Each city is imagined and each city is conceptual.

Invisible Cities continuously calls the reader’s attention to the destructive effects of time and the uncertainty of the future for the empire the Khan rules.

Calvino doesn’t reject the traditional approach of storytelling in terms of escalating conflict and surprise, but he has written them nontraditionally which helps to bring this already animated book to life. Polo’s accounts of the different cities are organized in to nine separate sections. But, Invisible Cities does have a clear and organized layout. It is unlike your average novel with a conflict, climax, and resolution. For example, he talks about the city of Isidora, “A city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors.” In the city of Isidora, “desires are already memories.” (8) Although Calvino doesn’t describe the contents or the architecture of the city, his description of the city leaves the reader with a clear picture in their head of what Isidora truly is like.Īt first, it’s a little difficult for the reader to sense the pattern of the story. Marco Polo says “it is not the voice that commands the story it is the ear” (135).Ĭalvino uses language to create pictures in the reader’s head of the most amazing detailed places without actually managing to describe the place itself.

Marco polo invisible cities