Reply
Sun 10 Nov, 2002 12:04 pm
Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, with the odor of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing.
"Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino
( Translated from the Italian by William Weaver )
Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea.
When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red windsocks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another's heads, the lighted ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair.
In the coastline's haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel's withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wineskins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed.
Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.
.... ibid
Great book, Debacle!
Did you notice that all the cities have the name of a woman?
Why?
Off to look at "Invisible cities"!
Lovely! Thanks Debacle - I read some thing(S) by Italo Calvino, looks like it's time to pick up another novel of his.
Nice writing. I suppose I'll have to add this book to my list. At current rates that probably means I'll get to it sometime around 2005.
INVISIBLE CITIES is my favorite Calvino--a unique poetic masterpiece. Another wonderful book of his is the ITALIAN FOLKTALES, a huge collection of fables he collected (and, I suspect, polished) which made him the best-loved author in Italy. I borrowed two of them for as novel I wrote that took place in early 20th century Italy...I don't think Calvino would have minded!
larry - thanks for your mention of the stendhal book on another post, sounds interesting - and have you read calvino's "if on a winter's night a traveler" I think thats the title. I haven't read any of him yet but he's way up there on The List.
I haven't read "If on a winter's night" because I know the gimmick of it and it seems irritating.
A great Calvino book of essays is THE USES OF LITERATURE, and the best essay in it is called "Why Read The Classics?" --a masterpiece. But all the essays are great.
Also lovely are his short stories, collected as LAUGHABLE LOVES.
Thanks for those suggestions, Larry. I have a book by Calvino with that title (Why Read the Classics). He either printed the essay separately as a book, or took the essay and expanded on it.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace