The City Through My Eyes

Invisible Cities is by far the most confusing book I have ever read. Calvino’s un unravel able web is indestructible. So far the metaliterature explanation has been key into really understanding what the author is trying to get across. It was only by reading a classmates blog, was I able to decipher the key for fourth section.

“ “And yet I know,” he would say, “that my empire is made of the stuff of crystals, its molecules arranged in a perfect pattern…Why do your travel impression stop at disappointing appearances, never catching the implacable process?...” (pg 60)

This confusing section now has become clear, there is going to be a change in perspective. Will this change be hinted towards Kublai Khan writing of the cities he has imagined? What does this change mean? The reader must now construct his own cities for Marco Polo has said enough for us to become the travelers. Perhaps the Venetian has no more cities to tell and so we must construct our own cities now.

The change in perspective metaliterally is Calvino explaining how a book, in this case a city, can be the same yet seen differently by travelers. This is true for many things for a change in perspective may be necessary to comprehend an object in its entirety. If we are limited only by our point of view then how can we claim we have seen all the faces the object has to offer us? Travelers see different meanings and perhaps all are true. “the traveler sees not one city but many of equal size and unlike one another, scattered over a vast, rolling plateau.” (pg64)

The change in perspective can be understood as well as if us, the readers, are now able to view the cities through our own eyes. No longer are we limited to the tales of Marco Polo, we can now explore cities by ourselves and therefore the book will change for the readers. “This is the result: the city that they speak of has much of what is needed to exist, whereas the city that exists on its site, exists less.”(pg67) This change in perspective hints that as the book goes on, the harder will it be for us to keep up with the writing for we will find that we are by ourselves with no guide to cross the cities. Although such a strong change of pace feels drastic, it might be what this book needs for the cities to be entertaining.