Paradox? Riddle.

What differentiates the literal from the figurative, or from the metaliterary?  Nothing?  Everything?  There is no answer to those questions.  At least there is no correct answer, because only the author knows what he wanted the reader to interpret with a specific part of text.  “'Venice,' the Khan said.  Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?'  The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.'”  (Dialogue Section 6)  Daniel Solano said that this excerpt lit a light bulb in his head that made a connection between the descriptions of the literal aspects of the city and the novel.  His analysis was purely literal.  “Now that I think of it: the canals, the windows, the canoes, and transportation by land or by water, the women singing, they all portray Venice from different perspectives. It all concludes in that all the cities turn out to be the same place: Venice.”  (Venice: The One and Only, by Daniel Solano)  I disagree drastically.  Calvino, via Marco Polo, has expressed his desire for the reader to not take anything for granted and to second-guess every aspect of the book.  For this reason, I see no plausible scenario in which the city of Venice, is the city of Venice.  I am not sure of the explanation of this excerpt.  Perhaps it is a manifestation of a symbol within the novel, metaliterature.  But what if it is nothing more than a paradox?  That would be the vague explanation to give.  The inclusion of Venice, indirectly, inside every city that has been and will be described, persuades the reader to find a driving force behind the city itself that will serve as a link between the different aspects in these cities. 

“Millions of eyes look up at windows, bridges, capers, and they might be scanning a blank page. Many are the cities like Phyllis, which elude the gaze of all, except the man who catches them by surprise.” (Cities & Eyes 4)  “I thought: 'you reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.'”  (Cities & The Dead 2)  “It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and stare at the carpet, you recognize the street you were seeking in a crimson or indigo or magenta thread which, on a wide loop, brings you to the purple enclosure that is your real destination.” (Cities & The Sky 1)

The above agglomeration of excerpts explains the paradox that surrounds Venice.  Allow me to rewrite and try to clarify.  “Millions of readers look at the symbols, the metaphors, the descriptions and they might be scanning a blank page.  Many are the novels like Invisible Cities, which elude the gaze of all, except the man who catches them by surprise.”  (Cities & Descriptions 4)  “I thought: you reach a moment in the reading when, among the factors that you analyze, the confusing outnumbers the comprehensible.  And the mind refuses to accept more confusion, more paradox: on every new description you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.”  (Cities & Confusion 2) “It is easy to get lost in Invisible Cities: but when you concentrate and stare at the text, you realize the explanation you were seeking in the literal or factual or simple thread which, on a proper analysis, brings you to the enclosure that is your real destination.”  (Cities & Explanations)

Three Elements

When reading Invisible Cities there comes a point when one must accept that the author has swindled you of your ability to analyze. Calvino uses metaliterature to describe the reasons why he is writing, and to explain why his work is inexplicable. He has impersonated the reader of his book in Kublai Khan’s character.    “No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it.”  (Cities & Signs 5)  He is telling us here that we must not take his descriptions of ‘cities’ and deal with them as if they are the book.  We must not analyze the descriptions that he offers as the content of the book, as the plot.  In truth there is no plot.  There is only: literal, figurative, and most importantly metaliterary aspects. 

The literal serves the purpose of descriptions, it transitions the reader, and it supports the other two elements.    “From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia's refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain.”  (Trading Cities 4) Perfectly exemplified in this excerpt, the descriptions in this book are literal.  The mountainside that Marco describes doesn’t mean anything obscure.  There is no paradox here.  The literal is a sort of false front.  Calvino uses descriptions to fool the naïve reader into believing that he must analyze them, but in truth, that is the how not the what. 

The figurative is used by Calvino to make a point.  “Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been demolished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a whim, I do not know.  The fact remains that it has no walls, no ceilings, no floors: it has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be: a forest of pipes that end in taps, showers, spouts, overflows.”  (Thin Cities 3)  Here Calvino wants to, at least in my interpretation, compare the city of Armilla to cities in Europe that seem to be too confusing and unplanned.  He wants to compare something literal, the description of Armilla, to something figurative, the infrastructure of a city that doesn’t exist, at least by that name. 

The metaliterary is used to describe the book— or as DiCaprio would say, a book within a book— in this way, Calvino can intervene on behalf of himself in the character of Marco Polo.  '”Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.'” (Cities & Signs 4)  Calvino uses the metaliterary to communicate to the reader that it is imperative that they break the inherited customary reading mold if they are to understand and enjoy Invisible Cities.  He wants to warn the reader that the symbols and signs that he uses must be construed as a completely new type of element. 

Going on a Tangent

Discourse

A good friend of mine likes to invent words.  One of my favorites, ‘braingasm’ is used to describe a moment where an intellectual realization makes someone feel nice.  Something similar to what she must feel, happened to me while reading Invisible Cities, specifically, the conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. 

Imagine.  Imagine reading while already knowing that you have found the coincidence that inspires you.  Those moments when you think that you found the link that connects something abstract to reality.  When you go out on a tangent and find that it is in truth, not so ridiculous.  This has happened to me.  Calvino, in my farcical state of mind, is describing the unattainable art of writing.  When he talks about ‘Invisible Cities,’ he is referring to literature.  Furthermore, his conversations with Khan describe the way that Calvino feels towards writing fiction, and the individual mold that he has undertaken to describe the implausible. 

