m_cable

Sorry, I haven't actually read the book. I heard that quote a few years ago and it has always stuck with me. I've puzzled over the interpretation of the line a few times, and regardless of what it actually means, I find it to be a profound lesson into the act of dealing with the stress and chaos of everyday life. It also has a wonderfully exotic non-standard diction and format that you find sometimes in translated texts.

I do know that there are some people on this board that HAVE read the book, and mentioned as such to me. Hopefully some of those posters will swing by and give you their impressions of the book.

 

I've read "If on a winter's night a traveler," I think I need to read that again because just now thinking about it, I'm struggling to remember what it was about.

 

I've read the book in Italian and English. It's one of my favorites, and definitely worth the read. I dig Calvino.

A major narrative strand in "Invisible Cities" is about the conflict between modern and post-modern worldviews: Marco Polo represents post-modernism, and Genghis Khan represents modernism. Calvino intended this comparison when he wrote the story.

Khan wants an entire picture of his kingdom - so he can "own" it. He's essentially searching for a complete and accurate picture of the world. Marco Polo simply frustrates him - Polo is emblematic of the impossibility of accuracy in language, or at least the impossibility of language to accurately reflect experience (notice how Khan's translators are represented in the book).

One of my favorite quotes from the book:

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks.
"The bridge is not supported by one stone or another," Marco answers,
"but by the line of the arch that they form."
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting.
Then he adds: "Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch
that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."


It's an embodiment of the conflict between wanting to have the world completely figured out so one can rest and no longer feel the need to unriddle the universe, versus the idea that it's truly impossible to completely understand the world.

The quote in m_cable's sig, and what immediately follows in the book ,I think, is what Calvino suggests is the best way - a compromise between the need to "rest" in one's examination of the world and the oppsosite idea that the reality of the world can never be fully understood. The "rope" over the abyss is the compromise between being certain (but wrong) about the nature of life against giving up completely and adopting a philosophy of futility of ever understanding anything about life. The "inferno" is a complete (and completely incorrect) view of the universe, while that which is "not inferno" is anything that contradicts the incorrect view of the universe - Calvino's saying that one can have a view of the world, but one should not stifle or ignore those things that conflict with that particular view, because precisely those things that conflict with one's perfect worldview may be the foundation of a different, and possibly more real, view of life.

That's how I understood it, anyway.

P.S. I just farted.

 

I can't believe that I almost made a similar joke in my post. The "crude referance coming out of nowhere and breaking the tone of a serious and academic message" joke. And I'm being completely serious. It's spooky.

I guess it's true what they say, "Great Minds. . .























fart at the same time."

 

This is the sort of thing that happens when you give white trash a library card.



Calvino has written a lot of great stuff, but "Invisible Cities" is definitely my favorite.