Italo Calvino on "Invisible Cities"

Author(s): Italo Calvino

Source: Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, No. 8 (Spring/Summer 1983), pp. 37-42
Published by: Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41806854 .
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 Italo Calvino on Invisible Cities

Thefollowing givenbyItaloCalvinotothestudents
isa lecture of
theGraduateWriting onMarch
Divisionat ColumbiaUniversity
29, 1983.
* * *

InvisibleCities does not deal with recognizablecities. These

citiesare all inventions,and all bear women'snames. The book is
made up of a numberof shortchapters,each of whichis intended
to give riseto a reflection
whichholds good forall citiesor forthe
in
city general.
The book was born a littleat a time,withconsiderableinter-
vals between one piece and the next, ratheras if I were writing
poems, one by one, followingup varyinginspirations.Indeed, in
mywritingI tendto workin series:I keep a whole rangeof filesin
whichI put thepages I happen to write( followingtheideas which
come intomyhead), or merenotesforthingsI would like to write
some day. In one file I put the odd individualsI bump into, in
anothertheheroesof myth;I have a fileforthetradesI would like
to have followed instead of being a writer,and anotherfor the
books I would liketo have writtenhad theynotalreadybeenwritten
by somebodyelse; in one fileI collectpages on thetownsand land-
scapes of my own life,and in anotherimaginarycities,outsideof
space and time.When one of thesefilesbeginsto fillup, I startto
thinkof thebook thatI can work it into.
This is how I carried on the Invisible Cities book over the
years, writinga piece every now and then, passing througha
numberof different phases. At one stage I could only writeabout
sad cities,and at anotheronly about happy ones. There was one
periodwhen I comparedthecitiesto thestarrysky, to thesignsof
the zodiac; and anotherwhen I kept writingabout the garbage
whichspreads outsidethe cityday by day.
In short,what emergedwas a sortof diarywhichkeptclosely
to my moods and reflections:everythingended up being trans-

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Calvino
formedintoimagesof cities- thebooks I read, theartexhibitionsI
visited,and discussionswithfriends.
And yet,all thesepages put togetherdid not make a book: for
a book (I think)is somethingwhich has a beginningand an end
(even ifit'snot a novel, in thestrictsenseof theword). It is a space
whichthereadermustenter,wanderround,maybelose hisway in,
and theneventuallyfindan exit,or perhapseven severalexits,or
maybe a way of breakingout on his own. It may be objectedthat
thisdefinitionholds good fora novel with a plot, not fora book
such as mine,whichis meantto be read as one would read a book
ofpoems, or essays,or at mostshortstories.But thepointI am try-
ingto make is thata book of thissort,ifit is to be a realbook, must
have a structure of some kind. To put it anotherway, one mustbe
*
able to finda plot, a route,a solution".
I have neverwrittena book of poems, but I am no strangerto
books of shortstories;and I can safelysay thattheorderingof the
variousstoriesis always a brain-racking task. In thiscase, I set out
writingthe title of a series at the top of each page: Cities and
Memory, Cities and Desire, Cities and Signs; therewas also a
fourthcategorywhichI startedoffby callingCitiesand Form;but
thistitleturnedout to be too generic,and thepiecesendedup under
otherheadings.For a while,as I carriedon writingcityaftercity,I
was not sure whetherto step up the numberof categories,to cut
themdown to thebare minimum(thefirsttwo, Citiesand Memory
and Citiesand Desire,werefundamental),or to do away withthem
altogether. ThereweremanypieceswhichI was unableto classify-
whichmeantthatI had to huntfornew definitions, new categories.
A numberof cities,for example,were ratherabstract,airy crea-
tions,and in theend I groupedthemas ThinCities.Otherscould be
classifiedas Twofold Cities; but then I found it was betterto
redistributethem among other groups. Other series, Trading
Cities,whichwerecharacterizedby various kindsof exchange- of
memories,desires, routes, and destinies- and Cities and Eyes,
characterizedby visual properties- I had not providedforto start
with.They sprangintobeingat thelast moment,as theresultof a
reallocationof pieces which I had previouslyassignedelsewhere,
especiallyunder the headings of Memory and Desire. The Con-
tinuousCitiesand theHidden Cities,on theotherhand, were two

