Calvino's Invisible Cities is a different take on the novel. It disposes of the traditional chronological narrative and organizes the story according to themes such as cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and names, etc.… The novel's thematic organization allows Calvino to de-emphasize the traditional characteristics of cities, such as their material structure and their uniqueness from other cities.
Calvino uses this thematic narrative to emphasize what is common to all cities. Thesis: For Calvino, what is common to all cities is the role of human perception, colored by desire and fear, in creating those cities, which can exist for us only as myths. Because our desires and fears persist no matter the city we are in, all cities are ultimately the same until we can live independent of desire and fear.
The Significance of Calvino's Juxtapositions
Dreams and Fears
Calvino posits that cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears. (Calvino 44). That is, our perception of the city, and our perception of its consequences, are the only aspects of the city that actually matter to us. Marco proves this when he points out that the curious, power-hungry Kublai "…take[s] delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours." (Calvino 44).
He demonstrates the similarities between cities and dreams by showing that they are all rooted in desires and fears. "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." Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears…" (Calvino 44). Kublai later demonstrates this as he thinks about the network of cities in his empire, thinking of the enormous trade and production that will occur, only to later worry that the empire is being crushed by its own weight. (73).
Ideologies and Myths
Calvino teaches that, for humans, cities exist most significantly as myths. In attempting to describe the city of Aglaura, Marco observes what he can say from having lived in the city will never be as "real" as the myths formulated about the city. The inhabitants reports' of the city's "…proverbial virtues,… proverbial faults, a...
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