Invisible Cities

by Italo Calvino

book data

4,758 ratings, 4.22 average rating, 476 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		46%
4		34%
3		15%
2		3%
1		0%

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published

May 3rd 1978 (first published 1972) by Harvest Books

binding

Paperback, 165 pages

isbn

0156453800 (isbn13: 9780156453806)

description

Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describin...more

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12/15/07

O'Donovan rated it:

bookshelves: re-reading

Italo Calvino is one of those writers who is beloved by all of the friends whom I love most ... and whom I most want to impress.

So, as is inevitably the case, I sat down to read, because just owning the book is, apparently, not enough. Nothing was osmosing, no matter how long it sat on my nightstand. So.

I started reading it in a diner. I don't recommend this approach, but I think it's a testament to the book's beauty and Calvino's kind of, um, restrained giftedness that I...more Italo Calvino is one of those writers who is beloved by all of the friends whom I love most ... and whom I most want to impress.

So, as is inevitably the case, I sat down to read, because just owning the book is, apparently, not enough. Nothing was osmosing, no matter how long it sat on my nightstand. So.

I started reading it in a diner. I don't recommend this approach, but I think it's a testament to the book's beauty and Calvino's kind of, um, restrained giftedness that I was skimming, skimming, skimming (also not recommended) and then said, "Whoa," out loud, and flipped back to the beginning of chapter six (which starts on page 10 in my edition, just to give you an idea) and started rereading, because I had a feeling that somewhere buried in all of the chapter's sensory descriptions and flash impressions was an actual story.

The closest I can come to describing Calvino to non-Calvino reading friends is that it's like reading a film.

Frex: "... The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of the guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips in the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock."

Seriously. Hollywood could spend two or three hours on that paragraph, which isn't even the whole paragraph. Barely half a page, even, but that's what I love and kind of hate about Calvino: so evocative, so interesting, and you have to pay attention to catch it because you (or the story) can get washed away because the technique is so incredibly economical.

Hmm. I just talked myself into giving the book another star, though, because it really is brilliant.(less)

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08/01/08

Capitu rated it:

bookshelves: 2008

Read in December, 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 philosophica...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

3 comments

11/12/08

QuiGenusHumanumIngenioSuperavit rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: dont-worry-be-happy, i-m-lovin--it

"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, ...more

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09/27/08

John rated it:

bookshelves: fine-strange-foreign

Read in June, 1975

recommended to John by: I'd heard of Calvino & bought the '74 hardcover
recommends it for: Just read it!

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 structur...more

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4 comments

07/21/07

Matt rated it:

Read in August, 2007

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 ju...more

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08/25/07

Jasen Johns rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in April, 2000

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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05/23/07

Nick rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: city planners, dreamers

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 ...more

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02/15/09

Canochinha rated it:

(review of isbn 8461292111)

bookshelves: 2009-books, own

Read in February, 2009

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...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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09/29/07

matthew rated it:

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

recommends it for: people who hate "if on a winter's night, blah blah"

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.

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

4 comments

08/14/08

Brian rated it:

Read in August, 2008

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, interpretatio...more

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04/03/08

Dfordoom rated it:

bookshelves: sf-fantasy

Read in August, 2003

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 th...more

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03/04/08

Lara rated it:

bookshelves: life-changing

I keep a copy of this around to use in the way some use tarot cards, or willow sticks or coins to throw the Yi Ching. I can open this book to any page, in any mood, with a question or somtimes simply a hollow heart, and there will be the story I need. Each city, each description (whispered to Kublai Khan to tell him of the vastness of his empire, most of which he will neither ever see nor understand...) is like an answer unto itself, a little meditation on a possible life. Some are as long as...more

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07/28/07

Karen rated it:

Read in June, 2005

recommends it for: brainy types who want you to know it

I bought it because i heard it had beautiful imagery and it transported your mind to other worlds etc...

Yes, it has gorgeous imagery, and yes, your mind is transported ~ kinda wanders too. It makes me wish I was high while i was reading it. The pace is dreamlike, which works perfectly for it, but you really must be in the right frame of mind. You have to be willing to put in the effort to extract meaning from it. On the second read I got more out of it ~ Calvino is supposed to be eso...more

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05/09/07

Bobby rated it:

bookshelves: reviewed

Very interesting and original premise. This book consists of brief (2-3 pages long) "chapters" in which Marco Polo is describing to Kublai Khan all the various cities he has traveled to. And every few chapters, there is a similarly brief chapter of exchange between Polo and Khan. Thus on the surface this is primarily a descriptive book with not any real plot, character development etc. But halfway during the book, the exchange between Khan and Polo become rather philosophical and they ...more

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08/09/07

John rated it:

Read in January, 2003

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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11/19/07

Erin rated it:

bookshelves: favorites

Invisible Cities has a nesting quality to it that I find deeply satisfying and incredibly beautiful. I almost feel like this book is more aptly classified as visual art that uses words as its medium. There's a lot of give and take in this book between the words and the reader. For instance, every chapter reminds me of a different aspect of Chicago, which I think is an extraordinairly visually inspiring city. For me, knowing Chicago enriches the text. This isn't a book one reads to escape... it's...more

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01/07/09

Alan rated it:

bookshelves: short-stories

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

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06/13/08

Eleanor rated it:

Just as good as cosmicomics if not better. Calvino describes a fictional Marco Polo's conversations with Genghis Khan about the cities to which he's travelled, each a little more fantastic than the last, until the journeys become more metaphysical than even fantastic. The way he launches himself head first until a new world each chapter is entrancing, especially given that each chapter is no more than a few pages. A wonderful short meditation on the sense of 'place' as created by peoples desi...more

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02/12/09

Brian rated it:

Read in February, 2009

Some readers report that if you take a hard right at the third shelf past the study carrels you'll find Invisible Cities -- a tome, they report unanimously, of 165 pages translated from the Italian.

The bibliophile wonders, though, at the diversity of these reports in other respects. Some readers recall Invisible Cities as a novel, others as a poem in free verse; still others insist that it is both. The book is most comparable to Gulliver's Travels, say some readers; no, reply other...more

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06/27/07

Rob rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: important

Read in April, 2007

recommends it for: aspiring writers and folks looking for the poetry in the prose

The expectation that had been set for me when I added this to my reading list? "This is the book where the city is the story." That said, I was expecting more narrative than what I found here. (Call me a traditionalist but I expect a bit of characterization and plot.) As a "book", I didn't much care for Invisible Cities -- but I would add it to my bookshelf as a good lesson in how to write about places. There is some pretty potent imagery and interesting wordplay at work...more

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"Chegando a qualquer nova cidade o viajante reencontra o seu passado que já não sabia que tinha: a estranheza do que já não somos ou já não possuímos espera-nos ao caminho nos lugares estranhos e não possuídos." More quotes...