, di cui qui si è parlato.
Gli altri motivi di pregio di questo libro sono altrettanto importanti. Balza agli occhi una scrittura virtuosistica, che sembra giocare con una facilità sovrumana con l'arte della variazione. Le parole di Marco Polo dipingono all'interlocutore città attraverso una molteplicità di lenti di rifrazione diverse, da far nascere il sospetto nel lettore: tante città? Una sola? La città si trasforma in espediente della coscienza che vede il mondo. E lo vede in molti modi diversi, attraverso caratterizzazioni peculiari (quel paio di lenti) che si ripropongono più volte, come testimoniano i titoletti di ognuna. Infatti ogni città ha un suo nome, ma nell'architettura del libro viene indicata da un titoletto che dichiara il punto di vista (le città e la memoria; le città e il desiderio; le città e i segni e così via) affiancato da un numero progressivo, testimonianza per questo gusto per la variazione (del quale Calvino non ha mai mancato di professare un certo apostolato).
Altra fondamentale caratteristica calviniana è il gusto per la parola, la sapienza nell'uso di un lessico che sia anche, contemporaneamente, suono e azione. Anche in questo l'autore dimostra un virtuosismo fuori dal comune.
Perché non ho attribuito le (meritatissime) cinque stellette? Perché riservo quell'ultima a una componente volubile, il gusto personale. Esaltante e trascinante questo romanzo a livello intellettuale: una grandissima opera. Il mio coinvolgimento personale, però, non è stato viscerale (del resto Calvino non è autore di questo genere), perciò lascio l'esclusiva della quinta stella a quei romanzi e racconti che custodiscono con sé una parte della mia esistenza. Tutto qui.(less)

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Dec 01, 2008 Capitu rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

As a child I remember being mesmerized by a collection of fairy tales. I could read with proficiency for my age – maybe 6 or 7 – but much of the meaning escaped me, although I could sense, or guess, much of it. At the end, it did not matter, because I was enthralled by the images and language.

Invisible Cities took me back to that early reading experience. I felt lost at times, searching for the meaning when the surreal and exotic images made me drunk. There is a philosophical deepness to this b...more

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Sep 27, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Just read it!

Recommended to John by: I'd heard of Calvino & bought the '74 hardcover

Shelves: fine-strange-foreign

Membership in Goodreads has its requirements, and I'd have to turn in my badge if I didn't post something on the late-century grandmaster Calvino. INVISIBLE CITIES emerges as the one to celebrate, though he never wrote a loser, and I'd never have a library without COSMICOMICS or THE BARON IN THE TREES. Still, CITIES is the one that's laid out songlines across all the continents of reading. By some miracle of imagination, Calvino pulls off both a form no one had ever seen before and a structure t...more

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Aug 12, 2007 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars

Perhaps my previous experiences with Calvino's writings led me to expect something different out of this book. Each short chapter certainly had plenty to make me think about, but after finishing the book as a whole I am having a hard time putting all of those thoughts together in a coherent way. I liked it. I really did. But I'm left more with a feeling of not having understood something very important from the whole 'story'...something Calvino wanted me to understand. Is it really just the frag...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

amazing, beautiful descriptions of imaginary cities, one like a spider's web, one on stilts etc. Exquisite prose.

2012 - been reading through my 1983 notebook and come across this: I.C. - elephants, girls and underground trains. Towers of cobalt. The city which is just plumbing, a bath tub, a shower, pipes, girls wallowing in tubs. The one that grows new cities within its centre, like tree rings; the one where new things replace the old every day - the dustmen welcomed like angels. Endless pleasu...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Kelanth, numquam risit ubi dracones vivunt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa, classico, ebook-carta, favorites

Pubblicato nel 1972, "Le città invisibili" è un romanzo di Italo Calvino in cui l'autore ricorre alla tecnica della letteratura combinatoria. Questo libro è infatti un romanzo metanarrativo, in quanto porta il lettore a riflettere sui meccanismi stessi della scrittura.

