Invisible Cities

by

Italo Calvino

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Invisible Cities: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Kublai Khan owns an atlas that maps out all his empire’s cities and those of the neighboring realms. He realizes that he’s not going to hear from Marco Polo about neighboring cities such as Kambalu, the capital of China, or the island of Java. Kublai asks if Marco is going to repeat his stories when he returns to the west. Marco notes that listeners only retain the words they expect to hear, so what Kublai, gondoliers, and possibly, the story he tells to a cellmate after being imprisoned by Genoese pirates will be entirely different. The listener controls the story, not the speaker. Kublai says that sometimes, he feels like Marco is far away and that he himself is the prisoner of “a gaudy and unlivable present,” in which human society has reached an extreme. He can hear the invisible reasons why cities live.
Marco’s comment about telling stories to a cellmate after being imprisoned by Genoese pirates is a nod to the real Marco Polo, whose adventures were recorded by his cellmate after Polo returned home to find Venice and Genoa at war. This reminds the reader that even if this novel is fantastical, it’s still applicable to and draws from the real world. Marco’s assertion that the listener really controls what they hear is again an assertion about the importance of perspective, as a person’s status and perspective influences how they interpret the same story.
Themes
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Kublai’s atlas depicts the entire globe, continents, ships’ routes, and illustrious cities. Kublai pulls out his atlas to test Marco. Marco can recognize Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Samarkand. He recognizes Granada, Timbuktu, and Paris. Marco recognizes other cities by studying small drawings on the map. There are some cities that Marco and the geographers aren’t sure exist, like Cuzco and Lhassa. Marco still lists names and suggests routes, knowing that names change with every new language and that it’s possible to reach a place from anywhere by driving, riding, or flying. Kublai declares that Marco knows cities in the atlas better than he does in person, but Marco insists that through travel, cities all begin to look the same. The atlas preserves the differences.
That Marco mentions flying as a mode of transportation is another reminder that the novel is drawing on and critiquing the reader’s modern world, where air travel is a fact of life. In this sense, Marco is especially correct, as air travel has made the world far smaller and more accessible than it ever was in the historical Marco Polo’s day. His aside that the atlas preserves the cities’ differences suggests again that the modern world deprives cities of any unique qualities, while recording them like this becomes a record of a time when cities were still different.
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Quotes
Kublai’s atlas contains maps of all the cities, including those that are gone and those that will exist someday. Marco leafs through the pages and points to Troy, where there was once a wooden horse. At Constantinople, Marco sees Mohammad and through Constantinople and Troy, he sees San Francisco—and that in the future, it will be part of an empire greater than Kublai Khan’s. That atlas reveals cities’ forms, even if they don’t yet have a form or a name. Marco can see Amsterdam, York, and New York’s skyscrapers and streets. The possible forms are endless and cities will rise until there are no more forms. At the end of the atlas, there are networks without beginning or end in the shape of Los Angeles or Kyoto.
The assertion that cities will rise until there are no more forms begins to suggest that the rise and fall of civilizations will only continue until people stop innovating and run out of ideas—which suggests that at least in the short term, there’s a lot to be said for coming up with new ways of knowing and understanding. It is, Calvino suggests, what moves the world forward, even if it’s one day going to bring the world to humanity’s final rise (of having cities everywhere) and fall (the end of humanity).
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Cities and the Dead. 5. Most cities have a second city in their cemetery. Laudomia doesn’t just have a second city; it has a third city of the unborn. As the Laudomia of the living expands and gets crowded, the tombs grow and begin to repeat the patterns of the Laudomia of the living. Both cities get increasingly crowded and the living often visit the dead to look for their own names. The living look for explanations and reasons from the dead. There’s also a huge place for the unborn to live. Presumably there are infinite people there, but the area is empty and the unborn could be any size. It’s possible to contemplate a thousand years of Laudomia’s future in a single vein of marble.
Significantly, the living only ever go to the dead to look for their own names. This suggests that looking for meaning in regards to one’s own life is perfectly normal, but it’s also somewhat selfish and narrow-minded. The fact that the unborn could be any size and are somehow invisible makes it easier to ignore the unborn and through doing so, ignore the future, something that Calvino seems to suggest is a bad move given how crowded the living and dead Laudomias already are.
