Invisible Cities is a novel that invites the reader to active cooperation and provides erroneous interpretations. It seems that the development of an adaptive metanarrative for this text should not be too difficult since the emblematic nature of its constituent elements presupposes its presence. However, the complexity of perception is the method of documenting reality among the characters in the work. Marco Polo and Kublai Khan approach the world around them through a subjective outlook, which hinders the dialogue between them and creates a particular attitude towards the author’s work.
Italo Calvino works on the novel as if it is a card index requiring a systematic approach: initially, each episode is recorded on a separate card, then they are systematized. The result of this approach is a catalog not exhaustive but offering a specific structure through which disparate data becomes orderly. In the context of Calvino’s aesthetic views, the “order for order” formula does not seem meaningless (Panigrahi 94). In the author’s commentary, Calvino retains a degree of ambiguity, without explaining the functional purpose of the created structure, but writes the following: “I tried to develop the best structure based on the material that I collected, since I wanted these series to alternate, intertwine with each other” (Panigrahi 95). Calvino pays close attention to the relationships of elements within a structure, but as a whole system, it is valuable to him as well. Its presence does not make it easier to navigate many factors, as Kublai Khan would have liked. On the contrary, it may appear to be an artificial complication since this structure is non-human and transpersonal. It does not correlate with the subject’s influence and is freed from the fear of power inherent in man.
However, Marco Polo, in the role of narrator, is in a position dependent on this feeling. As it was mentioned, for the time being, the character is under suspicion – reader’s and imperial – and, finally, is brought to light. When it is discovered that all the cities described by the traveler are the same, a natural question arises as to the essence of this feature. The recognition of Marco Polo takes place in the sixth chapter: “When I describe any city, I say something about Venice” (Calvino 93). It becomes clear that all cities are endless incarnations of a single place on the map, in the light of memories of it, turning into structural synonyms. At this point in the investigation, a return to the dialectical connection between the individual and the universal is inevitable. If Venice can be called a narrator’s tradition, he will not make a breakthrough through the ceremony. Venice’s idea is an obsessive, persistent thought, and most of all, it is such because the narrator himself finds absolute pleasure in this obsession with the city. In a sense, this is the factor by which his self-identification is carried out. It is no coincidence that Marco Polo warns the emperor that, having learned all the emblems, he “will become an emblem,” that is, an embodied universal (Calvino 168). He avoids such an outcome because the symbol he used remains empty: laying in their individual experience, he would flow with him, turning himself into an emblem.
Mutual pursuit (of the traveler by the city and the city by the traveler) explains how methodically Marco Polo excludes himself from the narrated reality. Kublai Khan intuitively understands the unnaturalness of an impersonal narrative and, with provocative questions, pushes the interlocutor to auto-narration. Kublai Khan is trying to transform a neutral voice into a narrative one because the story itself is the basis for his empire. For him, Marco Polo’s stories are the only dimension where his kingdom exists. Still, the ruler’s hopes are not met, leading to a series of verbal clashes in which he tries to reveal the interlocutor’s alleged deception to which, however, he does not even resist. Bringing a multiform reality to a universal denominator requires either bringing the individual to the limit together with the rejection of tradition or rejection of the individual. The narrator does not achieve the first, but he, inclined to subject centrism, is not ready for the second. And when Calvino casually abandons that he wrote nothing more than “a declaration of love to the city at a time when it became impossible to live in,” the paradox of this expression echoes Marco Polo’s inner unwillingness to abandon his Venice and so as his tradition (Calvino 160). The fear of influence can probably explain this unwillingness: the narrator is afraid that the global logical operation of generalization, which the emperor seeks to produce, will lead to total emblematizing.
In general, it is possible to observe a persistent opposition of approaches to solving a problem of creating a full-fledged synthesis of information about the empire at the character level. This is where the issue of the impossibility of dialogue between characters originates. They try to communicate from fundamentally different positions (from outside and inside), making their conversation unproductive. The problem of the “taciturnity” of a text-based on a non-communicative structure cannot affect the reader’s sensory perception of the text. The process of perceiving a work of art presupposes the interaction of two worlds: the world enclosed in itself and the world embedded in the recipient’s consciousness, and the emergence of a common field at their intersection. The possibility of forming an adequate interpretation of the text often rests on mastering the necessary historical and cultural vocabulary and receptive tools.
An ideal arrangement implies that the reader has the same amount of data and the same system of points of view on which the text is based. That is, an “ideal reader” in the sense in which this term is used in the works of W. Eco, including in The Role of the Reader (Trifonas 185). The speculative nature of these concepts does not protect the text from countless deviations from a particular ideal interpretation, but to some extent, concretizes the boundaries of possible variations.
In the case of Invisible Cities, all interpretations are deliberately wrong. An outwardly open work, inviting the readers to cooperation, letting them into its internal space, ultimately calls into question both the need for this cooperation and its benefits for the reader. The text turns to be a system that functions at the expense of internal resources with minimal reader participation, without promising the reader that they will be rewarded for the labors of the “secret” that has succumbed to them (Panigrahi 88). According to Eco, open text, like no other, needs an ideal reader who can follow the strategy of the work, cooperate in its creation, but this reader must meet specific standards, be the perfect model to ultimately crack the code and gain access to the ideal interpretation (Trifonas 182). The degree of closeness to the ideal is directly dependent on the accuracy with which the reader’s and the author’s academic fields are superimposed on each other.
Otherwise, on whether the reader can make an effort on themselves, after which they will be able to correspond to the author’s field – to conclude a “pact on trust,” get involved in the necessary historical and cultural context (Trifonas 181). In this case, the author relinquishes their authority, refusing to appear in the role of the bearer of real knowledge. This act of the author will sharply devalue the concept of ideal interpretation and at the same time makes the text publicly available, open to variation in the absence of any controlling authority. The plain text is genuinely revealed only under the condition of the perfect effort of the reader. At this point, a terminological paradox is outlined; Eco notes that “the reader cannot use the text the way he, the reader, wants, but only the way the text itself wants to be used” (Trifonas 190). On the contrary, a text that is overly open to any possible interpretations, including erroneous, is called closed by Eco.
Invisible Cities is, therefore, a novel-study, an aesthetic act of comprehending and ordering reality, and a system that maintains stability at a certain level, putting under control the level of internal entropy. On the one hand, due to this, fear is overcome, the source of which is the feeling of helplessness that overtakes when faced with an avalanche-like disorder of the world. On the other hand, the novel structure seems foreign. It hinders the development of the narrative within the narrative. Simultaneously, the latter assigns the service role of a compositional appendage: at first glance, frame fragments, that is, conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, appear only as preludes and interludes. The impossibility of a full-fledged dialogue between the characters is due to different thinking approaches and the principle of perceiving information. Consequently, the reader can sense the work’s reality only through one of the heroes’ prism, which in most cases happens through the thoughts of Marco Polo.
Works Cited
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Translated by William Weaver. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1972.
Trifonas, Peter Pericles. “The Role of the Reader: Remembering the Possible Worlds of Umberto Eco.” Edusemiotics–A Handbook, edited by Inna Semetsky, Springer, 2017, pp. 179−191.
Panigrahi, Sambit. “Postmodern Temporality in Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’.” Italica, vol. 94, no. 1, 2017, pp. 82−100.