Mi sembra chiaro, no? No, in effetti, non lo è molto. Riproviamo: due protagonisti, il primo è Marco Polo che, alla corte di Kublai Kan, il secondo personaggio, fornisce attraverso i suoi dispacci al Sovrano le descrizioni delle c...more

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Apr 02, 2010 Hollis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this. The best way I can explain is that it is basically the literary equivalent of one of those MC Escher engravings. What amazed me about the book is that it is less than 150 pages in length. If any writer in the world today attempted a book as profound as this it would have to be 500 pages at least (with a further two volumes to make up a trilogy, if the writer is in the fantasy genre). Not that anyone could make something as profound as this.

Rea...more

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Jul 27, 2009 Keely rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, philosophy, reviewed, urban-fantasy, italian

In writing, pretension is the act of pulling your hamstring while lifting your pen. It is that sudden, clear, and unfortunate. It should also be avoidable, but anyone gifted with a grain of brilliance is tempted to extend it as far as they can, like Donne's speck of dust stretched the length of the universe, one is left wondering whether it was more ludicrous or thought-provoking.

Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' is a series of descriptions of mythical, impossible cities told by Marco Polo to Kublai...more

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Aug 25, 2007 Jasen Johns rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I picked this up after becoming immersed in urban planning, reading and swearing allegiance to the small-footprint, high density environmental ethics school my philosophy professor Dan Holbrook, a rancher, had so disparaged. Calvino's fabulist take on cities stresses on how cities can be encountered and how the same city can be encountered in a multiplicity of ways. And that's the trick I'd later argue with Professor Holbrook: it's not the structure of cities necessarily undercutting any environ...more

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Jun 13, 2007 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: city planners, dreamers

Shelves: fiction

Hidden cities, thin cities, cities and memory, cities and eyes, cities and the dead - this book is a collection of ruminations about them all, and they're all the same city.

Marco Polo is sitting with Kublai Kahn in the capital of Kahn's vast empire, they are contemplating the complexity of his conquered territory, and the italian traveler tells him these stories, poems, anecdotes, meditations. Each one is no more than 3 pages. They are gems you turn over in your mouth before you go to bed. They...more

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Aug 09, 2007 John Wiswell rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Literary readers, poetry readers interested in prose

Calvino's upstart artists were interested in tearing down the barriers between forms of art, and in Invisible Cities he made a contribution by making prose as beautiful as poetry. Herein are a series of descriptions of cities, each focusing on one aspect (foliage, architecture, a city in the sky, a city underground, etc.). Many of these are no longer than a page, using the beauty of language and potent imagery to create beautiful and meaningful prose. Is the narrator (Marco Polo) making them all...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Evie rated it 5 of 5 stars

"The other ambassadors warn me of famines, extortions, conspiracies, or else they inform me of newly discovered turquoise mines, advantageous prices in marten furs, suggestions for supplying damascend blades. And you?" the Great Khan asked Polo, "you return from lands equally distant and you can tell me only the thoughts that come to a man who sits on his doorstep at evening to enjoy the cool air. What is the use, then, of all your traveling?" -- p. 27

Italo Calvino’s ponderous work titled “The I...more "The other ambassadors warn me of famines, extortions, conspiracies, or else they inform me of newly discovered turquoise mines, advantageous prices in marten furs, suggestions for supplying damascend blades. And you?" the Great Khan asked Polo, "you return from lands equally distant and you can tell me only the thoughts that come to a man who sits on his doorstep at evening to enjoy the cool air. What is the use, then, of all your traveling?" -- p. 27

Italo Calvino’s ponderous work titled “The Invisible Cities” is indubitably worthy of praise. This 165-page production is not one with an unravelling plot, but rather an assembly of fanciful descriptions of whimsical cities, peculiar scenery and sagacious, philosophical ideas. The recollection of these dreamlike tales of these fantastic cities is presented to Kublai Khan, Tartar emperor, by the blossoming Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, who is believed to have visited all of these cities himself. These cities are categorized accordingly: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and eyes, cities and signs and the like. Moreover, it appears that these cities, such as "Despina," "Anastasia," and "Zora" (to name a few), although “fantastic,” simultaneously do and don’t exist. What I mean by this is that although these cities cannot be geographically located on a map, allegorically, they represent overlaying concepts and themes, such as discovery, yearning, downfall, that are evidently prevalent in our modern-day societies. In addition, what I found intriguing and perhaps, even brilliant on Calvino’s part, is that each of these fictional cities is really all in all, the same one. Similarly, all of the elements distinctly featured in these individual, yet the same, cities co-occur in our society as well. On the whole, I found this work to be relatively easy to read through, quite interesting and rather psychedelic or mind-blowing. It was a pleasant read and I recommend it to all who enjoy reading books that expand the horizons of one’s mind! (less)

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Feb 28, 2009 Célia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2009, 5-stars, biblioteca-sábado, bought

Sinceramente, nem sei por onde começar a opinião deste livro. Aproveitei as mini-férias do Carnaval para o ler e dei a tarefa por concluída em algumas horas, tal foi a forma como fiquei hipnotizada com esta leitura.

Não é um livro muito fácil de descrever - a sinopse é, contudo, bastante elucidativa - ou de catalogar. Trata-se da colocação em palavras de uma imaginação prodigiosa. O livro não tem propriamente uma história, para além do facto de termos Marco Polo a falar de diversas cidades ao imp...more Sinceramente, nem sei por onde começar a opinião deste livro. Aproveitei as mini-férias do Carnaval para o ler e dei a tarefa por concluída em algumas horas, tal foi a forma como fiquei hipnotizada com esta leitura.

Não é um livro muito fácil de descrever - a sinopse é, contudo, bastante elucidativa - ou de catalogar. Trata-se da colocação em palavras de uma imaginação prodigiosa. O livro não tem propriamente uma história, para além do facto de termos Marco Polo a falar de diversas cidades ao imperador Kublai Kan. As várias cidades vão desfilando diante dos nossos olhos, agrupadas por temas (Memória, Desejo, Sinais, Subtis, Trocas, Olhos, Nome, Mortos, Céu, Contínuas e Ocultas), sendo que cada tema contém 5 cidades ordenadas segundo um esquema cuidado, mas que nem por isso impede o leitor de se sentir completamente enredado no que está a ler.

A grande maioria das cidades descritas são completamente surreais: desde cidades debaixo de terra ou de água, a cidades suspensas ou que consistem em duas metades, em que uma delas periodiocamente vai viajar por outras paragens. Mas, para além do surrealismo físico, estas cidades são também descritas através dos sentimentos dos seus habitantes, dos quais conhecemos os pensamentos e estados de espírito, que, frequentemente, se reflectem na própria cidade descrita.

A escrita é simplesmente genial: faz-nos viajar, imaginar, pensar. Pensar que todas as cidades descritas podem ser lados de apenas uma cidade, pensar no verdadeiro significado de tantas descrições e reflexões. Para mim, uma das conclusões a tirar deste livro é que a imaginação tem muita força. Termino este post tal como o livro termina, com esta frase genial:

O inferno dos vivos não é uma coisa que virá a existir; se houver um, é o que já está aqui, o inferno que habitamos todos os dias, que nós formamos ao estarmos juntos. Há dois modos para não o sofrermos. O primeiro torna-se fácil para muita gente: aceitar o inferno e fazer parte dele a ponto de já não o vermos. O segundo é arriscado e exige uma atenção e uma aprendizagem contínuas: tentar e saber reconhecer, no meio do inferno, quem e o que não é inferno, e fazê-lo viver, e dar-lhe lugar.

(less)

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Sep 18, 2008 matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who hate "if on a winter's night, blah blah"

Shelves: dear-to-my-heart, to-reread

my father masqueraded as a jeweller, for some time, and he once showed me a small packet of blue-white paper - not unlike what one might find drugs in - containing diamonds. that's what this book is like. it's a played out metaphor, but both still awed me.

