Notes on Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino © Medha Patel-Schwarz, June 2008
The Structure of the novel
Calvino favored non-traditional, imaginative structures for his novels, and no two are precisely alike. Using The
Travels of Marco Polo as his point of departure, he created a model for Invisible Cities that alternates between
an ongoing dialogue (between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan) and short, jewel-like descriptions of imaginary
cities. The cities fall into eleven categories, and each category features five model cities; thus there are fifty-five
cities in all. The second through eighth chapters each have five cities that appear in a pattern whereby no two
categories are repeated, one category is removed, and one new one is added. This can be displayed graphically:
1. mem, mem, des, mem, des, sig, mem, des, sig, thi
2. mem, des, sig, thi, tra
3. des, sig, thi, tra, eye
4. sig, thi, tra, eye, nam
5. thi, tra, eye, nam, dea
6. tra, eye, nam, dea, sky
7. eye, nam, dea, sky, con
8. nam, dea, sky, con, hid
9. dea, sky, con, hid, sky, con, hid, con, hid, hid
As you can see, the first and ninth chapters are twice as long (ten cities each), and do not follow the rules of the
intermediate chapters. In order to set his pattern in motion (and wind it down at the end), Calvino had to create
first and final chapters that work, literally, as bookends, and which by necessity had to repeat cities of the
earliest and last categories.
Is the order of the city categories significant? It is seemingly arbitrary, but notice that the last category to appear
is “Hidden cities” which seems to be a lighthearted joke by Calvino. However, the dialogue between Polo and
Khan often mirrors the content of the cities in some fashion. The first half of the novel stresses the theme of
communication (esp. semiotics) which matches the many “Cities and signs.” The end of the novel introduces
new themes concerning the moral and amoral nature of civilization, and this is most often scene in the “Hidden
cities.”
Ultimately, what is important about Calvino’s structure for the novel is that it is arbitrary and infinitely
repeatable. The back-and-forth alternation between the dialogue and the descriptions of the cities creates a
meta-dialogue, or a dialectic a la Hegel. Furthermore, the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan would
say.
Fibonacci’s Sequence
The first chapter, and its inverse, the ninth chapter, summon to mind the Fibonacci sequence. Fibonacci was a
13th century Italian mathematician who died around the year 1250. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Marco Polo
was born c. 1254. Calvino’s novel is set (rather loosely) in the 13th century, so it would be appropriate for him to
subtly invoke Fibonacci. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which each number is the sum of the
two numbers that preceded it. Thus:
0 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 8 , 13 , 21 , 34 , 55 , etc . . .
Like the structure of Invisible Cities, the Fibonacci sequence can theoretically be carried out to infinity. More
importantly, it begins, seemingly from nowhere, with a repetition of one (as Invisible Cities begins with a
repetition of “Cities and desire”). Also, as the sequence progresses, any number divided by the number that
follows it will approximate the golden ratio more and more closely. If one is inclined to privilege the golden ratio
with mystical significance, then one could argue that Calvino invokes Fibonacci and the Hegelian Dialectic in
the structure of the novel, implying perhaps, that the understanding between Polo and Khan moves closer and
closer to perfection or true harmony with each passing cycle of dialogue/cities. The novel has no traditional
plot, and yet it seems to move towards a satisfying resolution in the end nonetheless.
Venice as Climax
While the book eschews a traditional Shakespearean plot arc, Calvino adds emphasis to the middle of the novel
via his introduction of Venice as a trope. Shakespeare placed the climax in the middle of a play (Act 3), and it
was the moment of greatest dramatic tension with regards to the play’s central conflict. Invisible Cities has no
conflict, per se, but as it is a meditation on the nature of cities and the civilization from which they spring, the
exact middle of the novel serves a fulcrum or place of equilibrium. Here the conversation between Polo and
Khan begins to shift subtly from pure imagination to a real city, Venice. The second half of the novel
increasingly reminds the reader of real-world urban problems; sometimes to harrowing effect.
Calvino marks the beginning of this fulcrum with a very short piece of dialogue at the end of chapter five.
Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not 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 the arch that
matters to me.”
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”
By drawing the readers attention to the metaphor of the arch, Calvino not only justifies his fragmentary
structure for the novel, composed as it is from little “stones,” but he also summons to mind the concept of the
keystone in the middle. This bit of dialogue, and the longer dialogue at the beginning of chapter six, marks the
middle of the novel. And it is at the beginning of chapter six that Kublai Khan confronts Marco Polo about the
subject of Venice.
“There is still one of which you never speak.”