“'You advance always with your head turned back?' or 'Is what you see always behind you?' or rather, 'Does your journey take place only in the past?'” (Dialogue 2^nd Section)  Calvino feels that as a writer, he is always looking at what has already been written, not innovating, but recreating.  The journey that every author goes through includes analyzing previous works and using them to mold the outcome of their own piece.  Perhaps Calvino feels that by writing about Invisible Cities, by innovating, he is breaking the mold.  He is looking forward. 

“With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear.”  (Dialogue 3^rd Section)  Mr. Calvino fears that with innovation, he is revealing his desire.  “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.'”  (Discourse 3^rd Section) He is, at least in my mind, talking about literature.  He is using cities as a parallel device, a sort of analogy that symbolizes his novel.  By including the notes between Marco and Kublai, Calvino is giving himself a space where he can intervene, as Marco, and chip in with underlying messages about the writing of the novel.  Calvino wants to explain his style.  He wants to describe the meaning of his notes, and the recurring symbolisms inside the novel.  For this reason, “Kublai Khan had noticed that Marco Polo's cities resembled one another” (Discourse 3^rd Section) Literary works by the same author resemble one another, the author has a style that delineates throughout all the piece that he/she writes. 

As a writer myself, an amateur, I hope that you, reader, can forgive me for exploring the improbable.  My theory about Calvino’s intentions may be flawed, but, as my friend would say, it was ‘braingasmic.’

( ) v Blogger

Cities and memory

This blogger will attempt to review this book in an uncanny way.  In this allegorical feast, the confusing and ever-so-spooky journal of cities will rule the blog.  Obviously, our writer is know confused and finds himself doubting the value of the literary devices he learned when analyzing Invisible Cities.   Oh well, he’ll give it a shot. 

“Desires are already memories.” (Cities & memory 2)  Marco Polo attempts to describe the not so obviously invisible city.  The blogger is still contemplating whether the memory cities are in actuality one city that has been forgotten in desire.  By saying that desires are already memories, Marco Polo tries to make Kublai grasp the concept that this city/cities lies on another field, that desire drives people to do things that will be accomplished.  But, is this metaphorical?  Some might say that it is obviously metaphorical, for it is part of an allegory.  Others, like this blogger, like to discard perspectives that, in his naiveté, will drive him towards clichés.  He thinks that this excerpt shows that Marco actually believes that desire is a synonym of memory.  Then explain this, blogger…

 “The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”  (Cities & memory 3)

With the use of an analogy, Marco wants to bring Zaira closer to Kublai.  He wants him to feel the city in his hand, to look for it, and we he really desires to understand it, he will realize that it is already a memory.  The city that Marco is trying to describe lies on a different spectrum. It can never be visited through description.  That is why, according to this ridiculous blogger, Zaira, Zora, Maurilia, Diomira and Isidora are all the same city, and that they are described by memory and desire.   Why else, he says, would the names “remain the same” and since “It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them” (Cities & memory 5) Why not assume that they are the same city?  Oh, this blogger, how he yearns to prove his theory, but rumor has it, he forgot. 

Dawkins on the Pillory

“Most of what is unusual about a man can be summed up in one word: 'culture.'” (Pg. 189) For once, I agree with Dawkins.  Culture does not allow man to properly analyze the common misperceptions that are considered 'culture.'  The perception of belief in a higher being, a God, is precisely what Dawkins and I believe impairs humans from seeing science in an impartial way. 

In search of further scientific opinion on the subject of whether God exists and whether culture truncates intellectual growth, I found a rather interesting spectrum.  On Richard Dawkins’ scale of Atheism or Faith, people are classified into seven categories depending in whether they believe in God and how much they actually think that a superior being exists.  A seven is considered a person that is certain that God doesn’t exist; on the other hand, a one is someone who is convinced that God exists.  One can take the example of the book God is Dead, by Ron Curie Jr. where the reality that God existed, came to Earth and then died destroys every aspect of society as we know it.  Of course this book is fictitious, but it promotes the idea that society couldn’t survive with the idea that God is there.  People wouldn’t have panicked if they didn’t know that God had died, but in telling them that the superior being is dead, society loses all sense of right and wrong.  Dawkins (in The Selfish Gene) says that culture provides humans with what they think can be a driving force.  But in reality, he sustains, culture can be a distraction from actually progressing in purely factual biology. 

“Fashions in dress and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, all evolved in historical time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution, but has really nothing to do with genetic evolution.” (Pg. 190)  Dawkins thinks that people see evolution reflected in fashion.  This may be true in some cases, but that which he deems wrong with a condescending tone is in reality very similar to what he had said in earlier chapters.  He had stated that when animals decide to do something generic, like look for food in a group instead of alone, they are following the orders of genes.  So what separates the genes that decide that it is better to eat amongst friends and family from the ones that decide to build a taller building so that lions can’t catch us?  What Mr. Dawkins apparently doesn’t notice, is that his examples directly disprove his theory.  Furthermore, he relies on the reader not paying close attention to every sentence that he wrote, because if they did, they would notice that he contradicts his previous ideas constantly.  The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.” (Pg. 199) This sentence hints that the reason that these geniuses’ meme-complexes live on today is because of their genetic complex.  This is false, the ideas people have live on because they are worth listening to, not because they are just better, or different.  This may just be an illustration of my need to ascertain certain goals with these occasional blog entries— no I don’t just do them because I have to— but I think that it is our obligation to criticize and maybe even denigrate the author in order to properly analyze the work.