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Aug 15, 2011 Argelia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Las ciudades, como los sueños, están construidas de deseos y de miedos, aunque el hilo de su discurso sea secreto, sus reglas absurdas, sus perspectivas engañosas, y toda cosa esconda otra”. –I.Calvino

Las ciudades invisibles nos enfrena con un libro sumamente novedoso, pues bien podemos concebirlo como una novela divida en capítulos más bien independientes, o una serie de pequeños relatos unidos por la conversación entre Marco Polo y Kublai Kan; e incluso a un poema extenso dedicado a esas mani...more “Las ciudades, como los sueños, están construidas de deseos y de miedos, aunque el hilo de su discurso sea secreto, sus reglas absurdas, sus perspectivas engañosas, y toda cosa esconda otra”. –I.Calvino

Las ciudades invisibles nos enfrena con un libro sumamente novedoso, pues bien podemos concebirlo como una novela divida en capítulos más bien independientes, o una serie de pequeños relatos unidos por la conversación entre Marco Polo y Kublai Kan; e incluso a un poema extenso dedicado a esas manifestaciones prodigiosas de la civilización humana: las ciudades.

Calvino hace de su libro un homenaje a todo aquello que en realidad configura las ciudades: aquellos detalles imperceptibles y esas leyes no escritas que permiten que las ciudades, por más fantásticas que parezcan, se sustenten como posibles. La existencia de una ciudad flotante o de otra que se recicla a sí misma cada día resulta inverosímil, pero nuestras ciudades podrían resultar aún más increíbles si nos dedicáramos a mirar con detenimiento todas esas líneas invisibles que las sostienen. Las ciudades modernas son tan increíblemente disparatadas como los parajes de ensueño que describe Marco Polo al sorprendido Kan, quien se empeña en escuchar de voz del mercader veneciano los secretos de todas las ciudades que existen en su reino, un reino que él mismo sabe está destinado a caer.

El estilo de Calvino resulta atrevido y seductor.Todas las ciudades llevan nombre de mujer y en sí se nos presentan como un solo botón que se abre. Las descripciones se van tejiendo con lirismo en la imaginación del lector como lo hacen en la mente de Kublai Kan, quien a lo largo de las narraciones de Marco Polo reflexiona sobre su reino, las leyes que rigen sobre las ciudades que lo conforman, así como los miedos y los deseos del hombre, los cuales, finalmente, construyen estas urbes.

Así es como a través de los ojos, los símbolos, la memoria y la sutileza, las ciudades nos van rebelando no sólo un mundo fantástico y encantador, sino una introspección hacia la muerte, la esperanza, el bien, el mal y la necesidad humana de preservar su legado sobre la tierra.
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Feb 04, 2013 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The occasion of my awarding five stars to anything here is a rare one, but Invisible Cities just about wins my heart.

If you begin books hoping for the usual bombardment of clichés necessary to hold together a riveting story or one of the usual old formulaic plots, then Invisible Cities isn’t something you’ll appreciate. If, on the other hand, you enjoy the experience of reading purely for its own sake then you may very well be enchanted by this magical little book.
In creating this fictional comm...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Joni rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: architecture, entropy, fiction, philosophy, fantasy, urbanism, travel, utopia

Calvino's Invisible Cities is an amazing poetical and philosophical take on the city and the meaning of being human. The author takes the reader on a fantastic trip of architectural details, right, wrong, and grey. It visits 11 sets of 5 imaginary cities located in an imaginary empire. Each city has its specific subtleties described in a couple of pages. Aesthetic features and general organization is concisely covered but - like the city of Tamara - the form of the city has a hidden meaning. Eac...more Calvino's Invisible Cities is an amazing poetical and philosophical take on the city and the meaning of being human. The author takes the reader on a fantastic trip of architectural details, right, wrong, and grey. It visits 11 sets of 5 imaginary cities located in an imaginary empire. Each city has its specific subtleties described in a couple of pages. Aesthetic features and general organization is concisely covered but - like the city of Tamara - the form of the city has a hidden meaning. Each city a message.

