Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

I started Calvino's Cosmicomics first but ended up finishing Invisible Cities first. Calvino was a remarkable writer in many sense. His writing is simple but very thought provoking . Definitely one will be enchanted by the portrayal of various cities in this novel. 

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased. 

This is sort of travelogue of Marco Polo about the cities  he visited. He tells these stories to the great Genghis Khan. In fact there is no story in it. A novel without a story.This is not really about the cities its about ordering and reordering of human emotions and conditions of the modern world. These cities are seldom with people. Cities are grouped into random patterns.Cities are imagined and conceptualized. Calvino's cities are constructed by ideas and emotions.

There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

I read and reread many pages again and again. This book is definitely not an 'one-sit-reading' book.One needs to analyse each and every cities descriptions , I certainly believe that Calvino wants the reader to explore the inner longings , thoughts and emotions of his / her own.  The imagery portrayed by the author is so powerful, one cannot just race through this book.

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 it finds the most suitable mask.

 At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.

The author is inventive and original - each and every word strikes its notes perfectly. Both Marco Polo and Genghis build their own cities throughout the narrative by doing so they understand everything - empires, architecture,languages ,tales etc.Its time  for me to finish 'Cosmicomics;.

"Invisible Cities" is  a must read classic.