In the book “Invisible cities”, Italo Calvino described 55 different cities from Marco polo’s memory. Towards the end of the story, the fifty-five cities made me more and more troubled, as if they were just a city of different character. Marco polo visited Kublai Khan when he was 21 years old at 1,275 A.D. In 1279 the Yuan Dynasty unified the whole China to establish the seventh Chinese Dynasty. Western countries have send numerous messengers to meet with Kublai Khan, but Khan only put Marco Polo into Yuan’s historical records. I think Kublai is atractive by Marco Polo’s cities because he is providing a clue to Kublai himself to fantasize his dream city. And each city in the story display like one of Marco Polo’s dream, and he only remembered
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The pattern how Calvino made different cities link to another. “Invisible Cities” was made of two twisting parts. One of them is the conversation between Khan and Marco Polo, and the other part is the describetion of cities. Each series in the book is like a folder, and Calvino just intermittently describes all kinds of cities he thinks of. The angry cities, and the happy cities, and whenever a folder is full, he will tear the content apart and rebuild a new city. But when writing a new city, he will add a new theme in it, and then neatly write down the extension of this series. The composition of the text slowly turn into like a man building walls, each piece of brick is not piled on top of another brick but two, through two fulcrum to help a new fulcrum, continue to advance to form a wall. So that each city is connected with another city, as if the book describes the two streets of a city, a street filled with the elderly, enjoy their afternoon tea, and another street leading to the next one to go to the city. If to use letters to repersent topic, and numbers to repersent sections, a1 stands for city and memories #1, then the fitst chapter’s title would be a1a2, b1a3b2, c1a4b3c2. Every other city has something to do with the previous one, and that is where I think Calvino is building each city based on just one city that he is trying to argued. Marco Polo remindes Kublai that the story is rely on his own ideas to develop, Marco Polo only provide the clues for him to imagine the pictures, which is like what Calvino do to us the reader, they only put the bottom brick for the wall, and leave the imagination down to the story. The spider web city Octavia, the city on stilts Baucis, the mirror city, they all some how link to other. Calvino build up a story line that bound with every piece of Marco Polo’s story, insert a new argument between every stable statement to make a new
The pattern how Calvino made different cities link to another. “Invisible Cities” was made of two twisting parts. One of them is the conversation between Khan and Marco Polo, and the other part is the describetion of cities. Each series in the book is like a folder, and Calvino just intermittently describes all kinds of cities he thinks of. The angry cities, and the happy cities, and whenever a folder is full, he will tear the content apart and rebuild a new city. But when writing a new city, he will add a new theme in it, and then neatly write down the extension of this series. The composition of the text slowly turn into like a man building walls, each piece of brick is not piled on top of another brick but two, through two fulcrum to help a new fulcrum, continue to advance to form a wall. So that each city is connected with another city, as if the book describes the two streets of a city, a street filled with the elderly, enjoy their afternoon tea, and another street leading to the next one to go to the city. If to use letters to repersent topic, and numbers to repersent sections, a1 stands for city and memories #1, then the fitst chapter’s title would be a1a2, b1a3b2, c1a4b3c2. Every other city has something to do with the previous one, and that is where I think Calvino is building each city based on just one city that he is trying to argued. Marco Polo remindes Kublai that the story is rely on his own ideas to develop, Marco Polo only provide the clues for him to imagine the pictures, which is like what Calvino do to us the reader, they only put the bottom brick for the wall, and leave the imagination down to the story. The spider web city Octavia, the city on stilts Baucis, the mirror city, they all some how link to other. Calvino build up a story line that bound with every piece of Marco Polo’s story, insert a new argument between every stable statement to make a new