All kinds of awesome concepts are implemented - the city of Zora for example is described as the preeminent memory palace. The city of Leandra explores the concept of what is a house and by extension the city. Is the essence the form and the structure or the spirit of those that inhabit it. There is Eutropia - a utopian Europe of sorts - a city of multiple cities, where from time to time, when people are bored they change their work/wife/family/home and live in perpetual movement. There is Octavia - the barely hanging there city; and Baucis the city with legs. There is Olinda - the city that grows from the center. The new quarters are created in the center of town while the old city expands outwards pushing the oldest Olindia at the fringes of the metropolis. The cities usually represent a contrasting concept - each is independent and self-defeating and yet each feels part of its quintuple before being part of the empire.

Mostly the cities are extremely original - some of them however might serve as conceptual blueprints of a new, better type of city; a city that goes beyond mere functional and efficient planning, making the bettering of the life of its inhabitants its central goal. This makes the book seem a slight critique - or rather a commentary of globalization and modernism in architecture.

Magical realism is what makes the book work. The two main characters are Khubilai Khan and Marco Polo. The emperor and his ambassador. It is mentioned that they cannot speak the same language and try to find novel ways to communicate. Before and after every round of five cities a conversation between the two of them takes place. Real cities are mentioned shortly during the dialogues - putting the imagined cities and the real ones in a similar plane. Magical realism however works best with the temporal and geographical aspects of the book. Although because of Khubilai Khan one gets the feeling of an ancient oriental empire, often the author includes airports and all kinds of modern urban features into the game.

Structurally each city is part of a series and each series comes up cyclically until its five cities are exhausted. The book has some meta element to it - structurally similar to GEB - where cities loop in one another and parts of them are found in other cities.

This was the second time I read the book, but the first time that I did so in Italian. I love reading in Italian - and I especially enjoy doing so out-loud. The more poetic the work, the better this awesome language sounds.

“L’inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n’è uno, è quello che è già qui, l’inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l’inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all’inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, dargli spazio.” - Italo Calvino(less)

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May 25, 2012 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2012, longish-reviews

What a strange book.

Invisible Cities is exactly the kind of book I always wondered, and hoped, existed. Cities are such a fascinating topic, one that I never felt was explored properly by other literature. The format and framing of the book is unique to say the least. It's original, experimental, yet also extremely simplistic. Although I couldn't see him writing anything quite like this, I was reminded of the initial I-didn't-know-you-could-do-this shock response I had when first reading Borges....more What a strange book.

Invisible Cities is exactly the kind of book I always wondered, and hoped, existed. Cities are such a fascinating topic, one that I never felt was explored properly by other literature. The format and framing of the book is unique to say the least. It's original, experimental, yet also extremely simplistic. Although I couldn't see him writing anything quite like this, I was reminded of the initial I-didn't-know-you-could-do-this shock response I had when first reading Borges.

Being such an original format, it's hard to tell if Invisible Cities is good or not– there's simply nothing to compare it to. Without a doubt, I was shocked at it's originality, but after that shock dies down, I was confused on what to think. Is it poetic, beautiful? Is it pretentious and nonsensical? Did this take a lot of skill and craft to think of, or is it simply some weird cities? Is it even a problem if it's just a book of weird cities?

I'll attempt to answer these. The book is often poetic and beautiful, but definitely teeters into pretentious territory. Your mileage will vary, of course, but even the most open-minded reader is bound to find a few parts to scoff at. I never had any problems with the city sections (except for maybe Tamara, in Cities & Signs 1), but all of the italicized sections about Marco Polo and Kublai Khan's interactions were grueling. Polo and Khan came off as bumbling dopes, rambling about juvenile what-if's such as "what if we're the only things that are real," "what if we're not real," "what if nothing is real," and "what if only this azalea bush is real." While they puff away at pipes (the substance isn't said, but it doesn't take too much brainpower to guess), they wonder if they're actually talking to each other, or if they're just imagining the other talking. While Borges' philosophies and metaphysics can be dense, Calvino's philosophies can be adolescent, shallow, and distracting.