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The living of Laudomia visit the house of the unborn often to ask questions. They always ask questions about themselves or their legacies, not about future generations. The future inhabitants seem too unreal. Visitors to the house of the unborn ultimately come to one of two equally alarming possibilities: one is that there are more unborn than dead and living, and the house is filled with invisible hordes; the other option is that at some point, Laudomia and its citizens will disappear. In this option, the Laudomia of the living and that of the unborn are like the two bulbs of an hourglass. Someday, the final inhabitant will be born and the final grain will fall to the bottom.
Here, Calvino suggests that the future is simultaneously too abstract and too alarming for many people to want to think about it, as doing so would entail coming to terms with one’s own significance (or lack thereof) in either case. If the world is going to end, everything is insignificant; if the world is going to go on forever, the life of a single individual pales in comparison to the long line of humanity that came before and will come after for all eternity.
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Cities and the Sky. 4. Astronomers established the lines of Perinthia according to the stars and the zodiac so that the city would be guaranteed to reflect harmony, reason, and the gods’ benevolence. People arrived to populate it. Today, travelers find all manner of deformed individuals there, but the most monstrous are hidden in cellars and lofts. The astronomers must either admit that their calculations are wrong and they’re unable to describe the heavens, or they must admit that they described the heavens correctly and their monstrous city reflects the gods.
Here, Calvino seems to take aim again at unthinking expansion and colonialism, which was once thought to be an entirely positive thing. The fate of Perinthia a few generations later, however, suggests that it’s foolish to believe that humans have a right to expand and reproduce with abandon, given that Calvino suggests there will at some point be consequences.
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Quotes
Continuous Cities. 3. Marco Polo says that every year, he stops in Procopia and stays at the same inn. From his window, he can see a ditch, a bridge, a hill, and chickens. The first year, he saw no one outside. The second year, he noticed a face among the leaves. In following years, he noticed more and more faces and now, he can only see faces, not the landscape. He thinks that he should just stop looking out the window, but it’s hard to move away—there are 26 people in his room. Fortunately, they’re all polite.
When Marco notes that in addition to seeing all the people outside he’s also in the room with 26 others, it suggests that as people travel, they have to reckon with who they were the last time they traveled somewhere—the other people in his room are presumably the 26 versions of him who have previously visited Procopia. In other words, one’s memories never truly disappear.
Themes
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Hidden Cities. 2. Life isn’t happy in Raissa. People curse at children, spend their lives in bad dreams, and domestic disputes abound. However, at every turn, there seems to be something happy. Children laugh at dogs, and women smile at men on horseback whose horses are thrilled to be flying over jumps. There are birds in the sky, having been freed by painters. The painter’s picture of the bird will accompany a philosopher’s words. The philosopher says that in Raissa, there’s an invisible thread binding living beings together, making it so the unhappy city contains a happy city that doesn’t know it exists.
Raissa shows again that cities are never entirely good, nor are they entirely bad—one’s interpretation depends on where they look and on what they focus. Raissa’s version of the birds situates birds clearly as a symbol of hope and of happiness, qualities that Calvino seems to suggest exist everywhere without exception. Even in the saddest of places, it’s possible to find some upside, and that upside is worth looking for and fighting for.
Themes
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Cities and the Sky. 5. Andria was built to follow a planet’s orbit. Events flow calmly and nothing is left to human error. Marco Polo recalls telling residents that he can understand why, since they think of themselves as cogs in clockwork, they try not to change anything and rejoice in staying the same. The residents looked at him, dumbfounded, and showed him a new suspended street, theater, river port, and toboggan slide. Marco asked if the new additions disturb the city’s rhythm, and the residents responded that any change in Andria corresponds to a change in the stars. Astronomers look for change in the sky when things happen in Andria. Marco notes that residents are self-confident and prudent. They’re convinced that every change in the city influences the sky, and before doing new things, they calculate risks and advantages for themselves and for all worlds.
