Invisible Cities

by

Italo Calvino

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Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Memory, Perception, and Experience Theme Icon
Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control Theme Icon
Cycles and Civilization Theme Icon
Modernity Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Invisible Cities, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control Theme Icon

Kublai Khan wants to hear Marco Polo’s stories—and those of his other merchants—primarily because he believes that if he can learn about every city in his empire, he’ll be able to control the empire. As Marco returns from his journeys and regales Kublai with tales of yet more cities that seem increasingly unreal, Kublai doubles down on his attempts to make definite sense of what he’s hearing. In this way, Calvino seems to suggest that while it may be a natural human inclination to want to pick out patterns and know things for sure, it’s not always a fulfilling endeavor—and stories, like this one, are capable of both teaching people how to interpret things while making the case that doing so isn’t always entirely useful.

The entirety of the novel is arranged to follow a pattern, which allows the reader to join Kublai’s attempts to make sense of Marco’s stories. While the first and ninth chapters describe 10 cities each, the inner eight each describe five—and the 55 cities all fall into 11 different categories (cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and signs, thin cities, trading cities, cities and eyes, cities and names, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, continuous cities, and hidden cities). Dividing the cities up into these different categories creates what seems initially to be a natural way to draw similarities between cities of the same category and comparisons between cities of different categories. However, this system of categorization isn’t as clear-cut as it seems. For instance, while some of the trading cities like Euphemia, Eutropia, and Ersilia are thematically similar in that they’re all explorations of how humans form relationships with each other, the other two trading cities, Chloe and Esmeralda, don’t as obviously share this focus on relationships and indeed, they share more imagery or thematic links with cities of other categories. In fact, Esmeralda in particular—the final city of the trading cities—is the first to introduce the imagery of rats and swallows, which appears later in cities from cities and names and several hidden cities. The fact that this pattern of exploring similar themes in cities of the same category doesn’t entirely hold true begins to break down the initial assumption that it’s possible to neatly categorize the cities at all. In this way, the reader, like Kublai Khan, must constantly work to piece together how—or even if—things fit together. In guiding the reader through this attempt, Calvino seems to suggest that the endeavor itself is entirely natural and not a bad thing—but is also, in some sense, somewhat futile.

At the same time as parts of the novel seem to deny the reader and Kublai the ability to make sense of what’s going on, Marco also describes cities, such as Tamara (of cities and signs), that function as lessons in communication. The way that Marco describes Tamara offers the reader a lesson in semiotics (the study of signs and symbols, and how people know what they mean), while other cities, like Fedora and Zirma, draw out other ways of making meaning and understanding something, as through repetition or assumptions. In particular, Tamara’s lesson on semiotics proves extremely important later in the novel, as it paves the way for the reader to understand how symbols function in later chapters. Marco is upfront about the fact that the vendors’ wares in Tamara aren’t themselves valuable, but that those items refer to the value of other things, as in “the embroidered headband stands for elegance; [...] the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness.” This makes way for, later in the novel, the reader to recognize symbols as they arise naturally, as with Esmeralda’s rats and swallows, which symbolize a struggle for freedom. In the frame story of Marco and Kublai’s conversations, Kublai’s chessboard begins to symbolize the futility of trying too hard to understand something by making it fit into a certain system.

Kublai, annoyed by Marco’s unwillingness to—in Kublai’s mind—tell the truth about the cities or describe them in a way that’s useful for him, asks Marco to use chess pieces and the chessboard to tell him about the cities. As the two play—and as Marco is able to successfully describe cities using the chess pieces—Kublai asks himself a question that disturbs him: what’s the point of winning at their chess game, especially in light of the fact that Marco is able to draw out such delightful stories by “reading” the grains of ebony and ivory that make up the board? More broadly, this question asks why it’s necessary to constantly develop new ways to figure out how the world works, or make existing evidence fit into systems that, possibly, are somewhat ineffective at making that evidence make sense. At the same time, the novel also suggests that this endeavor is still entertaining and therefore, like Marco Polo’s stories, is no less worthwhile.

Related Themes from Other Texts
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Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control appears in each chapter of Invisible Cities. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control Quotes in Invisible Cities

Below you will find the important quotes in Invisible Cities related to the theme of Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control.
Chapter 1 Quotes

Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

The wares, too, which the vendors display on their stalls are valuable not in themselves but as signs of other things: the embroidered headband stands for elegance; [...] Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:

But, obscure or obvious as it might be, everything Marco displayed had the power of emblems, which, once seen, cannot be forgotten or confused. In the Khan’s mind the empire was reflected in a desert of labile and interchangeable data, like grains of sand, from which there appeared, for each city and province, the figures evoked by the Venetian’s logogriphs.

Related Characters: Marco Polo, Kublai Khan
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“It is evening. We are seated on the steps of your palace. There is a slight breeze,” Marco Polo answered. “Whatever country my words may evoke around you, you will see it from such a vantage point, even if instead of the palace there is a village on pilings and the breeze carries the stench of a muddy estuary.”

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

He infers this: if existence in all its moments is all of itself, Zoe is the place of indivisible existence. But why, then, does the city exist? What line separates the inside from the outside, the rumble of wheels from the howl of wolves?

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”

“Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.”

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

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.”

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan (speaker)
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Marco Polo, Kublai Khan
Related Symbols: Chess
Page Number: 123
Explanation and Analysis:

For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:

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.”

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 127
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

And Polo answers, “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.”

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Related Symbols: The Atlas
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Related Symbols: Rats, Birds (Swallows)
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.”

Related Characters: Marco Polo (speaker), Kublai Khan
Related Symbols: The Atlas
Page Number: 165
Explanation and Analysis: