Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Invisible Cities, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Perception, and Experience
Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control
Cycles and Civilization
Modernity
Summary
Analysis
Kublai Khan asks Marco Polo if he’s ever seen a city like Kin-sai, his latest conquest. There are bridges over canals, palaces with doorsteps in the water, and boats unloading vegetables. Marco says that he never imagined a city like this one could exist. That evening, Marco describes cities. Normally Kublai goes to bed when he begins yawning, but tonight, he insists on staying up. At dawn, Marco insists that he’s described every city he knows. Kublai points out that Marco never speaks of Venice. With a smile, Marco asks what city Kublai thinks Marco’s been talking about, as he describes Venice every time he describes another city. For him, Venice is implicit. Kublai says that Marco should begin his stories with his departure from Venice. Marco says that once memories become words, they disappear. He suggests that in describing other cities, he’s already lost Venice.
By essentially admitting that he’s really only talking about Venice, Marco suggests that a person always carries their past with them when they travel; it’s impossible to escape where one comes from, even as they travel through cities that are very different from home. Marco’s refusal to speak explicitly about Venice again speaks to the fleeting, fickle nature of memory. By talking about his memories of Venice, Marco understands that he’ll begin to remember it differently and, he seems to imply, not as accurately.
Themes
Trading Cities. 5. In Esmeralda, streets and canals intersect. The shortest distance anywhere in Esmeralda is a zigzag, not a straight line, and travelers have infinite options for how to get somewhere. Esmeralda’s inhabitants are never bored, especially since they have to climb stairs up and down. Calm lives have no repetition, while adventurous lives face no restrictions. Cats, thieves, and illicit lovers in Esmeralda move along gutters and balconies, while below, rats run with smugglers through manholes and ditches. A map of Esmeralda should include all of these routes. More difficult, however, is to record the routes of the swallows that swoop overhead and dominate the city.
When Marco Polo begins telling Kublai Khan how to map these various cities, it shows that he’s still aware that Kublai is listening so that he can figure out how to possess the cities in his empire. He also seems to suggest that it’s nearly impossible to chart routes of birds, even if they’re one of the most important parts of a city. Given this and the birds being a symbol of hope, Marco suggests that it’s impossible to map out how hope develops in a city, even if they should do so to understand the city.
Themes
Cities and Eyes. 4. When a traveler arrives in Phyllis, they gleefully look at bridges over canals and a variety of different windows. The city offers surprises at every turn, and travelers believe that the person who looks at Phyllis daily and can constantly discover new mysteries must be happy. Travelers leave with regret, but some have to stay. For them, the city begins to fade and they stop noticing the windows. They follow zigzag lines and the streets. Phyllis becomes the shortest way to get somewhere, and people follow buried memories rather than what they see. Many eyes scan the skyline, but they may as well be looking at a blank page. Many cities are like Phyllis and are invisible, except when someone catches them by surprise.
Phyllis illustrates how, once a place loses its shine and becomes home, people generally stop engaging with it like they engage with new exciting locales. It becomes boring and normal, even if it once contained any number of delights and new things. When Marco says that people follow their memories rather than what they see, it indicates that people are going off of their interpretations of a place rather than what they actually see—and if they were to really look, they’d see that the city is no less interesting than it used to be.
Themes
Cities and Names. 3. Marco Polo explains that, for a long time, Pyrrha existed in his mind as a fortified city on a bay with high windows, a deep central square, and a well in the middle. Even though he’d never actually seen Pyrrha, it existed in his mind like other cities he’s never visited. When he eventually visited, everything he’d imagined disappeared and Pyrrha became what it is. At that point, he thought that he’d always known that one can’t see the sea in Pyrrha, and that the houses are low and separated by open lots filled with sawmills. Now, when he thinks of Pyrrha, he thinks of the city he saw, but his mind still holds many cities he’s never seen and never will see. The city above the bay is still in his mind, but he can’t call it by name or remember how he ever called it Pyrrha.
While it’s possible to imagine any number of things about a place that one hasn’t actually seen with their own eyes, once a person has been to a certain place, it’s impossible to think of it in the same imaginary way that they once did. This again shows that a person’s experience (or lack thereof) directly influences how they think of and interpret a place, even if, as the novel suggests elsewhere, their memories of a place may not also be entirely correct.
Themes
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Cities and the Dead. 2. The city of Adelma is the farthest Marco Polo has been. He landed there at dusk and noticed that the sailor who tied his boat looked like a man he fought with and who died. An old man looked like a long-dead fisherman whom Marco remembered from childhood, while a fever victim on the ground reminded Marco of his dying father. Marco reasoned that if Adelma is a dream where he encounters the dead, the dream scares him. If Adelma is real, the resemblances will disappear. He reasoned that at some point, the number of people he knows who are dead will outnumber the number living. He began to wonder if he looked dead to other people, too. Marco wondered if Adelma is where people arrive dying to find people already dead. He reasoned that he was dead too and realized “the beyond is not happy.”
In Adelma, Marco Polo begins to contemplate his own impending death, the end of his life cycle. This is extremely disturbing for him, which suggests that contemplating the end, either of one’s own life or of humanity on a larger scale, is universally unsettling. Beginning to wonder if he looks dead to Adelma’s other residents shows that as he begins to gain this perspective, he’s able to look outside himself and think of how other people interpret the world around them in the same way.
Themes
Cities and the Sky. 1. Eudoxia spreads upwards and down in confusing alleys, dead ends, and hovels. There’s a carpet there that allows people to see Eudoxia’s true form. At first, the carpet seems to have nothing to do with the city. When a person studies it, however, they decide that they can find any spot in the city on the carpet. It’s easy to get lost in Eudoxia, but with the carpet, people can find their way. Everyone compares it with their own version of the city, hoping to find an answer. Once, they questioned an oracle, and the oracle said that one object—Eudoxia or the carpet—is a map of the universe; the other, a human approximation. People believed that the carpet was divine for a long time, but it’s also possible to argue that Eudoxia, which is crooked and failing, is the map of the universe.
Nowhere in the narration does Marco Polo say that the carpet is a direct representation of Eudoxia; rather, the carpet seems to be a representation of Eudoxia because people want it to seem that way—once again, people’s perspectives change how they look at the city. However, this city takes things a step further by casting doubt on whether the carpet truly is divine, or if people are just imposing artificial significance on it. The idea that Eudoxia is the map of the universe is far less comforting, given how confusing, dirty, and doomed the city sounds.
Themes
Kublai Khan declares that Marco Polo’s journey is truly one through memory, and that he’s trying to escape nostalgia. Kublai spent the last hour toying with questions about the past and the future, and finally, he demands to know if Marco is smuggling moods or states of grace. It’s possible that this exchange was imagined, however, as both men sit and smoke their pipes. Marco watches his pipe smoke and thinks of misty skies over seas and mountains that, when they disappear, reveal cities. Or, he sees heavy smoke that hangs over metropolises haunted by death.
Calvino leaves it up to the reader to decide if this exchange between Kublai and Marco actually happened, thus encouraging readers to apply what he’s already explored in terms of experience coloring people’s perception to their own reading experience. It’s possible to interpret this passage either way; what a reader chooses, however, offers them clues into their own beliefs and past experiences.
Themes
