![]() ![]() In another tale, Polo tells Kublai of a city that was once peaceful, spacious, and rustic, only to become nightmarishly overpopulated in a matter of years (146–147). Polo, at one point, recalls a city where household goods are replaced on a daily basis by newer models, where street cleaners “are welcomed like angels,” and where mountains of garbage can be seen on the horizon (114–116). But it is also possible that Calvino is mixing historical details in order to comment indirectly on 20th-century social and economic issues. His taste for confusing variety is very much in evidence in "Invisible Cities," where 13th-century explorer Marco Polo describes skyscrapers, airports, and other technological developments from the modern era. Italian author Italo Calvino (1923–1985) began his career as a writer of realistic stories, then developed an elaborate and intentionally disorienting manner of writing that borrows from canonical Western literature, from folklore, and from popular modern forms such as mystery novels and comic strips. As Kublai speculates, "perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars named Kublai Khan and Marco Polo as they sift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them" (104). Calvino scholar Peter Washington maintains that "Invisible Cities" is "impossible to classify in formal terms." But the novel can be loosely described as an exploration-sometimes playful, sometimes melancholy-of the powers of the imagination, of the fate of human culture, and of the elusive nature of storytelling itself. And even though some of the cities that Polo evokes for the aging Kublai are futuristic communities or physical impossibilities, it is equally difficult to argue that "Invisible Cities" is a typical work of fantasy, science fiction, or even magical realism. This page last updated on Tue May 29 2007.Although Calvino uses historical personages for his main characters, this dreamlike novel does not really belong to the historical fiction genre. The middle section then focuses on the timbres of the vowels, while the final section brings these together, with the filtered consonants accompanying the song-like vowel sounds. In the opening, for example, the rhythmic texture is the result of filtering only the consonants in the speech. In Invisible Cities (1972), Italo Calvino contrasts a rigid outline structure with a flexible textual content. Excerpt: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino The other ambassadors warn me of famines, extortions, conspiracies, or else they inform me of newly discovered turquoise mines, advantageous prices in marten furs, suggestions for supplying damascened blades. My treatment of the spoken text proceeded in a similar fashion: although the speech is never clearly recognizable, it shapes the rhythms, timbres, and overall gestures of the music. '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. In particular, the images of mirrors and water were uppermost in my mind while composing. Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels-a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory. ![]() 'Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening. In composing Valdrada, I wanted to draw upon the imagery, atmosphere, and poetry of the text without creating an explicit "setting" of it. Italo Calvino, William Weaver (Translator), Erwin Salim (Translator), (Translator) 4.13 Finally, Marco tells of the relationship between the city and its mirror: "the two cities live for one another, their eyes locked together but there is no love between them." So great is their obsession with these mirrors of themselves that it becomes not so much their own actions and passions which are of importance to them, but those of their images in the water. Marco tells of how an arriving traveler sees not one but two cities: the "real" one above and its reflection in the water below he then explains the peculiar awareness which the inhabitants of Valdrada have of their reflections in the lake. The piece is based on Marco's description of Valdrada, a city built upon the shore of a lake. Calvino's book is a collection of prose poems, connected by the scenario of Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan stories of the fantastic cities which he has visited. Valdrada, composed at the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music, is based on an excerpt from Le cittá invisibili by Italo Calvino. ![]() Valdrada was the first of a series of electronic works that I had planned to compose that were inspired by stories in Italo Calvino's book Invisible cities. Valdrada Home Music About Frances White Contact ![]()
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