Your
blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 21st at 10:00 am. You
may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop
your own response to the readings.
1) Trace
some of the ways in which Calvino constructs the city. What are some of the themes he explores? What issues does he examine? In what ways do the constructions of these
various cities reflect the imagination of the narrator? Of how we imagine the
city?
2) All
of the cities are named after women.
Draw connections between this novel and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman and explore the ways in
which architecture and urban planning can be gendered and informed by the
complex nature of desire.
3) The
title of this text is Invisible Cities.
In what ways are cities “invisible”? Use
this text to draw connections from texts we have previously explored in this
class.
Memory is ephemeral. Even though specific aspects of our memory can remain with us for years and even our entire lives, the moment which a thought or a memory is brought to the forefront of our mind is for a very limited time; a flash of a visual, a clip of a mental video, a rush of remembered touch. Our body physically reacts to these rapid relivings; Goosebumps flare, body temperature changes, our throat swells, we perspire. Nonetheless, we react to that which is invisible.
ReplyDeleteWe may be able to enter and travel through this virtual world in our mind but it is truly invisible. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, taps into the flexibility of this existential place, as Kublai Khan and Marco Polo discuss the many cities and journeys of their lives. The manner in which their discussions transform is stunning. Their relationship and communication develops a cyclic process. Marco Polo’s initial inability to verbalize his stories led to a naive but deeply expressive type of dialogue. “evening after evening, words failed him, and little by little, he went back to relying on gestures, grimaces, glances.” pg. 39 In regards to Derrida’s thought that once thoughts or events are written they are recorded as a lie and transition into ‘bad’ or false memory. Marco Polo learns to verbally communicate experiences, and so, their conversations transform context from gesture, to word, to silence, back to gesture.
Marco Polo reiterates this thought: “‘Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,’ Polo said. ‘Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.” pg. 87
How do we handle our memories? What is the best way to express them?
From what I have gathered, the answer is action. In the exploration of the city of Zobeide, men have share a dream of chasing a woman through a white city. These men are moved enough by the imaginative experience that they translate it into their reality. When they ventured out to look for the city and did not find it, they founded it.
Unfortunately, the men falsified it. Constructing blockades where the girl in the dream had once escaped was the ‘lie.’ It was the tweaking or pushing of the truth that drained all veracity. They eventually forgot the dream.
Much more can be said with a gesture or action than words, because they too can be invisible. These cities may be invisible but they can also be true.
“Set out, explore every coast, and seek this city...then come back and tell me if my dream corresponds to reality.” pg. 55 And here develops a rhetorical question: Should our dreams correspond to reality or is it ideal if they differ?
In reading your post, I couldn't help but think about the ways in which history can or cannot "record" the invisible nature of the city. A part of what was so exciting about the excavations of Pompeii in the the 19th century was that in the bodies frozen in ash from the volcanic eruption, archeologists could look at the ways in which people actually *lived.* I would continue to explore through research the detritus of the everyday, as Robertson would say, the small minutia of life that reveals so much of our inner-workings as human beings in space. I would like for you to push your analysis of the dream of Zobeide a little further. Consider the ways in which architects and city planners "chase" a dream through construction, and not just a dream but a *memory* of a dream. I don't think your final question is rhetorical, and I would work through it a little more. We might think the things we dream up are corresponding to reality, but are they? Are we constantly in the process of creating our reality through our dreams, through our imagination?
Delete2) All of the cities are named after women. Draw connections between this novel and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman and explore the ways in which architecture and urban planning can be gendered and informed by the complex nature of desire.
