Sunday, 22 June 2025

Not a review of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino translated by William Weaver

 This is another classic that is highly regarded by many fantasy writers, which is how I found out about it, but Calvino's work would probably be shelved with world literature rather than fantasy. Invisible Cities isn't really a novel so much as a series of imaginative vignettes loosely strung together, each describing a city. (I like how that phrase could mean many different cities, one per description, or one city described many different ways.) It feels like a literary exercise, or game. But I never figured out how the game is played. Still, the text has a lot to delight in, like: "hanging canals whose cascades move the paddles of mills" (Cities and Signs 5); or "confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies" (end of chapter 6).

But, I'm bothered by how the cities are all named with women's names. It made me wonder if there was a draft where Casanova was the narrator rather than Marco Polo. But then one city is called Hypatia, not that I could connect that vignette to what I know of Hypatia (which isn't much, to be honest). Other names were more common, but I don't know if those names are linked with specific women in Italian culture, or Parisian culture. Again, I feel like I just didn't understand what Calvino was doing. The book would read differently if the cities were Tom, Dick and Harry, or Mnrrjy, Uswrcn , and Jtszgx; so why did Calvino chose women's names? 

I might try another of Calvino's books in translation, and that might lead me back to Invisible Cities. But at the moment, I just don't love it enough to study it.

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