“It was reduced to a square of planed wood: nothingness…” (pg 123)

As I continue to read Invisible Cities, I continue to find symbols of the world, or life itself. As I mentioned in my previous blog entries, I believe that the city of Venice is meant to represent not only Marco Polo’s hometown, it represents life itself, and all the cities described in the book are the different perceptions or opinions people with different outlook might have regarding it.

The mountain if trash in Letonia, “the city that refashions itself every day” (pg 114) represents all the memories we build up during our lifetimes. The fact that it takes one simple object to fall in order to make the mountains of rubbish crumbles signifies the precarious instability of life, and how we don’t know when or how our lives are going to change, whether it be for better or for worse.  

The game of chess described by Calvino as representing each city is not only that, it is also an allegory for all the decisions we might have to take; how we may win or lose those things that are important to us, but if we lose that one value or principle that makes us different from everyone else around us, we lose the game of life.

“Each game ends in a gain or a loss: but of what?” (pg 123). I can interpret this quote in two ways. One can see it as those risks we chose to take in life and the way we are rewarded for each, or one can interpret it by saying that each game here represents knowledge, and the question at the end is actually asking what the real importance of knowledge is. Why bother reading this complex book? To understand life better, but what will that give us? We will all end up dying eventually so what is the point?

This makes me question if Calvino, after all the analysis he made upon society and its ways, actually has a negative view on life, just like the one expressed by Shakespeare in Macbeth. 

“…So then, yours is truly a journey through memory!” (pg 98)

How do you read a book? Is there really a right way and a wrong way to do so? Every author has a purpose whenever they set out to write something. Whether the purpose is to entertain readers by talking about fascinating fictional beings, inform the audience about facts and theories, or explain the meaning of life, they have all been written with a specific purpose in mind.

As soon as you start reading Invisible Cities, you, as a reader, take on the arduous task of trying to figure out what Italo Calvino really wants to convey through his cities. What you don’t realize at first is that Calvino wrote the book in such a way that as the book progresses, he too is figuring out his audience.

“Each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all the things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged according to their true relationship.”(pg. 96). By stating that the carpet is a map of the city, Calvino is not only saying that Marco Polo’s tales all talk about Venice, he is comparing Venice to the common thread that ties everything together, and is presenting his book as a map of life itself.

Just like Virgil guided Dante through the depths of Hell; Tralfamadorian theory guided the life of Billy Pilgrim; Vladek guided the life of his son, justice guided the fates of Claitemnestra, Agamemnon, Electra, and Orestes; freedom guided the life of Eli Wiesel; an unjust world guided Candide through his journey; the meaning of nothing guided Macbeth through his; and selfishness guided Dawkins’ work and beliefs; Calvino uses Invisible Cities to guide us through life. 

Define: Life

“No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it.” (pg 61)

Amethyst: a purple or violet quartz, used as a gem.

Hypochondria: excessive worry or talk about one's health.

Balustrades: a railing with supporting balusters.

Cedar: any of several Old World, coniferous trees of the genus Cedrus, having wide, spreading branches.

Filigree: delicate ornamental work of fine silver, gold, or other metal wires, especially lacy jewelers' work of scrolls andarabesques.

Mullioned: a vertical member, as of stone or wood, between the lights of a window, the panels in wainscoting, or the like.

Raffia: a fiber obtained from the leaves of the raffia palm, used for tying plants and other objects and for making mats, baskets, hats, andthe like.

Mandrel: a shaft or bar the end of which is inserted into a workpiece to hold it during machining.

Lathe: a machine for use in working wood, metal, etc., that holds the material and rotates it about a horizontal axis against atool that shapes it.

Sojourn: a temporary stay

Pediments: (in classical architecture) a low gable, typically triangular with a horizontal cornice and raking cornices, surmounting acolonnade, an end wall, or a major division of a façade.

Punctilious: strict or exact in the observance of the formalities or amenities of conduct or actions.

Zebus: one of a domesticated form of cattle, Bos taurus indicus, of India,having a large hump over the shoulders and a large dewlap.

Spire: a tall, acutely pointed pyramidal roof or rooflike constructionupon a tower, roof, etc.

Hempen: of, like, or pertaining to hemp.

Hemp: a tall, coarse plant,Cannabis sativa, that is native to Asia but naturalized or cultivated in many parts of the world and is the source of avaluable fiber as well as drugs such as marijuana and hashish.

Consign: to hand over or deliver formally or officially; commit (often followed by to ).

Wastrel: a wasteful person; spendthrift.

Sponger: a person who habitually borrows or lives at the expense of others; parasite.

Denouement: the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel.