Andria is one of the closest things to a utopia in the novel, but it’s still not quite a utopia. While the residents do think of others, they’re also self-centered and focused only on the effects that human events have on the rest of the universe, rather than accepting either their insignificance or that the universe is the one to influence what happens in Andria. Despite this, it’s telling that Marco is so confused by the way that people in Andria live their lives, as it suggests that it’s not often a person comes across a society that makes such an effort to care for others in the modern, individualistic world.
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Continuous Cities. 4. Marco Polo address Kublai Khan and says that in answer to Kublai’s comment that he never describes the spaces between cities, he’ll now describe Cecelia. In Cecelia, Marco once met a goatherd who asked where they were. The goatherd explained that he and his goats pass through cities and can’t tell them apart, but he can name all the grazing land in between the cities. Marco explained that he’s the opposite; he knows the cities but not the lands between. Many years later, Marco got lost in a neighborhood and asked a passing man where they were. He recognized the man as the old goatherd, and the goatherd explained that they were still lost in Cecelia. Marco exclaimed that he got lost in a different city long ago and asked why he’s in Cecelia now. The goatherd explained that the cities have mingled and now, Cecelia is everywhere.
The fact that Cecelia has expanded to pull in the grazing lands in between it and other cities (as well as those other cities) is another nod to the rise of the suburbs and of the connected and constantly expanding modern world. The goatherd, meanwhile, represents a world that exists only in the past, as he hasn’t been able to keep up with the changing times and doesn’t know how to find his way around the cities. However, the fact that Marco can’t find his way around either anymore suggests that the modern world is damaging and confusing for everyone, no matter their generation.
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Hidden Cities. 3. Long ago, someone said that there are two cities in Marozia: one of the rat and one of the swallow. Today, vicious, fighting rats swarm Marozia. A new century is about to start, however, and in it residents will fly like swallows. It’s possible to see, beneath the viciousness, that there’s already preparation underway for the next phase. Marco Polo returns after many years and sees that though the city is at its height, he senses suspicion and sees that people struggle to fly. He notes that if a person moves through Marozia, they can see different cities in the cracks. He wonders if one person’s pleasure is enough to transform the city, but thinks that it must happen by chance. He thinks that Marozia consists of two cities: one of rats, one of swallows. The second is always freeing itself from the first.
Again, the swallows represent a hopeful future, while the rats are indicative of corruption and greed. However, Marco implies that it’s very possible for there to be qualities of both swallows and of rats in one person, suggesting that this, too, is part of a cycle that takes place in the course of a single human lifetime just as it does in the wider arc of human history. It’s possible, in this sense, to see how humans can become different people as they take on more of one quality or another, just as cities change depending on how hopeful or corrupt they might be.
Themes
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Quotes
Continuous Cities. 5. Marco Polo says that he should describe Penthesilea by talking about the city’s entrance. Most people believe that until a person reaches the walls of a city, they’re still outside—but in Penthesilea, this is incorrect. People advance for hours and it’s unclear if they’re inside or outside. It’s possible to wander and reach places that seem to indicate a change in the city’s texture, but beyond that spot is more suburbs, a carnival, or a cemetery. If a traveler asks where Penthesilea is, residents gesture vaguely and point in any given direction. Finally, if a traveler asks for the road out of Penthesilea, they’ll pass suburbs and neighborhoods. Travelers will eventually give up on trying to discern if Penthesilea is anything more than suburbs—and, disturbingly, will begin to wonder if a world outside of Penthesilea even exists.
Unlike many of the other cities Marco has described that contain both suburbs and a proper city, Penthesilea is just an anxiety-inducing expanse of nothingness—again, something that Calvino seems to suggest is a product of the modern world that can’t satisfy any desires properly. In this case, he also shows that it’s impossible to get out of the modern world by making it so that Marco can’t ever leave Penthesilea. As Marco seeks to understand where he is, he feels even less in control—suggesting that he can’t make sense of this senseless modern world.
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Hidden Cities. 4. Theodora has been invaded multiple times throughout the centuries. Residents finished with one enemy, only to begin fighting another. They fought off condors, serpents, spiders, flies, and termites. Eventually, it became an exclusively human city. The rats were the last to hold on. They were hard to get rid of, as each successive generation became increasingly tougher. Finally, humans massacred them. Theodora became a cemetery of the animal kingdom and humans established the true order of the world. Its library contains records of extinct species—or so the residents believe. Animals that have been hiding for ages are beginning to reemerge and others come out of the library’s basement. Sphinxes, chimeras, dragons, unicorns, and basilisks are retaking their city.
Killing off all of the mythical creatures speaks to humanity’s desire to rule and be in charge, like Kublai Khan wants to be in charge of his empire. However, when the creatures begin to return, it implies that humans will never fully be able to possess their cities and their worlds, just as Kublai will never be able to fully possess his empire by learning about all the cities or making them fit into a certain system. Notably, referring to Theodora as a city that belongs to the animals suggests that humans were wrong from the beginning: the world doesn’t belong to humans, it belongs to the animals.
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Hidden Cities. 5. Marco Polo refuses to tell Kublai Khan about Berenice, the unjust city. Instead, he’ll describe the Berenice of the just, which is hidden. People handle materials in shadowy back rooms, and when giant cogs jam, a quiet ticking suggests that something else is governing the city. Instead of describing perfumed baths where unjust people in Berenice eye women, he’ll share how the just cautiously evade spies and recognize each other by their punctuation and their cuisine. From this, it’s possible to deduce Berenice’s future, but it’s important to keep in mind that within the city of the just, there’s a malignant seed containing certainty and pride. This seed turns into bitterness, resentment, and the desire of the just to both get revenge on the unjust and live the way the unjust do.
Berenice again points to a cycle in which humans try to overthrow bloated and powerful regimes, but it suggests that it’s not as straightforward as previous battles between the rats and the swallows may have led the reader to think. In this case, Calvino suggests that the premise itself is wrong, since even those who are on the side of good and justice have in them a seed of injustice and want revenge—and to copy the unjusts’ way of life. However, this also suggests that wanting to be rich and powerful is part of the human condition, even if it is universally destructive.
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Marco warns Kublai that most important in all of this is that there’s always an element of the unjust city developing within the just city. Looking more closely at the seed of justice, however, it’s possible to pick out a spreading spot, which is the desire to impose what’s just through unjust means—which might lead to a huge city. Marco says that Berenice is indeed a succession of just and unjust cities, but he wants to warn Kublai that all future Berenices are already present.
Here, Calvino makes a veiled reference to communism, suggesting that even if “just” regimes try to assert themselves by subjugating others in an unjust way, they’re just as bad as the unjust system they’re replacing. Insisting that all the future cities are already presents points to the continuity of this cycle between just and unjust cities, which, he suggests, will continue forever.
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Kublai Khan’s atlas contains maps of promised lands that haven’t yet been visited or founded. these include New Atlantis, Utopia, and New Harmony. Kublai asks Marco Polo to tell him which of these will become the future. Marco replies that he can’t draw routes or set dates for these places. Sometimes he only needs a glimpse to know that he can set out and put together a city, but he and Kublai cannot stop actively searching for it. It might be rising up right now in Kublai’s empire, but they can only look for it in this way.
Mentioning Utopia the city is a reference to Utopia, the novel by Thomas More. In it, More critiques expansion and suggests that utopia is impossible, something that Marco echoes in his response to Kublai about not being able to simply map out a route to a utopian place in the world, either in terms of finding it on the globe or finding it in the future.
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As Marco says this, Kublai flips through his atlas and focuses on the nightmare cities such as Enoch, Babylon, and Brave New World. He cries that it’s useless if they’re inevitably going to end up in the infernal city. Marco warns that if the inferno is going to come true, they’re already living it. He says that there are two ways to keep from suffering in it. Like many, they can accept the inferno and become a part of it. Or, they can take the more difficult route and vigilantly look for people, places, and things that aren’t part of the inferno and seek to preserve them.
Mentioning Brave New World as a city is a reference to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, which takes a decidedly bleak view on the fate of civilization. However, Marco’s advice to Kublai and to the reader is to focus on the good, even if it’s fleeting. By doing this, people will be able to enjoy what they have and hopefully, preserve what’s good in the world for future generations.
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Quotes