Italian author Italo Calvino (1923–1985) began his career as a writer of realistic stories, then developed an elaborate and intentionally disorienting manner of writing that borrows from canonical Western literature, from folklore, and from popular modern forms such as mystery novels and comic strips. As Kublai speculates, "perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars named Kublai Khan and Marco Polo as they sift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them" (104). Calvino scholar Peter Washington maintains that "Invisible Cities" is "impossible to classify in formal terms." But the novel can be loosely described as an exploration-sometimes playful, sometimes melancholy-of the powers of the imagination, of the fate of human culture, and of the elusive nature of storytelling itself. And even though some of the cities that Polo evokes for the aging Kublai are futuristic communities or physical impossibilities, it is equally difficult to argue that "Invisible Cities" is a typical work of fantasy, science fiction, or even magical realism. 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, e dargli spazio.Although Calvino uses historical personages for his main characters, this dreamlike novel does not really belong to the historical fiction genre. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l’inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Già il Gran Kan stava sfogliando nel suo atlante le carte delle città che minacciano negli incubi e nelle maledizioni: Enoch, Babilonia, Butua, Brave New World.ĭice: “Tutto è inutile, se l’ultimo approdo non può essere che la città infernale, ed è là in fondo che, in una spirale sempre più stretta, ci risucchia la corrente”.Į 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. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. There are two ways to escape suffering it. He said: “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.”Īnd Polo said: “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. IE University.Įxcerpt of Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) by Italo Calvino (1972).Īlready the Great Khan was leafing through his atlas, over the maps of the cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions: Enoch, Babylon, Yahool and Butua, Brave New World. Goretti González – Visiting Professor & Academic Coordinator of Humanities, IE School of Global & Public Affairs.
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