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.’