Invisible Cities was my favourite fictional read of 2023 (actively adjusting for recency bias) – perhaps inching onto my all-time top ten. It is also a terribly difficult book to review, hence the delay – I have been chipping away at this one for months.
Invisible Cities is structured as a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, in which Polo recounts his travels to 55 different cities, each tale less than two pages long, interspersed with dreamlike dialogue between Polo and Khan. The cities are fanciful and metaphorical: there is Thekla, the city that is forever under construction because its inhabitants are afraid of the destruction that construction eventually entails; Ersilia, the city where people hang threads form house-to-house to mark relationships, migrating to a new location when the threads become impassable leaving behind only the threads; Andria, the city which mimics the heavens and which the heavens mimic.
So I have told you what the book is about, and yet this does nothing to present the meaning of the book. Above I have given nothing more than a dissection, and in a Heideggerian sense, dissection does nothing to disclose being. In fact, I believe that is one of the core themes of Invisible Cities – exploring whether deconstruction can lead to a synthesis of meaning.
It initially seems like each city is designed to highlight a specific aspect of society or human nature, though sometimes the lesson is as inscrutable as that of a Zen koan. But as we read on, particularly with the reflective dialogue, we realise that the tales are deeply interlinked. Some editions’ blurbs give the “spoiler” that Marco is actually describing 55 different aspects of Venice. This is perhaps the publisher’s attempt to hint at the deeper layers of the book, to convince prospective readers that it isn’t just a thin travelogue, but that still criminally undersells the complexity of the book. Marco (Calvino?) is not describing 55 different cities, nor 55 aspects of any city, but attempting to describe every city, and every possible city, and further still, he is describing the ways in which one can describe a city and examining whether that is the same as understanding meaning.
Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone. "But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks. "The bridge is not supported by one stone or another," Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they form." Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds:"Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me." Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."
Invisible Cities is a meditation about the synthesis of form, simultaneously deconstructing cities while eschewing deconstructionism. It is an exploration of the human condition, and the strange loops of creation and destruction therein (indeed, I was constantly reminded of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid). Trying to reduce form into its primitive components can result in the loss of purpose. Perhaps purpose exists in the minute textures of reality and the richly interacting tapestry those details form; komorebi – that beautiful Japanese word for light filtering through the trees.