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 Italo Calvino on InvisibleCities
serieswhich I wrote with a special purpose in mind, once I had
begun to see theformand the meaningwhichI wanted to give to
thebook. I triedto work out thebest structureon thebasis of the
materialsI had collected,as I wantedtheseseriesto alternate,to in-
terlace one another, while tryingto keep fairly close to the
chronologicalorderin which thevarious pieces had been written.
In the end I determinedto writeeleven series of five cities each,
groupedin chapterscomprisingpieces fromdifferent serieswhich
had a common climate. The systemof alternationis the simplest
possible, thoughsome people have not foundit so.
I still have not mentionedsomethingwhich I should have
declaredat the outset: InvisibleCities is in theformof a seriesof
verbal reportswhich the travellerMarco Polo makes to Kubla
Khan, Emperorof the Tartars. (In fact, the historicalKubla, a
descendantof GenghizKhan, was Emperorof theMongols; but in
his book Marco Polo referred to himas GreatKhan of theTartars,
and thushe has remainedin literarytradition.)Not thatI had any
intentionof followingtheitineraryof thethirteenth centuryVene-
tian merchantwho travelledas far as China and who, as am-
bassador fortheGreat Khan, visitedmuchof theFar East. For the
Orientis nowadays a topic whichis best leftto experts;and I am
not one. But throughoutthe centuriestherehave been poets and
writerswho have drawntheirinspirationfromII Milione, as an ex-
otic and fantasticstage setting:Coleridge in his famous poem,
Kafka in The Emperor'sMessage, Dino Buzzati in his novel The
Desertof Tartars.Only the Thousand and One Nightscan boast a
similar success- that of an imaginarycontinentin which other
literaryworks find space for theirown particularworlds: con-
tinents of the 'elsewhere," now that there is no longer any
'elsewhere"in the world, and the whole world is becomingmore
and more uniform(and forthe worse).
In my InvisibleCities,Kubla Khan is a melancholyrulerwho
realizes that his boundless power is of littleworth because the
worldis goingrapidlydownhill.Marco Polo is a visionarytraveller
who tells the Khan tales of impossible cities- for example, a
cobweb-citysuspendedover theabyss, or a microscopiccitywhich
graduallyspreads out untilone realizes thatit is made up of lots
and lots of concentriccitieswhich are all expanding.Each of the

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Calvino

chapterswhich make up the book is precededand followedby a

sort of commentaryfromMarco Polo and the Khan. In point of
fact,the firstof theseintroductory episodes was writtenbeforeI
startedon the cities; and it was only later,as I went on with the
cities themselves,that I thoughtof writingsome othershort in-
troductionsor epiloguesforthem.To be moreprecise,I had put a
lot of work into thefirstpiece, and had a lot of materialleftover;
and as timewenton I wentahead withsome variantsof theseleft-
over pieces (the languagesof the ambassadors,Marco s gesticula-
tions) and found that new reflectionswere emerging.The more
citiesI wroteabout, themoreI developedmythoughtson thework
in the formof commentsfromMarco and Kubla. Each of these
reflections tendedto pull thingsin a particulardirection;and I tried
to let themhave theirown way. Thus I ended up withanothercol-
lectionof materialwhichI triedto let runparallel to therest(that
is, the cities proper). I did also a certainamount of cuttingand
mountingwork,in thesense thatsome of theconversationsare in-
terrupted and thenresumed.In shortthebook was discussingand
questioningitselfat the same timeas it was beingcomposed.
I feelthattheidea of thecitywhichthebook conjuresup is not
outside time; thereis also (at timesimplicit,at othersexplicit)a
discussionon the cityin general.I have heard froma numberof
friendsin town planningthat the book touches on some of the
questionsthattheyare facedwithin theirwork; and thisis no coin-
cidence, as the backgroundfromwhich the book springsis the
same as theirs.And it is not only towardstheend of thebook that
the "big number"metropolisappears; for even the pieces which
seem to evoke ancientcitiesonly make sense insofaras theyhave
been thoughtout and writtenwith thecityof today in mind.
What is the city today, for us? I believe that I have written
somethinglike a last love poem addressed to the city, at a time
whenit is becomingincreasingly to live there.It looks, in-
difficult
deed, as ifwe are approaching period crisisin urban life;and
a of
InvisibleCitiesis likea dreambornout of theheartof theunlivable
citieswe know. Nowadays people talkwithequal insistenceof the
destructionof the naturalenvironmentand of the fragilityof the
large-scaletechnologicalsystems(whichmay cause a sortof chain
reactionof breakdowns,paralyzingentiremetropolises).The crisis

