Invisible Cities

'Invisible Cities' is the title of a book by Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Cuban-born fabulist author and journalist who spent a considerable part of his adult life residing in San Remo, Italy. The book consists of a series of dream-like tales told by the youthful Venetian traveler Marco Polo to the elderly Tartar ruler Kublai Khan in the latter's garden. These are tales of twilight; evening stories, told to an emperor in his declining years, and uncertain that his empire will outlast him.

Something of the setting and tone of the tales is indicated by this passage, in the author's voice, between the first and second group of Polo's tales. "(T)he emperor is he who is foreign to his subjects, and only through foreign eyes and ears could the empire manifest its existence to Kublai. In languages incomprehensible to the Khan, the envoys related information heard in languages incomprehensible to them: from this dense, opaque stridor emerged the revenues received by the imperial treasury, the first and last names of officials dismissed and decapitated, the dimensions of the narrow canals that the narrow rivers fed in times of drought. But when the young Venetian made his report, a different communication was established between him and the emperor. Newly arrived and totally ignorant of the Levantine languages, Marco Polo could express himself only with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and of horror, animal barkings and hootings, or with objects he took from his knapsack - ostrich plumes, peashooters, quartzes which he arranged in front of him like chessmen." (p. 21)

Language, meaning and understanding are clearly important themes in Invisible Cities. The tales were first written in Italian. An additional dimension of language and interpretation is added for all non-Italian readers. For English language readers, the tales have been translated by William Weaver.

In the author's voice between settings three and four we learn that the Khan himself has dreamt of a city which he describes to Polo.