Role-Play

When you pick up the book Invisible Cities for the second time, you expect to finally start understanding what the author is really getting at. This section, however, starts with an “imaginary” conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, where one assumes what the other is asking and imagines a response according to that. This shows the relationship between Calvino and the reader. Since Calvino couldn’t possibly meet all of his readers and answer their questions, he was forced to imagine what questions the book would arouse, and attempt to answer them as best as he can.

If we think about it from a Shakespearean point of view, there is really no need for these questions because life means nothing, so what you chose to do with it shouldn’t matter either. Calvino states that it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy” (pg 35.) What one should be asking him or herself is what makes a city happy? And at the same time, what makes a person happy? However, if we look upon the story in the same way Shakespeare viewed Macbeth and his story, this wouldn’t hold any importance, because life is meaningless after all.

As you continue to read, you become more identified with Kublai Khan’s feelings and questions regarding the city, and the more you read the more you realize you are Kublai Khan, and Calvino is Marco Polo, trying to explain the complexities of humankind to an idle audience. “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 stands for something else.” (pg 44)

Why paint something when you can describe it just as effectively?

After having started to read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, my way of approaching literature and works of art has changed completely. Painters believe that art is a way of viewing human condition in a different way. Musicians believe that tunes and melodies are able to convey things that cannot be expressed through words. Writers believe that literature reflects the human condition, as well as society’s hopes and dreams.

In this book, Calvino uses a technique much like the one employed by Hemmingway, where they both start their works by jumping straight into the action without introducing the setting, characters, or giving a reader any sort of clue as to what the story is about. As a reader, you are left to look over the writing for any type of clues that will help you understand what is really going on and start getting a clear image of the events that are taking place.

However, this book goes beyond that. Not only do you have to draw conclusions from the limited descriptions offered by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan of each city he visited, you also get the hard task of deciding in what order you wish to start reading the book. There is a reason why Calvino chose to place the chapters in their respective order, but there was also a reason why he named some of the chapters the same, and why he placed specific numbers next to them as well.

This book can not only be read in many different ways, but it can be interpreted in various forms as well. Calvino describes his cities in such a way that the reader is able to imagine a part of it, making the experience of reading this particular book a completely different one for every person who reads it. 

“All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.”

I had never thought about animals having their own culture, but this chapter in The Selfish Gene made me realize how true that was. Dawkins starts talking about animal culture, and then proceeds to talk about genes and evolution in human for almost the first time since the start of the book. However, he gives the chapter a completely different approach than the one I expected by mentioning what he names memes. According to the dictionary, memes are “cultural items are transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.”

He exemplifies his point by stating that “God exists, if only n the form of a meme with high survival value, or ineffective power, ion the environment provided by human culture.” (pg 193.) Although highly controversial, this statement is completely true. There is no evidence at all that confirms the existence of a being such as “God”, he exists merely in people’s faith, which according to Dawkins I “blind trust, in absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence… Blind faith can justify anything.” (pg 198.) Who can tell you you’re wrong when you don’t need anything to confirm that you are right? I respect people that have such strong convictions, but I cannot personally relate. How can you believe in something you don’t know exists? How can you blindly trust some old papers that were written by people that would probably be considered insane in our modern world?

Dawkins ends the chapter by saying that our genes are survival machines, yet they were not created to be, nor can we expect them to be, immortal. They are bound to change because of the nature of evolution itself, but memes, on the other hand, can last for a longer time. They will not be exactly the same, since everyone changes ideas to fit certain circumstances and to fit their own understanding, but their essence will remain. Can we consider, then, that our ideas are more important than our bodies?

A Matter of Time

After reading several of the chapters from The Selfish Gene, I am not completely certain if I have learned a lot or am simply confused by the enormous amount of information, definitions, examples, and conclusions that Dawkins draws throughout the book. It seems as if sometimes, by trying to enhance his point he goes a little overboard using allegories in order to make the reader understand and ends up doing exactly the opposite.

In chapter ten, he addresses social insects, such as bee, wasps, ants, and termites that rely on cooperation and apparent altruism for the survival of their species. The individuality of these social insects is subjugated to the welfare of the community as a whole, not to their individual benefit. He went into great detail talking about how this works with bees, and how this is possible because most males have no father. They all have only half the number of genes and all of them come from their mother. It is weird to write about this in Mother's Day, seeing as those sterile male bees owe their entire existence to their mother.

Dawkins also mentions mutualism and symbiosis, the relationship of mutual benefit between members of different species. He states that the mitochondria in our cells were probably separate species from us a long time ago, but we became so dependent on each other that we evolved into the same organism, and if we were to eliminate all the mitochondria in our bodies, we would be dead within seconds. I find this type of dependency amazing, but a little contradictory to the whole “selfish gene” idea.