Reflections and Reflections

The Great Khan stops sending Marco Polo on missions, and now the two listen to each other as the merchant develops new cities through chess pieces. Marco Polo adeptly teaches the conqueror details are essential and that only by looking at wood many things may be learned. In one occasion, Marco Polo quickly identifies traces in the wood used for the chessboard as indications of severe winters or droughts. He also finds the techniques used to cut the trees down, with these observations Kublai Khan slowly learns the importance of details. A value many of us do not appreciate correctly.

            One day, after many games were played Kublai states he lost the purpose of the game and could no longer understand why they still played them. Through this games he arrived to what he calls “the definitive conquest”, this conclusion argued his “empire’s multiform treasures were only illusory envelopes…nothingness” (123). Kublai has come to accept the fact that knowledge is above any material possession. That the richness he holds as the Khan of the largest empire at the time, is not within the treasures he receives from ambassadors, but at the details of each new place. Additionally, he seems to understand Kings and Empires would come and go, and just like in chess when a King falls nothing remains. That is what his Empire is: nothingness.

            As the end approaches Marco Polo declares a very important truth: “It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear” (135). Meaning that, it is not the person who tells the story who controls it, but the individual hearing it, since he is the one who interprets it and learns it through his own perspective. Humans tend to neglect the truth they hear for their personal convenience; as a result a story that may originate from the same source may have dozens of different sides to it. Ideally, details should be kept intact, so that way the truth does so as well. Which leads Marco Polo to declare it is does differences that enable someone to entirely comprehend a city and hence life itself. It is “that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name” that ensure one has gotten the true meaning of a place (137). Moreover, this quality allows the atlas to predict the form of future cities and its successors, like New Amsterdam that will later become New York and shapeless cities like Kyoto-Osaka, also find their place in the atlas.

            In the final pages the merchant and the conqueror discuss their final question, what to do next? Marco Polo wants to create the perfect city through recompilations of other ones until equilibrium is attained. However, Kublai Khan wanders if they are all going to hell, since that seems to be the way they are getting to: “the infernal city” (165). But Marco Polo tells him that there can only be one inferno for the living, “the inferno where we live in”, an inferno that seems inescapable to most (165). For most live a life of complacency and embrace the hell they dwell. Others, very few and who work very hard not to be part of hell, are the ones who must “endure and be given space”, these are not part of the inferno and face very difficult tasks not to be so (165).  

Wait, What?

As the story develops the talks become more intriguing and ambiguous. It seems as if the two men never existed and they not only talk of cities that resemble only one: Venice, but also how their whole discussions cannot be true. Calvino slowly provides the reader with constant conversations where the conqueror and the merchant doubt everything they’ve discussed and how their whole existence is but a mere illusion. Marco Polo evaluates the impossibility of his feats as Kublai Khan tells him its not possible for one man to have traveled so much. Marco Polo replies “everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space…when I concentrate and reflect I find myself in this garden” basically not only has he dreamed every single visit, but he made them up based on one city (103). At this point nothing that has occurred actually makes sense, and I feel irritated by how poor did Marco Polo back up his stories. These even state that their “garden of thought” only exists in their minds and that each never stopped “from raising dust on the fields of battle; and I, from bargaining for sacks of pepper in distant bazaars” (103). The conversations have deteriorated to such a state both talkers hallucinate about their state of none reality. Further on Kublai Khan states: “we have proved that if we were here, we would not be”, Calvino has narrated many dubious events, but how does this conflictive conclusion helps the reader understand the book’s theme I do not know (118). I can only hope to read on and find more facts.

Dreams on Cities on Dreams

Once one understands the origins of all the cities, little by little I could decipher the magic behind each. The invisible cities Marco Polo describes depict a dream or some sort of fantastical location that could only be found in someone’s imagination.  For instance, the city of Zobeide was founded upon a dream. All the men who come do so because they all dreamed the same thing. Who has not dreamed of a place which reunites people that have suffered similar occurrences, and then shape the city according to what they share in common. Since a lady escaped their grasp in the dream they built “an ugly city, a trap”, so that whenever the girl will appear she will have nowhere to go (46). Zobeide shows how significant dreams are to our reality and how influential they may become if everyone shares them. Zobeide develops, grows, and lives because of a dream some men had in common.

            Hypatia is a city where the meaning of words was mixed and hence its purposes as well. Marco Polo narrates how he was trapped by the common meaning of words and could not find the proper signs to meet his desires. Although desires are what he searches for, the city falls into the category of signs and cities, since the signs are what leads him to what he wants. He seems to be lost until a philosopher states “sings form a language, but not the one you think you know”, that Marco Polo realizes he must “free himself from the images…in the past” only that way he would understand the images in Hypatia (48). This city reflects the mixture of language and its meanings. Perhaps, either Kublai Khan or Marco Polo dreamed of a place where everything was not what it appeared to be. This city plays with reality and how signs may completely deviate one from its objective if not interpreted correctly. Something I like to do, picturing what would happen if bathroom meant auditorium instead of bathroom.

            The city of Armilla follows a more mythical environment where nothing ordinary exits but “water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be” (49). This city was not designed for humans but for nymphs who “in the morning you hear them singing”, happy because of the watery gifts the architects of Armilla gave them. Just like the previous cities either the Venetian or the conqueror imagined themselves visiting a city not inhabited by humanity, but by a different species and therefore Armilla was created. Yet, out of all the other cities mentioned above, this one was the one that helped me the most understand how Calvino forms each one. For very few people would deny Armilla’s magnificence and the incredibly relationship its citizens share with it. It all seems as if were part of a dream.