Marco Polo bowed his head.
“Venice,” the Khan said.
Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”
The emperor did not turn a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.”
And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”
Like Polo and the Khan, the reader compares each city in the novel to his or her own Ur-city. And Polo illustrates
this point eloquently with the two cities that follow this dialogue and open chapter six, Esmeralda and Phyllis,
which are both cities of canals that closely resemble Venice.
The Theme of Desire and the Names of the Cities
All of the cities in Invisible Cities bear feminine names. This point is somewhat lost upon English readers since
our cities are neuter. However, for the traveler Marco Polo who misses his homeland and the comforts that
come with it, each city is female and the object of desire. The names are mostly exotic and occasionally hint at
the qualities of the city in some manner. So, for instance, the spider web city is Octavia. Invisible Cities is
fundamentally a dialogue between two men, and so the theme of desire in the novel is consistently a very male
desire in which woman are chased. This idea is explored quite literally in Cities and desire 5, Zobeide. This is the
city whose street plan is the result of the many dreaming men who chased an imaginary woman to the site of
Zobeide. But Calvino suggests that unbridled desire has resulted in “this ugly city, this trap.”
The Green Theme and the Continuous Cities
It is difficult to read Invisible Cities today without seeing the theme of environmentalism. This theme is most
evident in cities such as Leonia, Trude, and Procopia. First published in 1972, Invisible Cities demonstrates that
Calvino was already concerned with urban sprawl, overcrowding, and throw-away culture.
Continuous cities 1, Leonia, is a frightening indictment of the modern consumerist culture. Its inhabitants throw
away everything they use daily. The refuse is hygienically whisked away by angelic garbage men, but it piles up
outside the city in ever larger mounds. Calvino imagines a cataclysm that will destroy the city under an
avalanche of its own garbage, but, pessimistically, another neighboring garbage city will simply plow the ruins
of Leonia over to claim the land for its own garbage dump. Extending this logic, one could see the entire world
as being composed of cities that are continuously pushing their rings of garbage farther and farther out until
they butt up against the encircling garbage ring of neighboring cities. As I write this, a recent waste-disposal
crisis in Naples has added emphasis to Calvino’s critique.
Continuous cities 2, Trude, is a scathing attack on the sameness of our suburban world. Employing
anachronism artfully (as he does throughout the novel), Calvino presents a city that is identical to countless
other cities: “Only the name of the airport changes.” The truth of Trude can only have been magnified since
Calvino wrote the novel, as the same chain retailers and “big box” stores increasingly swallow up and rub out
signs of regional identity.
Continuous cities 3, Procopia, is a riff on overpopulation. As our narrator returns to the city each year, he finds
the population has grown exponentially. Carried to its logical conclusion in the final paragraph, the city has
become so densely populated that one can no longer move at all. Calvino describes the faces of Procopia’s
citizens as “round” and “flat,” so it is easy to read this as a commentary on the Far East. Regardless, the comic
ending of his description of Procopia is no laughing matter: the real world cannot sustain the exponential
population growth that Calvino describes here so easily.
The Final Message
The ultimate city in the novel, Berenice (Hidden cities 5), expands more explicitly upon the Hegel-inspired
interplay of the just and unjust. Berenice, like an onion, contains layers within layers of alternating micro-cities,
oscillating between the just and unjust. Calvino’s message is optimistic here: even in a world of evil there is the
germ of a better society that can be nurtured and grown from within. However, the opposite is true too, and an
ethical citizen must be ever vigilant and on the lookout for the seed of the unjust.
While the entire novel up until the final pages (blessedly) avoids preachy judgments and instead only hints slyly
at the positive and negative aspects of our cities, the final snippet of dialogue between Polo and Khan is more
direct. After contemplating the Great Khan’s atlas that includes every imaginary city of fiction (Calvino reveals
the breadth of his own literary connoisseurship: Utopia, Brave New World), Polo pessimistically states that we
are already living in an unjust world, an “inferno.” Of course inferno is more laden with meaning for the Italian
reader than the English one since Dante’s Divine Comedy is the foundation of Italian literature. Whether or not
the reader appreciates the allusion, Polo suggests two methods for escaping the inferno (Virgil and Beatrice
being unavailable):
“The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The
second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what,
in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
Polo provides an apt argument for reading Invisible Cities: it is certainly not part of the inferno – and long may it
endure. The novel is astounding for the potency of its prose-poetic magic and for the universal and timeless
themes it contains.
All of the quotations are from William Weaver’s excellent translation, © 1974 by Harcourt, Inc.
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