As Marco Polo describes cities, he pays close attention to cities that contain elements of both wonder and absolute horror. Not every place, he suggests, is entirely good—within every beautiful city, an element of darkness lurks, waiting to manifest itself. Especially in the latter half of the novel, when his cities seem to more closely mimic real ones, Calvino seems to suggest that the course of human history, as well as an individual’s experience of their comparatively short life, are cyclical. This cyclical nature, he suggests, is a natural part of not just the world that humans have physically built, but is also an intrinsic part of what it means to be human.
Invisible Cities draws out several cycles that repeat again and again in various cities. One of the cycles is, in a sense, the cycle of civilization itself: Marco Polo explains that in Eutropia, the city isn’t just one city—it’s a collection of multiple cities and, as its inhabitants become bored and staid, they collectively pack up and move to the next version of Eutropia, where they can find happiness and purpose for a while longer in a “new” locale, with new jobs and new spouses. This type of cycle repeats itself in other cities, offering insight into human nature in the process. People’s patterns of behavior in Eutropia suggest that it’s part of being human to desire something new and different, while the people in the city of Melania show that this desire is impossible to satisfy. In Melania, travelers return to find that conversations repeat again and again among different versions of the same people (there’s always a braggart soldier and an amorous daughter, for example, but the person acting as the soldier or the daughter changes over time). Considering these and other cities in which things repeat and cycle without end, Invisible Cities seems to propose that life is an endless cycle—even when people try to find something new, as in Eutropia, they’re still inevitably condemned to repeat the cycle for all time.
Especially in its cities connected to death and to the sky, Invisible Cities dives into the intertwined ideas of how people deal with their inevitable demise, and how they fit into the universe while they’re still alive. Again, however, Marco doesn’t indicate that any of those cities or their inhabitants come to positive, meaningful understandings—but through these two types of cities, the novel begins to question whether it’s possible to break the cycles. In both cases, the possibility of breaking any of the cycles is so horrific as to be almost inconceivable to the cities’ residents. In Laudomia, inhabitants have access to a version of the city that houses the dead, as well as a version that houses the unborn. Anxious residents turn to the dead or the unborn to try to make sense of their own lives instead of where their city may end up in the future, because, Marco suggests, contemplating humanity on a larger scale requires considering whether people will be around forever—and whether anything they’re doing is, if humans may not exist forever, actually meaningful. Meanwhile in Thekla, the city is constantly under construction—and when Marco or other travelers ask the builders when the city will be done, the builders anxiously imply that if they keep building, they’ll never be able to peak and then begin to decline. Through these two cities, the novel begins to suggest that, even if the cycles of humanity are constant, it’s possible that they will eventually cease to exist. The thought of human extinction is something universally disturbing for people who will, the novel shows, do nearly anything to ignore their own lack of importance.
As Marco’s descriptions of cities grow grimmer and grimier, Kublai Khan begins to share some of the qualities of those in Laudomia and Thekla. He laments that his empire is falling apart and becoming ill, and in his final conversation with Marco, he declares that “It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.” Essentially, Kublai accepts at this point that he, his empire, and all of humanity are failing. However, Marco offers a remedy to Kublai’s existential crisis. He suggests first that “the inferno of the living” won’t ever actually come to pass—and if it does, people are already inhabiting it, unbeknownst to them. Instead of dwelling on humanity or civilization’s eventual decline, he proposes that people must either accept the inferno until it becomes background, or else dedicate themselves to looking for the beauty in the world, humanity, and its cycles. Though the cycles may be inevitable, Marco seems to suggest that it’s possible to make them bearable by focusing on and promoting the good and beautiful aspects of human life while it lasts.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Cycles and Civilization ThemeTracker
Cycles and Civilization Quotes in Invisible Cities
It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption’s gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing.
[...] and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something of the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.
The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.
For everyone, sooner or later, the day comes when we bring our gaze down along the drainpipes and we can no longer detach it from the cobblestones. The reverse is not impossible, but it is more rare: and so we continue walking through Zemrude’s streets with eyes now digging into the cellars, the foundations, the wells.
Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will only last so long.
There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.
Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers,” but by the line of the arch that they form.”
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then, he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.”
Polo answers: Without stones there is no arch.”
For some time the augurs had been sure that the carpet’s harmonious pattern was of divine origin. The oracle was interpreted in this sense, arousing no controversy. But you could, similarly, come to the opposite conclusion: that the true map of the universe is the city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly, with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness.
It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought that you can measure Leonia’s opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new. So you begin to wonder if Leonia’s true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity.
The Great Khan tried to concentrate on the game: but now it was the game’s purpose that eluded him. Each game ends in a gain or a loss: but of what? What were the true stakes? A checkmate, beneath the foot of a king, knocked aside by the winner’s hand, a black or a white square remains.
If you ask, “Why is Thekla’s constructing taking such a long time?” the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, “So that its destruction cannot begin.” And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, “Not only the city.”
Perinthia’s astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.
Was the oracle mistaken? Not necessarily. I interpret it in this way: Marozia consists of two cities, the rat’s and the swallow’s; both change with time, but their relationship does not change; the second is the one about to free itself from the first.
“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
