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Le città invisibili by Italo Calvino
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Le città invisibili (edition 1972)

by Italo Calvino

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
9,334205836 (4.14)1 / 379
In Kublai Khan's garden, at sunset, the young Marco Polo diverts the aged emperor from his obsession with the impending end of his empire with tales of countless cities past, present, and future.
Member:Sbark
Title:Le città invisibili
Authors:Italo Calvino
Info:Einaudi
Collections:Your library, 311–O Liter
Rating:*****
Tags:LIT

Work Information

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

  1. 200
    Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (WSB7)
    WSB7: Both have wonderfully imaginative but controlled semiotic exercises.
  2. 171
    Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Carnophile)
    Carnophile: Both books are liesurely contemplations of fantastical situations, not plot- or character-driven, but conceptual.
  3. 113
    The City & The City by China Miéville (snarkhunt)
    snarkhunt: Calvino's book is a travelogue of impossible societies while China's book is a sweet little noir stuck in the middle of one.
  4. 30
    Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was by Angélica Gorodischer (spiphany)
  5. 30
    Tainaron: Mail from Another City by Leena Krohn (ari.joki)
    ari.joki: An allegory of the human condition by revealing one facet at a time through presenting a foreign, strange city with foreign, strange inhabitants.
  6. 30
    Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino (P_S_Patrick)
    P_S_Patrick: Thes two books are in some ways very like each other, and in some ways quite the opposite. In Mr Palomar various locations, things, and thoughts are described precisely with the utmost eloquence and detail, whereas in Invisible Cities, it is one place being described in many different ways, hazy, as if seen through lenses of different qualities, and warping mirrors. But the effect is much the same, both books give you something to think about, make you see things in different ways, and are a pleasure to read. Both books also contain no strong plot, and consist of many small and diverse sections, and in a way, could be dipped into. Where Palomar gets very much into the mind of the protagonist, and his fixed, elaborate, and definite interpretations of reality, Invisible Cities is similar in that the recollections are also told from the point of view of the narrator, but differ each time, none being tied to reality, all of them containing aspects of truth found through how you interpret them. If you enjoyed reading one of these books, you should enjoy the other.… (more)
  7. 52
    The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges (Torikton)
  8. 20
    Solution 11-167: The Book of Scotlands by Momus (Kolbkarlsson)
    Kolbkarlsson: Written in the same vein, The Book of Scotlands lists a series of alternative scotlands previously unheard of. Every Scotland is written in it's own style, but with similar wit and daunting imagination.
  9. 10
    Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson (WSB7)
    WSB7: Each has a partially factual/partially imagined frame.
  10. 21
    Viriconium: "The Pastel City", "A Storm of Wings", "In Viriconium", "Viriconium Nights" by M. John Harrison (Torikton)
  11. 32
    The Dictionary of Imaginary Places {original edition} by Alberto Manguel (VanishedOne)
    VanishedOne: One is systematic and compendious, the other flows freely from one impression to another, but both flit between windows onto imaginary vistas.
  12. 10
    Paintings by Victor Segalen (defaults)
    defaults: A series of descriptions of imaginary ancient Chinese paintings. Uncannily similar in tone, hieratic and surreal, rabbit-holes inscribed in rabbit-holes... and written several decades earlier.
  13. 10
    Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente (PhoenixFalls)
  14. 10
    The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo (Jannes)
  15. 10
    Marcovaldo or The Seasons in the City by Italo Calvino (unctifer)
  16. 10
    The Logogryph: A Bibliography Of Imaginary Books by Thomas Wharton (unctifer)
  17. 00
    Freud's Alphabet: A Novel by Jonathan Tel (hdcanis)
    hdcanis: A novel starring a historical person (Marco Polo or Sigmund Freud) exploring a city (Venice or London) in fragmentary manner, each fragment handling a different aspect of the city.
  18. 00
    Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will by Judith Schalansky (CGlanovsky)
    CGlanovsky: Little vignettes about places. Calvino's are more fanciful and there's a twist, while Schalansky's are little anecdotes based on actual bizarre and out-of-the-way places.
  19. 00
    Ring (Swiss Literature Series) by Elisabeth Horem (Nickelini)
  20. 00
    The Aphorisms of Kherishdar by M. C. A. Hogarth (sandstone78)
    sandstone78: Vignettes that create a picture of something greater.

