"The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there…" (Calvino, 28). The past is always changing as one experiences new places, becoming more accurate and clear to us. However, the future and the past are always just illusions, transient and unstable. (Calvino 27).Ĭalvino mocks ambitions by showing that journeys take place solely in the future and the past. For Marco, this quality makes the common man enjoying the cool breeze enviable, while making the Khan, who is speculating on foreign threats, pitiable. The only meaningful difference between individuals is in one's capacity to enjoy the present moment. In each place, humans will be saddled with ambitions as well as fears. The reason that life does change much from moment to moment is because humans do not change much from place to place. Marco advises Kublai that he "would do as well never moving from here." (Calvino 27). At the footsteps of Kublai's palace, as at the doorsteps of that distant resident's house, life consisted of men sitting in front of their homes enjoying a slight breeze. TOPIC: Essay on Calvino's Invisible Cities Is a AssignmentMarco's description was meant to point Kublai back to the present moment by showing him that life did not change much from place to place. Marco is teaching Kublai that life in their current location consisted of the same experiences as life in that distant location that Kublai desired to know so much about. We are seated on the steps of your palace. What is the use, then, of all your traveling?" To this question, Marco replies that "It is evening. Kublai asks Marco why he chooses to report such mundane details of these fascinating cities: ".you can only tell me thoughts that come to a man who sits on his doorstep at evening to enjoy the cool air. Paper NOW! ⬇️ Through his descriptions of the mundane happenings in each city, Calvino aims to teach us about the joy available in the present moment in our present location. This sense of lack renders us unable to be happy with where we are at. This restlessness is reflection of the human mind's incessant anxiety, borne out of a deep sense of lack. Our journeys and our travels themselves come from restlessness, which we disguise as curiosity or ambition. On a deeper level, Calvino's descriptions point us to the importance of the present moment, as that is all we ever have and all we ever need. Lessons Derived from Calvino's Paradoxical Descriptions of the City Calvino believes that a city's past can only be discerned by the records of human usage of its material structures, the "…scratches, indentations, and scrolls," as he put it. Conversely, he is saying that one can know nothing of a city without knowing of the human habitation of that city: "The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps.every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls." (Calvino 10). Calvino points to specific locations and physical infrastructure, such as the bastions and ports, as the shapers of human behavior. Calvino conceives of a symbiosis between the city's inhabitants and the city's settings, the symbiosis between the perceiver and that which is perceived.
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