Invisible Cities is more than a collection of weird, fantastic cities. Every city has a message or a philosophical point to drive home. Some cities talk about, simply, the nature and movement of cities and their people. Others discuss how the mind interprets and views the world. Some have clear social commentaries, such as the false conservatism of the Maurilians (in Cities & Memory 5), and the environmental message of the wasteful Leonians (in Continuous Cities 1), who create an impenetrable shield of landfill mountains around their city. A few cities don't contain any discernable message, but they are often delightfully surreal enough to not be an issue (such as Armilla, the city of water pipes, and Procopia, the city full of hundreds of polite faces all eating corn).

On multiple times throughout the novel I would come across a few sentences that made me happy to know that other human beings had feelings and realizations I thought were very personal or abnormal... or at least feelings and realizations I never thought of talking about to anyone before.

I have a feeling I could change the star rating drastically over the next few months– the book is just that strange, it'll take some time to let it all sink in. Regardless, Invisible Cities is an incredibly original experience that is short and easy enough that no one has an excuse not to give a try.

Calvino also says the 14th century had cities that contained skyscrapers, roller-coasters, motorcyclists, refrigerators, radios, and streets lined with tram tickets. And Marco Polo traveled by flying from airport to airport. That's like, so po-mo.(less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2010, read-2011, default

This book is very, very difficult to summarize. Marco Polo describes cities he has been to to Kublai Khan. Okay, it's very easy to summarize. But here is the thing. Each of these cities is described in generally a page. Or less. They are not about cities, but they are about names and language, they are about memory and perceived memory, they are about desire and life and death and every possible conceivable subject.

These subjects are not what this book is about. It is a truly interesting and st...more

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Sep 14, 2009 Joana Costa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Excerto:

«Nada garante que Kublai Kan acredite em tudo o que diz Marco Polo ao descrever-lhe as cidades que visitou nas suas missões, mas a verdade é que o imperador dos tártaros continua a ouvir o jovem veneziano com maior atenção e curiosidade que qualquer outro enviado seu ou explorador...
Só nos relatos de Marco Polo, Kublai Kan conseguia discernir, através das muralhas e das torres destinadas a ruir, a filigrana de um desenho tão fino que escapasse ao roer das térmitas.»

Aquilo que mais goste...more

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Aug 14, 2008 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just re-read this book after 5 or so years. What I had remembered about it was a cool book about Marco Polo describing Kublai Khan's empire to him by describing a long list of cities. After my first, brisk reading (it is a very short book) I didn't carry with me much else besides it being a cool "exercise."

Upon re-reading, I was blown away. This book has it All. Everything.

Every description of a city contains a great idea about memory, signs, interpretation, place, time, consciousness, reality...more

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Apr 03, 2008 Dfordoom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy

My favourite of Italo Calvino’s books. It consists of a series of impressionistic portraits of imaginary and possible cities described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. The cities are all fantastic flights of fantasy but they all represent some aspect of the idea of a city, or some way of looking at a city, or some way in which we think of cities or give names to our ideas of cities. They also represent ways of looking at human societies and life and death and the ways in which we comprehend the wor...more

3 likes · like · see review

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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Invisible cities as imagined by artist Colleen Corradi Brannigan	1	5	May 20, 2013 05:15pm
Novels of very short stories or fragments	5	12	May 16, 2013 09:31am
The Italo Calvino...: Favourite city from Invisible Cities	7	54	Apr 13, 2013 06:00am
This was my first Calvino book, which next?	10	89	Jan 06, 2013 07:20am
Diogenes Club: Le città invisibili	18	16	Nov 27, 2012 08:15am
YA e dintorni: Le città invisibili: consiglio	4	15	Nov 27, 2012 07:02am
ketabi bas bi faiedeh va bikhod:(	1	18	Oct 20, 2007 03:25am

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About Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).

His style is not easily classified; much of his writing has an air of the fantastic...more

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Quotes from Invisible Cities

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” — 129 people liked it

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” — 106 people liked it

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