City: a large town.
I have always respected the extraordinary. All those topics about dreams and dimensions amuse me. The way Italo Calvino portrays this topic, seems a little obscure. It is all so controversial and confusing, because Calvino himself is playing with our minds like Marco Polo is with Kublai Khan. "With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear." (P. 44) When Khan refutes to Polo about these cities he is coming up with, Polo comes up with this sentence. I don't know about you, but to me that's a little bit of inverse psychology.
Invisible Cities. Cities that are invisible. How? Is that even possible? We have clear that it is all an allegory. But, to what? There are many clues Calvino has given us to build up an understanding as we read the book. He uses short descriptive sentences. He will never dare to generalize, as he just talks about specific moments or events. Also, he writes about these cities like they were people, or dreams that can take over you extremely easily.
The main thing that sticks in my mind as I read, is how cleverly Calvino uses psychology. We see ourselves involved in something that doesn't correspond to us, but it does at the same time. He is fooling us all, expecting the reader to understand what this whole allegory is about. He got us inside a world where anything can happen, but we are absolutely unaware. And mostly, we are unaware we are involved.
Let's not forget his chapter order. Why would an author take his time to provide the reader with two ways of reading a book? Could it be two vantage points? What has me going mad, is the fact that I can understand literally every word. But why would he say it? Why in that way? The thing is, it is so abstract, that as much as I dig for a figurative reason, I. Won't. Find. It.
I keep thinking it's some sort of paradox.