            At first, I was very confused with the way Calvino presents his cities, however it was a matter of using a more symbolical perspective to understand the city’s themes. Using my own dreams helped me connect the dots when figuring out how cities like Armillam Hypatia and Zobeide came to be. 

A Talk with No Words

            Marco Polo’s descriptions and private talks with Kublai Khan are but creations of his mind. Each of them develop their ideas throughout dreams and pondering what will the other or himself think if he were asked a certain question. Calvino’s complex creation is exposed in chapter two while “Marco Polo could explain or imagine explaining or be imagined explaining or succeed finally in explaining to himself”, it seems every response or description somehow originates from the mind and stays within it (28). This sentence explains how very different the memoirs written in this book are, since both men form them through their imagination. They even “imagine themselves being interrupted” for the sake of the conversation.  At first, I found this relationship quite absurd, since it implied all descriptions originated in some kind of made up discussion. However, as I read on I understood the purpose of each of the cities. In one of the imaginary talks Marco Polo declares “cities like dreams, are made of desires and fears” and “everything imaginable can be dreamed” (44). So apparently what these two men have been doing is sharing their long forgotten dreams or they most covered up fears through the creation of sometimes imaginary conversations and most importantly the cities they envision in them. These truths explain the existence of cities such as Fedora where all its alternative existences are replicated in small crystal balls. Who would not like to see the future version of the city he lives in recorded in a crystal ball forever to be admired, these types of cities represent the dreams these two great men have created in theirs travels. Additionally, Marco Polo argues that the beauty of a city is not its wonders but the “answers it gives” or the “questions it asks” (44). Marco Polo slowly teaches the Great Khan to appreciate a city not by its physical aspects, but by the emotional reactions it creates, that is a city’s inner purpose.

            

             Moreover, if it were not enough with having imaginary conversations based on somewhat fictitious cities Calvino makes these talks wordless. Even when the venetian merchant learns the Tartars languages, he only gives the Khan “the fundamental information” in words, while transmitting everything else through “objects…gestures, leaps, cries… or animal sounds” (39). It would not make sense to have this envoy as the only source of intelligence regarding a certain area, but the inaccuracy of the messages was what the Khan loved about them. The Khan later explains one “could wander through them in though, become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off”: the ambiguousness of Marco Polo’s cities allows them to travel the past, and their lost futures (38).   

A conqueror, a merchant and some other cities

Invisible cities are the distinct stories a stranger brings to a great conqueror who knows nothing about his empire. Apparently, he has grown fond of this man who seems to capture the essence of each of the cities he visits. Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant, breaks each city in rather symbolic ways where a city may be “a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember” or where “gods live in buckets that rise” (15)(20). Accompanied by the descriptions, complications are also numbered. On the first, since everything is used to successfully remember everything the city has “disappeared”. Because it needed to stay the same so it could be remembered, Zora, the city that reminds you of everything was forgotten. How ironic is that. Additionally, Marco Polo tells of a city that when you get on a camel it reminds of a boat, and when you get on a boat it reminds you of a camel. Here, he portrays the contrasting perspectives visitors may have regarding the same city. Each of them desired the opposite. Each “see Despina, a border city between two deserts” may it be water or sand you travel, you will desire what the other brings. Clearly, he wants to redefine the concept of what a city truly is through a number of categories. The city falls into one category based on the reactions it evokes on the traveler or the most quintessential characteristics it holds. For instance, Calvino defines Zirma as a city of repeated signs, so that at least one will create an impact. He then concludes “memory is redundant” because it repeats the city signs so that the city truly exists (19). Just as the previous descriptions of cities, Zirma forces Calvino to expose a paradoxical truth where “the city is redundant”, because it repeats itself to be remembered (19). These remarks make no sense, but that is the purpose: force the reader to evaluate the complexity of cities and the different relations we share with them. Since one man may view the same sign over and over in the city, while another might simply be seeing the same sign over and over again in his mind.

Marco Polo’s descriptions of the cities are immensely varied and not very straightforward. However he always ends with some solid insight regarding the nature of the city or the most probable reaction it will bring on its visitors. Calvino demands a lot of thinking from his reader, although I have not truly made a conclusion about the descriptions he makes. I will dare say he wants the reader to understand the impact engineering has on the human mind and how the human mind plays with the surroundings as well.

            Marco Polo’s relation to The Great Khan is no less complicated. His descriptions are transmitted through physical movements or animal sounds, for he does not speak Tartar. Yet, Marco Polo became his favorite ambassador, he illustrates cities in ways his other diplomats had never tried to. Where the others saw “famine, extortion, conspiracies…” Marco Polo portrays “the gaze of a man meditating, lost in thought” (27). He argues that even if the Khan rides through all of his empire, if he keeps the orthodox mind of an ambassador he will only see the same things. Marco Polo thinks he comprehends the origins and functions of cities. On the other hand, The Great Khan seems lost in the insurmountable territory his controls. He truly wishes to understand it, but he knows it might be impossible to do so. Calvino takes us into the mind of a traveler discussing with a conqueror, who seeks the knowledge to correctly control his empire.