ReplyDeleteThe opening reference to Kulbai Khan and Marco Polo imply exploration or the expansion of ones knowledge, country, culture, etc. This search and desire for new places, knowledge, or people can be correlated to man’s desire to gain possessions. Men typically, but sometimes women, name their possessions. These possessions include boats, cars, etc and often times our possessions take control of us. “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.” (Cavalo 12). Anastasia, whether she is a city, a person, or a personal possession, she can have complete control over your actions. Women can “wear the pants” in a relationship, and the loss of an inanimate object can break ones heart. This desire to attach to something or someone is shown in The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman whenever Desiderio thinks of Albertina. Desiderio believes he is under control of the machines, but his desire for Albertina puts her in control of his fate. She finally allows Desiderio to make love to her in the end of the novel. Dr. Hoffman and Albertina finally fool Desiderio into fulfilling his desire for Albertina, while powering the machines through his lust and sex. I believe that the cities are named after women because people tend to open up to women compared to men. This vulnerability to the feminine touch makes it easy for them to “enslave” those who open up to them.
I think the latter half of your post is interesting as it poses the question if Invisible Cities is a feminist book since it seems to place women in a position of "vulnerability" and "openness." Perhaps, though, Calvino is highlighting the way in which we position women in these essentialist ways. I would continue to explore this idea of "possession" in terms of space and the work of the architect. We see how the drive to have possession of women becomes ultimately enslaving to the male characters of these novels (Desiderio in The Infernal Desire Machines...and Marco Polo in Invisible Cities). How do we see modernist architects and even postmodern architects to some extent trying to "possess" a space? How might Tschumi pose an alternative to this drive?
DeleteItalo Calvino, through his abstract and imaginative narrative, explores generalizations that pertain to urban life. Within the novel, the aging emperor Kublai Kahn calls upon the explorer Marco Polo to survey and describe the state of his emperor. Polo describes 55 metropolises he has visited each with a woman’s names and each one is radically different from the next. For Polo, the account of these cities repeatedly interchanges between realism and fantasy. These descriptions imply the numerous dimensions which pertain to the urban landscape as told through allegories. This in turn allows to the reader to visualize the potentialities of how cities can be formed and function.
ReplyDeleteThere is no limitation by physical, cultural or urban laws in how these imaginative cities may come into being. A great city is not determined by its buildings and streets, but more so by an invisible element which architects and urban planners have attempted to decipher for the greater part of human history. Polo remarks “there is an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, the unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence” (Calvino 149). Each person, within the medium of the city, has unique experiences which come about by various interactions and personal outcomes. These experiences determine our overall affection toward a particular city. Human interaction is seen as the “invisible” element which pervades the intricacy of city life.
Moreover, Calvino suggests there is a system of generalizations that can be applied to each city. For example, the city of Eutropia is made up of many cities, so that when all the in habitants tire of their lives they all together move to one of the empty cities where they will have new friends, new jobs, and new things to gossip about: “their life is renewed from move to move” (Calvino 64). Eventually despite the new jobs and new interactions the same jobs are done and the same things are gossiped. Within every city there are general social practices: marriage, work, habitation etc. These practices do not change much for the people who practice them are consistently replaced through birth and immigration. Thus traditional roles and scripts become imbedded within the culture of the city. This further suggests that landscape of the city is not made up steel and concrete but preconceived ideas and daily practices.
This is an excellent analysis of Calvino's ideas. I would encourage you to continue analyzing the way in which culture can dictate the structure of the city. It might not be the roads, buildings, parks, and subways that create the city, but the habits of everyday life. Consider some concrete examples that might help you defend this interpretation of Calvino's ideas.
DeleteWhat are the themes Calvino explores in the “Invisible Cities”? The general topics that keep coming throughout the book are about life, people, society, History, infrastructure, women, the notion of time, weeding, travelling from areas to areas, and architecture. The Author is telling a story in his book using the power of memory, desire and exploration in order to connect ideas, communicate his thoughts and get his message across.
ReplyDelete“Invisible Cities” is a book that telling a story about two people having a dialogue. The dialogue is between Kublai Klan, an emperor who fears for his kingdom, and Marco Polo, an explorer who tells story about the surreal cities. Polo claims that he has been in these incredible cities; Klan is skeptical but still willing to listen to Polo because he was fascinated by Polo’s stories (Calvino 5).
