To amend this, listen to PoloРІР‚в„ўs observation, РІР‚Сљit is not the voice that commands the story it is the ear.Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant., 'Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.' So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. Within the cohesive empire, the utopian ideal of the cities remains unachieved - whether aimed through the ontological set-up of PlatoРІР‚в„ўs Ideal City in The Republic, or down the centuries, when Calvino sat to write about the cities, which could not be validated. KhanРІР‚в„ўs aspiration to systematically bracket PoloРІР‚в„ўs accounts echoes the political realities. At every step, Polo defeats the purpose of the frames and questions its boundaries that refrain him from putting the blocks together. To have a better understanding of PoloРІР‚в„ўs narration, Khan deploys - chessboard and atlas - as the predetermined tools to lend a structure to PoloРІР‚в„ўs commentary. Inevitably, it barred me from reading the book under the lens of political empire and sovereign logics. Under the current context, while rereading the text, I was taken by surprise that in the past, I had been caught within the poetic-philosophy framework of the cities.

Largely, the textРІР‚в„ўs liminal position between modern and postmodern forms catches the attention of the readers and critic alike. Even the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge has dedicated a long poem Kubla Khan to the РІР‚Вslight dispositionРІР‚в„ў of the emperor of the Tartars who ruled as far as the regions of current day EuroAsia.Р”В®arly sailing ship for voyages of discovery Image Credit: Courtesy of Creative Commons Even if the cities documented in the book are as fantastical as the Be'er Sheva, the travel accounts of the real-time Italian explorer Marco Polo and Kublai KhanРІР‚в„ўs court were made popular in the 13th century Italian Renaissance with a travelogue The Travels of Marco Polo written down by Rustichello da Pisa and Polo. The second part holds true for this book - with less than 150 pages it would force you to take long pauses before turning a page and often even moving to the next paragraph to understand the meaning of the unsaid РІР‚Вbetween the linesРІР‚в„ў. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their. If the cover of the book does not affirm the quality of the book, then the number of pages is nowhere the yardstick to measure the intensity of the read. by Italo Calvino, (Translator) William Weaver. My first encounter of the bond between these two countries came with the two protagonists - Venetian traveller Marco Polo and the Tartars emperor Kublai Khan - of Italo CalvinoРІР‚в„ўs Invisible Cities, published in 1972.

Book cover of Invisible Cities Image Credit: Courtesy of the author

Italo calvino invisible cities