Madeleines From Reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Indescribably Delicious
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities can be, in fact, accurately characterized as a package filled with especially luscious, especially rich madeleines.
Although the book is structured with a frame story (Marco Polo relating his poetic descriptions of cities he has visited to Kublai Khan as both take their ease in the Imperial Gardens), the vignettes of the cities are isolated exercises in surrealistic imagery that seem randomly arranged.
The prose is glorious.
You may just have to trust me on this one, because I’m not sure I can convince you with my own literary efforts. Let me explain with an example of yet another episode when I was at a loss for words. When I first visited fancy-schmancy restaurants that not only qualified as hip and trendy but also employed surpassingly skilled chefs, I encountered dishes that were delicious and intensely flavorful yet indescribable. Tastes, textures, and appearances had been deconstructed, reprocessed, and rebuilt in new variations that required experience and a special glossary to limn.
And so it is with the servings offered in Invisible Cities. Every paragraph is a joyous read but that joy is all but impossible to delineate.
To extend this already tenuous metaphor, I can, however, share a bit of this entrée, which is way better than reading about it.
Isidora
Any of the 55 cities described would be a treat, but Isidora is one of my favorites. One warning: this is definitely not fast food. Take time to savor this delectable bite from Invisible Cities.
When a man rides a long time through wild regions, he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to 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. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man: he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.
OK, that worked - I’d like to read more. I’ve seldom encountered sentences that manage to evoke so much in the space of a paragraph (or more likely to make this sentence feel, comparatively speaking, like a galumphing camel). Thanks :-). Just in time, too. This evening will find me passing the time in a book store while my kids take in a movie. I’d rather buy a book than a ticket.
Comment by MindSpin — May 4, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
For what it’s worth, the nearly universal recommendation is not to begin with Invisible Cities but to start instead with Italo’s Cosmicomics or If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler. I, of course, read Invisible Cities first; I, of course, now recommend reading Cosmicomics or If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler first.
Comment by DrHGuy — May 4, 2007 @ 3:28 pm