Trace some of the ways in which Calvino constructs the city: In order to connect the reader to the story, Calvino “personalizes” the city. He first gave each city a woman’ s name and gives it human’s characteristics. He talks about the city as if he was talking about a human being. As an example, “ the days of poverty were followed by more joyous times: a sumptuous butterfly- Clarice emerged from the beggared chrysalis- Clarice (Calvino 107).” The personification of the city is so intense that, as a reader, I forget that I am reading about a city. I feel that I am reading about woman, which is interesting because, while reading, it creates inside my head and my body feeling of desire, and bring back some good memory in the mind of my past experience.
The choice of the words makes the book erotic, which makes the readers forget that he or she is reading about the city. The reader feels that the author is talking about a woman. As example, the author talked about “ the journey [that] leads to the city of Tamara”. He states “ you penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls (Calvino 13). The choice of words like penetration of the city is very important when the writer want to create the notion of desire. Then the notion of desire would bring memory. The text is then a sign that activates the idea of desire and the desire creates memories and memories creates more desires and the desire makes look for more signs. The book is provocative and has logic. The repetitiveness in the book makes it desirable. The reader wants more because it is a great experience. The author used a strategy that the city of Zirma used. “The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind (Calvino 19). The book has the title of chapters that repeat themselves: Cities and desire, cities and signs, cities and memory, etc.
Thank you,
Edgar Irakiza
Yes, Calvino's novel is a highly erotic, sensual book when you read it through this lens, but why do you think this is so? Why do you think he is comparing the city to a woman? What sort of theoretical possibilities does this open up in terms of thinking about the ways in which the city becomes an object of control, seduction, etc? I think you've done a great job here articulating some of the sensuality of Calvino's work, but try to critically assess what he is trying to tell us about how we understand the city.
DeleteOn my vary first class in Architecture School in Mexico City the teacher told us, word for word, the conversation that Marco Polo and Kublai Khan have on page 82:
ReplyDeleteMarco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is nor 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.”
The impact that Marco’s final answer provoked in me since the very first time I heard those words has never left my mind, and it keeps coming back to very livid memory whenever I feel stuck in the design process.
Cities have indeed become invisible in the way that people no longer notice the stones in the arch, they become concerned over what that arch looks like, if it fits in it’s surrounding context, if it helps create a connection with the people; and really people could not care less if the arch was here or there, or anywhere at all. Cities have now become blurry memories of previous magnificent cities that coincidentally bore the same name as the current one.
Throughout the novel, Italo Calvino recalls an important memory in each of the cities he describes. In Zemrude, the city that reveals itself according to the mood of the beholder, the inhabitants can now only remember what upper Zemrude looks like. Why don’t they get happy and simply look up? The entire city of Zobeide was created because of the memory of a dream the founders had in which they chased a beautiful woman through unknown streets, but they are never able to catch her. They modify the city to create new barriers that will perhaps allow them to trap her, she never shows herself again and yet they continue to search for her.
Memory is now playing such a strong part in Kublai Khan’s mind, that before we get to end of Marco Polo’s travels, the Khan begins to reveal memories of his own. Little pieces of information start to become images of landscapes and cities, of people moving in them, of rituals being performed in each one. The Khan begins to understand the nature of the city, perhaps he had known it all along except now he is beginning to notice the stones that make the arch.
Yet, both Khan and his ambassador know that without a desire to create something, to establish a connection to desert, the sea, the moon, the golden string that ties everything in the city together, is what creates the city in the first place. The inhabitants have forgotten these desires and can now only recall memories of a past golden era.
Perhaps they should all be reminded, Khan and Polo know this already, that they are all living in Octavia, the city suspended over an abyss with only a net to keep them from falling. “Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.” (Calvino, pg. 75)
In this case, no memory can bring you back.
What I especially like about this post is the way in which you talk about how no one notices architecture anymore in the city and how "people no longer notice the stones in the arch" and "could not care less if the arch was here or there, or anywhere at all." I think of older cities where even banal engineering structures such as aquaducts and train stations possess intricate detail and beauty. Have we stopped noticing these spaces and has that blindness led to a lack of investment in creating beautiful, but utilitarian, structures?
Delete