I first read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino in 2019, late fall, early winter. At the time, I wrote that I should reread the book every six months and I’d have a new interpretation of the book every time.
And over that next six months: Covid. Lockdown. Remote schooling. And after that, I took on a new career and moved across the country. So, the whole world changed and I changed a bit as well. And it took me four years to go back to Invisible Cities.
The book is a fictional travelogue, Marco Polo describing cities to Kublai Khan. The bulk of the book consists of fifty-five descriptions of cities that Wikipedia describes as poems. Each chapter is bracketed by conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan.
And this is not an exercise in world building. Not only are the cities not connected together, they feel like exercises in thought experiment, breaking down the concept of place. Calvino has been described as an iconoclast and Invisible Cities can easily be exhibit A for that argument.
One of my favorite sequences in the book is still Polo and Khan discussing whether or not they are real. When, in fact, these versions of them are not real and are fictional constructs. Calvino doesn’t just break the fourth wall. He sets it on fire and dances on the ashes.
When I first was Invisible Cities, I was pulled into its deconstructionist, iconoclast nature. This time, I found myself more focused on each city as a poem, as an individual work of art. I began (digitally) underlining the bits that really struck me.
I didn’t remember the spiderweb city of Octavia from my first reading. This time, it was the most memorable city for me. Suspended over a vast chasm, the inhabitants have less uncertainty than other people. They know the net will only last so long.
I haven’t read nearly enough Calvino but I think that Invisible Cities is one of his most accessible books.
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