Senses, Connections, and Thekla

In response to Carolyn’s question about why each of the subsections (groups of cities) of the book contains five parts, I was thinking that this could relate to the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) or the five elements of the Earth. Despite the fact that the organization of the book seems asymmetrical and random, Italo Calvino’s decision to have each subsection contain the same number of chapters leads to an organized, aesthetic structure by the end of the book. The choice to have five sections (as opposed to any other number) could well represent the use of the five senses or the elements of the Earth. Within Invisible Cities, there is at least one detail contingent upon each of the five senses. Perhaps, Calvino is writing this book in an effort to praise and “champion” the power of the five senses. Only with the use of all five of our senses are we able to truly connect with and appreciate the plethora of diverse images Calvino presents in his cities. Calvino invites each of us to take what we want from the encounters of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. As Marco Polo states: “It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear” (135). Essentially, Calvino tells the reading audience that they are in control of what they read and can interpret it in any way possible; readers can choose to accept all of what Calvino is saying, some of it, or none of it all.

Besides my traditional Catcher in the Rye reference (fields of rye are mentioned on pg. 152), several of the ideas featured in Invisible Cities connect to other books we have read. Due to the fact that all the cities Marco Polo describes in the book are really the same city, Calvino creates a strong feeling of inter-connectedness in humanity, time, and nature. This feeling is especially evident when Polo tells Kublai Khan: “Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances” (137). This concept of everything being related is similar to the sense of inter-connectedness that Walt Whitman creates in his poems. Also, the constant confusion over whether the conversations and stories exchanged between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan are real or imaginative (as well as whether they are talking to one another or communicating via other means) reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern incessantly wondering if their experiences were really occurring or not in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead that we read in Mrs. Kasprak’s class. Furthermore, Kublai Khan telling Marco Polo that the “current is drawing us” (165), on the last page of Invisible Cities, reminded me of the famous last line of The Great Gatsby that reads: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180).

Lastly, I would just like to mention a detail from the city of Thekla that I found particularly intriguing. Thekla is one of the few cities where Marco Polo informs Kublai Khan of destruction and degradation. Marco Polo reports that the residents of Thekla justify the slow construction of the city by explaining "that its destruction cannot begin” (127). This belief that not building a city can delay its destruction fascinated me; also, it appears as though the inhabitants of Thekla are afraid that destruction will continue beyond their city once Thekla begins to fall.