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 Italo Calvino on InvisibleCities
of the overgrowncityis the otherside of the crisisof the natural
world. The imageof"megalopolis"- theunending,undifferentiated
citywhichis steadilycoveringthesurfaceof theearth- dominates
my book, too. But thereare already numerousbooks which pro-
phecy catastrophesand apocalypses: to write anotherwould be
superfluous,and anywayitwould be contraryto mytemperament.
The desireof my Marco Polo is to findthe hiddenreasons which
bringmen to live in cities: reasons which remainvalid over and
above any crisis.A cityis a combinationof manythings:memory,
desires,signsof a language; it is a place of exchange,as any text-
book of economichistorywill tellyou - only, theseexchangesare
not just trade in goods, they also involve words, desires, and
memories.My book opens and closes withimagesof happy cities
which constantlytake shape and thenfade away, in the midstof
unhappycities.
Almost all criticshave stopped to commenton the closing
sentenceof thebook: "seekand learnto recognizewho and what,in
the midstof the inferno,are not inferno,and make themendure,
give themspace/' For giventhattheseare thelast lines,everybody
has takenthemas theconclusion,the"moral."But thisis a many-
facetedbook, and thereare conclusionsthroughoutits length,on
each of thefacesand along each of theedges; and thereare others,
no less epigrammaticor epigraphicthanthefinalone. Certainly,if
that sentenceis to be found at the end of the book ratherthan
elsewhere,thereis a reason; but we oughtto beginby sayingthat
thelast littlechapterhas a double conclusion,both partsof which
are equally necessary:on theUtopiancity(whicheven ifwe do not
catchsightofitwe cannotstoplookingfor);and on theinfernal city.
And again; this is only the last bit of the section on the Great
Khans atlases, which has been somewhatneglectedby thecritics,
and which fromstartto finishdoes nothingbut propose various
possible"conclusions"to be drawnfromtheentirebook. But there
is also the other thesis,which says that the meaning of a sym-
metricalbook should be sought in the middle: thus there are
psychoanalyticalcriticswho have foundthedeep rootsof thebook
in Marco Polo's evocationsof Venice,his nativecity,as a returnto
the firstarchetypesof the memory;while scholars of structural
semiologymaintainthat one must seek at the very centreof the

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Calvino
book - and by doing so have foundan image of absence, the city
called Baucis. Here itbecomesclearthattheauthorsview no longer
counts: it is as ifthebook, as I have explained,wroteitself,and it
is only the textas it standswhichcan authorizeor rule out thisor
thatreadingof it. As one readeramong others,I may say thatin
chapterfive,which in the heartof the book develops a themeof
lightnessthat is strangelyassociated with the themeof the city,
there are some of the pages I consider the best as visionary
evidence;and perhapsthesemore"slender"parts,the ThinCitiesor
others,are themostluminousareas in thebook. Thereis no moreI
can say.

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