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.