There's no escaping home, is there?

Our sense and memory of where we belong to, real or imagined, colours everything we think of when we consider other places, conveys Calvino in this instant classic.

“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 to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other explorer or messenger of his.”

So begins Invisible Cities, often described as the most beautiful work written by Italo Calvino. An emperor greets a world-weary traveller and asks him to recount all the cities he has visited and seen. The traveller, Marco Polo, as legendary as the emperor, proceeds to spin descriptions of the cities he’s apparently seen and the wonders he claims to have witnessed. But even the most imaginative of medieval wanderers run out of cities to conjure up and when quizzed by the emperor as to why he’s never spoken of his own home, Marco Polo answers that every time he describes a city, he’s, in fact, saying something about Venice.

Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in Italy. The child of parents who were scholars of the natural world — his father was a pioneering agriculturist and mother was a botanist — Calvino had initially enrolled to study agriculture at university. The second World War intervened and he joined the partisans against the fascists. After the war, he switched to literature at university and began writing in earnest. Several short stories and a first novel were published and he joined the Communist Party. Books followed at regular intervals but he gradually veered away from the realism of his initial works and into magic realism and folklore. He even wrote a book influenced by tarot, The Castle of Crossed Destinies.

A dazzler of a book

Invisible Cities was published in 1972 and the English translation came out a couple of years later. Since then it’s inspired countless writers, artists and designers with its gorgeous prose about fabulous cities. I read Invisible Cities after coming across a mention of it in a design journal in the college library. I read it over a week’s time and felt dazzled and transported by Calvino’s words via Marco Polo. Among the imagined cities he talks about is Valdrada, built by the ancients “on the shores of a lake with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water.”

When pressed by the emperor and he finally does speak about Venice (here named as other imaginary cities but Venice at heart nonetheless), the Great Khan remarks “…so then, yours is truly a journey through memory!” These parries and rhetorical barbs between the dictatorial leader and the court guest are interspersed throughout the book.

Marco Polo is accused, not without reason, of exercising nostalgia for his home through his fantastical narratives. And here lies the nub of the matter beautifully expressed by Calvino through Invisible Cities: there’s no escaping home and the past. Travellers cursed by itchy feet have been going around the world since the first of our ancestors set out to walk from the African continent. But in all the places we go, we lose ourselves and then when we talk about it to friends or post about it on social media, there is a germ of longing for where we’re rooted. Our sense and memory of home, real or imagined, colours everything we think of when we consider other places, other countries, and other cities.

The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing, or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats.

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