Invisible Cities

Part 5 Introduction

Khan conjectures that it is better for an empire to “grow within itself” rather than merely from the outside and thus be abundant and flourishing rather than impoverished (65). He contemplates an empire with cities bursting with civilization and dreams of a city with “slender pinnacles, made in such a way that the moon in her journey can rest now on one” (66). Polo names the city of Khan’s dreams as Lalage and says that the pinnacles are so positioned to enable the moon to allow the city to grow eternally. Khan remarks that this growth is happening in lightness.

“Thin Cities 5”

Octavia is “the spider-web city,” a settlement made of threads over a void between two mountains (67). The inhabitants are less insecure than people of other cities because they know that they have limited time; “the net will last only so long” (67).

“Trading Cities 4”

The city of Ersilia is made up of “spider-webs of intricate relationships seeking a form” (68). The inhabitants string color-coded strings between their houses to denote relationships. When the strings become too numerous, the houses are destroyed and the inhabitants leave, so that only the strings and the poles they are suspended from remain. The refugees rebuild Ersilia elsewhere several times. The ruins of the abandoned Ersilias are not dwellings; they are the strings with their networks.

“Cities and Eyes 3”

The city of Baucis is on stilts and hidden from travelers’ eyes under a stratum of clouds that must be climbed by ladders. The inhabitants have everything they need up there and never come down to the ground. People hypothesize variously that Baucis’s inhabitants either hate the earth, respect it too much to make contact with it, or prefer to look at it with telescopes and spyglasses, “contemplating with fascination their own absence” (69).

“Cities and Names 2”

Leandra is a city protected by two species: the Penates which stand at the doors of the houses, and the Lares which stay in the kitchen and belong to the house. The two species stay there as generations of tenants come and go and debate the essence of the Leandra and which of them is more associated with it.

“Cities and the Dead 1”

Melania is a city of never-ending dialogues. Through the passing generations, the dialogue continues, but the protagonists are different: “[T]he participants in the dialogues die one by one and meanwhile those who will take their places are born, some in one role, some in another” (72). As time goes on the roles of the participants differ and the topic of conversation always seems to head for some final denouement, even when the plot appears to thicken.

“Part 5 Coda”

When Marco Polo tells Khan of a bridge’s construction stone by stone, Khan asks which stone supports the bridge. Polo replies that the bridge is supported not by any individual stone but by the arch they form all together. Khan asks why Polo should speak of the stones when only the arch matters. Polo replies that without the stones the arch cannot exist.

Part 6 Introduction

Khan criticizes Polo for never speaking of the city of Venice, the settlement of canals that he longs to hear about. Polo replies that “every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice” (77). As Venice is the city that remains “implicit” for him, he must speak of it to distinguish “other cities’ qualities” (77). While Khan would wish for an exhaustive description of Venice, Polo is afraid that he would lose Venice once and for all if he speaks of it in words. He worries that in describing other cities he has incrementally lost Venice.

“Trading Cities 5”

Esmeralda is a city of water, whereby a network of canals and streets intersect each other, so one can choose to travel by land or water. The shortest distance is “not a straight line but a zigzag that ramifies in tortuous optional routes, the ways that open to each passer-by are never two, but many” (79). This means that the repetitious humdrum that ails inhabitants of other cities does not afflict Esmeralda’s citizens, who must continually traverse different routes. Those with secrets to keep and the swallows of the air have even more intricate routes. Polo considers that maps of Esmeralda should include “in different colored inks, all these routes, solid and liquid, evident and hidden” (79).

“Cities and Eyes 4”

The one-time traveler to Phyllis notices all the city’s beauties and distinguishing features. However, should he be forced to stay there all of his life, what makes the city distinctive will fade before his eyes, as he spends his days in dreary routines. There are many cities like Phyllis “which elude the gaze of all, except the man who catches them by surprise” (82).

“Cities and Names 3”

For a long time, Pyrrha was one of those cities that the traveler only knew by name. He had a mental picture of it as a fortified city on a bay. However, when he visits Pyrrha “everything I imagined was forgotten” as he familiarizes himself with its realities (83). However, the city he first associated with the name Pyrrha remains in his fantasy, and he has no name for it.

“Cities and the Dead 2”

When he reaches the city of Adelma, the traveler is confronted with likenesses of familiars who have already died. He considers that “you reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one finds the most suitable mask” (85). He then considers that Adelma might be the city that people who are dying travel to, and that by extension he too must be dead.

“Cities and the Sky 1”

Eudoxia has a carpet from which the city’s true form can be perceived, and “each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city” like a faithful reflection (86). However, the carpet also reflects the individual experiences of Eudoxia’s inhabitants. An oracle proposed that one of the objects, either the carpet or the city, reflects divine constellations and orbits. Augurers assumed the oracle referred to the carpet, but the traveler thinks that the true map might also be the city itself.

“Coda to Part 6”

Khan teases Polo that his is a journey through memory, fueled by nostalgia. Khan explains himself less in words and more through some mysterious non-verbal communication that passes between the two men as they smoke their pipes. Polo contemplates the clouds of smoke and thinks that they give way to the images of cities as they are suspended in the air. There is also the possibility that the clouds represent stasis at the end of a journey, or “the sponge swollen with vital matter that no longer flows” (88).