Calvino Homework

Assignment 1: Calvino’s Invisible Cities

1) Diomiria
a. “he feels envy toward those who now believe the have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time”
b. People just going about their daily routine, and others thinking back on it and feeling nostalgic.
2) Isodora
a. “where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third.”
b. The ideal city but not in time
3) Dorothea
a. “this path is only one of the man that opened before me that morning in Dorothea”
b. Many possibilities
4) Zaira
a. “As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands”
b. Contains both past and present memories
5) Anastasia
a. “You believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave”
b. The city is your master, not vice versa
6) Tamara
a. “The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things”
b. There are so many signs that mean other things you leave with out knowing what they mean
7) Zora
a. “The city which cannon be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honey comb in whose cell each of us can place the things he wants to remember”
b. Cities which are designed to be easily memorable never change and thus fall into a lull and lose their importance
8) Despina
a. “A border city between two deserts”
b. In our eyes, the city becomes what you most desire
9) Zirma
a. “The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind”
b. The city only exists in consistency
10) Isaura
a. “A city that moves entirely upward”
b. Everything depends on perspective
11) Maurilia
a. “He must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits”
b. A city, when changed significantly, becomes a different city entirely
12) Fedora
a. “The one that contains what is acceptable as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later, it possible no longer.”
b. Possibilities for thinking of what a city would be become something else before it could be completed
13) Zoe
a. “Zoe is the place of indivisible existence”
b. What does it mean for a city to exist?
14) Zenobia
a. “It makes not sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it”
b. Cities continue to follow tradition though it may no longer continue to be logical
15) Euphemia
a. “on your return from Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at ever solstice and at every equinox”
b. Memories gradually change as you tell the story about them
16) Zobeide
a. “They tell this dream of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream”
b. People begin cities because of an ideal dream but it often never becomes reality
17) Hypatia
a. “There is no language without deceit”
b. Cities are often idealized
18) Armilla
a. “Armilla cannot be called deserted”
b. Things are not always what they seem
19) Chloe
a. “If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop”
b. People don’t act because of the consequences that might be created but because of this they fail to live
20) Valdrada
a. “inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror image, which possesses that special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness”
b. You are always being watched and need to be mindful
21) Olivia
a. “Falsehood is never in words; it is in things”
b. Words describe things accurately, but the things themselves can be misleading
22) Sophronia
a. “it must wait before the caravan returns and a complete life can begin again”
b. The city is only partially whole half of the year
23) Eutropia
a. “they open alternate mouths in identical yawns”
b. Continuous cycle
24) Zemrude
a. “You cannot say that one aspect of the city is truer than the other”
b. Your perspective determines how much you get out of the city
25) Aglaura
a. “The city that they speak of has much of what is needed to exist, whereas the city that exists on its site, exists less’
b. Description doesn’t necessarily follow what the city actually is like, but it is so often changing that the description is the only thing that you can count on
26) Octavia
a. “They know the net will last only so long”
b. Cities have a limited life
27) Ersilia
a. “Spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form”
b. If things become too complex then they can no longer function
28) Baucis
a. “that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence”
b. There could be many reasons for many actions
29) Leandra
a. “But that does not mean they only live in memories”
b. People always believe things could be better
30) Melania
a. “Melina’s population renews itself”
b. Continuous cycle
31) Esmeralda
a. “all these routes, solid and liquid, evident and hidden”
b. There are many more ways than roads, to get around a city
32) Phyllis
a. “Phyllis is a space in which routes are drawn between points suspended in the void”
b. You lose the charm of the city if you live there
33) Pyrrha
a. “the name means this and could mean nothing like this”
b. Defining a city by name creates constraints
34) Adelma
a. “You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known the dead outnumber the living”
b. When you look to others that you don’t recognize, you see people that you’ve known and so do they – searching for recognition
35) Eudoxia
a. “the other is an approximate reflection, like every human creation”
b. You can see meaning in an entire lack of meaning if you stare hard enough
36) Moriana
a. “it consists only of a face and obverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure on one side, which can neither be separated nor look at each other”
b. Cities have a pretty pleasant face, and a broken down poor face
37) Clarice
a. “they grabbed everything that could be taken from where it was and put to a different use”
b. Cities become different cities with no connecting
38) Eusapia
a. “in twin cities there is no longer a way of knowing who is alive and who is dead”
b. If everything is the same, there can be no way to see a difference
39) Beersheba
a. “A city which, only when it shits, is not miserly, calculating, greedy”
b. When you are so obsessed with perfection than you become empty
40) Leonia
a. “the more Leonia expels goods, the more it accumulates them”
b. Many are just focused on having new objects rather than sensibly repairing the old which is practical
41) Irene
a. “Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes”
b. Your first perception of the city could be entirely different than what the city actually is like and is a entirely different city itself
42) Argia
a. “it has earth instead of air”
b. An imagined city
43) Thekla
a. “”there is the blueprint”, they say”
b. Continuous construction without having an original product leads to nothing
44) Trude
a. “I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off”
b. Cities really are, in essence, the same
45) Olinda
a. “and within the innermost circle they are already blossoming”
b. Cities are constantly changing and renewing themselves
46) Laudomia
a. “for different cities that could have been there and were not, or reasons that tare incomplete contradictory, disappointing”
b. Limited overabundance
47) Perinthia
a. “the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters”
b. Atheism
48) Procopia
a. “even the sky has disappeared. I might as well leave the window”
b. Spirits
49) Raissa
a. “every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence”
b. Being thankful
50) Andria
a. “only city I know where it is best to remain motionless in time”
b. Interconnectedness
51) Cecelia
a. “Cecelia is everywhere”
b. Similarities
52) Marozia
a. “You will see a crack open and a different city appear”
b. Possibilities are everywhere
53) Penthesilea
a. “a soupy city diluted in the plain”
b. Interconnectedness
54) Theodora
a. “the exclusive image of human city that still distinguishes it”
b. By attempting to thwart nature, it comes back stronger and more powerful
55) Bernice
a. “this seed ferments in bitterness, rivalry, resentment”
b. Infinite possibilities
Question Paragraph:

The narrator in Calvino’s work is Marco Polo. Marco Polo was Venetian, which is why Venice is such a significant part of the story. Historically, Marco Polo was known as a notorious traveler, which is why the author chose to use him as the ideal narrator. Marco Polo is ideally suited to narrate this story and is a believable character. Marco Polo decides to change his perspective as narrator several times during his story telling. At points his perspective is first person, at other times it is third person omnipotent. I believe Marco Polo chooses this narration style because at certain points it makes a more powerful statement.