(see all 26 recommendations)

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Group TopicMessagesLast Message 
 Folio Society Devotees: LE: Invisible Cities48 unread / 48SF-72, October 2023

» See also 379 mentions

English (178)  Portuguese (Portugal) (5)  Italian (4)  French (4)  Spanish (3)  Dutch (3)  Danish (1)  Greek (1)  Hebrew (1)  Catalan (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (202)
Showing 1-5 of 178 (next | show all)
You can read this story by the Italian fabulist Calvino on two different levels. Ostensibly a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in which the adventurer describes 55 cities he has visited in the empire to the emperor, you can try to focus on the unique physical aspect of each city as described. This is interesting and has led to many different artists creating visual interpretations of the cities as described in the book. But that's not really what the book is about.

Each description of a city, 1-3 pages long each, takes one facet of the human experience and makes it the defining feature of that city. In Chloe, everyone is a stranger, no one ever greets anyone with recognition, and at each encounter with another person, one imagines a thousand different possibilities unfolding before quickly looking away. Perenthia was laid out in design to reflect the perfection of the firmament, to create heaven and utopia on earth, but gives birth to monsters. Octavia is suspended from a net stretched across a void between two huge mountains, buildings held up by being tied to the net above; life is less uncertain in Octavia, as inhabitants know the net will last only so long. Valdrada was built above a reflective lake, so that nothing that happens in the above ground Valdrada does not also happen in the Valdrada of the lake, and the inhabitants are so aware of their copied image that they take no action without taking special care of how that copied image will look (this book was published in 1972, well before Instagram!).

Halfway through the book, Polo tells Kublai Khan that in describing each city he is really describing his home city of Venice, describing some aspect of that city. But he is also describing some aspect of humanity in each description of a city. As Kublai Khan tells him in one of the dialogues that are placed between descriptions of cities, "I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again." Polo replies, "Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name."

Humanity, in other words, is more similar than the differences suggested by maps and human constructions. More durable as well. Travelogues are interesting but what they tend to describe is not lasting. "Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing."

It's a hopeful vision. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
When Marco Polo first meets Kublai Khan they do not speak the same language. Of the many hundreds of languages in the Khan's empire they don't have even one in common. Instead Marco Polo uses a number of small objects to indicate certain ideas, and a dialogue using these symbols is born. Eventually the two of them develop a lingua franca of whatever words in common they pick up and their own mutual experience with each other. This communication is forever anchored around the initial experience with the objects.
"Each piece of information about a place recalled to the emperor’s mind that first gesture or object which Marco designated the place. The new fact received a meaning from that emblem and also added to the emblem a new meaning. Perhaps, Kublai thought, the empire is nothing but a zodiac of the mind’s phantasms."
Guuuuuh that's so fucking rad. ( )
  ethorwitz | Jan 3, 2024 |
Only for those enchanted by Latin American 'magicians' - Borges, Rulfo, Coelho and the like.
  Den85 | Jan 3, 2024 |
I often feel that Calvino could have written about a slice of cheese and would have made it interesting. William Weaver's translation is superb (at least as far as reading experience goes--I have not/can not compare it to the original). The book is full of metaphor, but instead of feeling tedious, we start to understand the metaphors as truths and not just mere symbols. The context is a fictitious conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the founder and first emperor of the Yuan dynasty of China, and the subject of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem. Rather than set it completely in dialogue, however, the book offers vignettes of these "invisible cities" to which Marco Polo has "traveled"--the scare quotes will have to suffice here as I do not wish to offer spoilers. Occasionally dialogue from Khan and Polo interject to wax philosophical, but it is far from gratuitous. For those new to Calvino's writing, it is a great entry! It did not take me ten years to read this book---I just started it on my Kindle ten years ago and put it aside for awhile. ( )
  rebcamuse | Dec 30, 2023 |
This is a wonderful daydreaming book. It's basically Calvino's interpretation of Marco Polo's telling the Kublai Khan of his travels around the world. These cities are magically places. I have often wondered if George Lucas read this before creating some of his cities in Star Wars. ( )
  KarenDeLucas | Nov 13, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 178 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (115 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Calvino, Italoprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Baranelli, LucaContributorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Brasliņa, ElīnaIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kapari, JormaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lauder, ChristopherNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lee, JohnNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
McKean, DaveIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Meiere, DaceTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nieuwenhuyzen, KeesCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pasolini, Pier PaoloAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Riedt, HeinzTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Silo, MoroNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vlot, HennyTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Walsmith, SheltonCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Weaver, WilliamTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Winterson, JeanetteIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expedition, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.
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Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,

their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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In Kublai Khan's garden, at sunset, the young Marco Polo diverts the aged emperor from his obsession with the impending end of his empire with tales of countless cities past, present, and future.

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