Journeys of Our Minds

In the beginning of the second section of Invisible Cities, Marco Polo, who is actually representing the author, Italo Calvino, explains Kublai Khan the reasoning for his journeys. Calvino says, “Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the forgiveness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places” (pg. 29). Later, as Kublai Khan mentions, Marco Polo does not talk about the material things of his trips, but instead the observations he made or the realizations he had, showing how exposure to different things can make us think about the ones we already know. These comments made me realize what traveling is all about, for some people at least, and how the cities can represent different things in one’s life. Calvino’s cities show how places or foreign things can make us reflect on our realities.

Isidora, the city of one’s dreams, contains the common flaw people find in themselves. In this case, people arrive there wanting to be younger, which relates to the quote I mentioned earlier, as the city makes people see what they didn’t do before, when they were younger. In Isidora, “Desires are already memories.” Just as people felt old in the city, society sometimes can make us feel like it’s too late for everything. Traveling can isolate us from that and make us realize what different perspectives exist. Marco Polo wouldn’t be able to comment on his experiences if he didn’t had such a wide array of them.

Marco Polo’s trips in the book mean much more than just a visit to those places. As Kublai Khan says, his observations and thoughts make his trips special. Even more, these trips or observations are just a literal and figurative way of explaining Clavino’s beliefs, as a work of metaliterature. As I mentioned before, traveling is a way of growing and understanding life, but what gives traveling those characteristics is the knowledge you obtain from it.

All Marco Polo’s observations, whether it is the ways one can see Dorothea, how Zora walks people down their memories or that Zirma is remembered by a few repetitions, show how he analyzes things. He is able to analyze them because he understands them as a foreigner, as he gets to discover them and differentiate them from other cities. What I believe Calvino is saying is that with knowledge, just as one can compare cities, one can build up upon ideas and eventually understand things. Another case in which the author shows that understanding is valuable and necessary is in the city of Zenobia. Merchants form different places gather at equinox, a special occasion, to trade something more special than goods: memories. Trading in memory, or learning and teaching, is better than building up on material things.

As I read the first two parts of the book the way, I perceived it changed. I started reading it as a simple book where each city critiqued a few things about society, personality or life, but as I kept on reading, and was able to put together some of these ideas, I started to understand what Calvino actually meant—I was able to understand some of its metaliterary aspects. Marco Polo’s trips, as I first observed, are an explicit way of showing how stepping out of your comfort zone is beneficial, but when put together, along with the conversations in the interludes, one can see that the book is showing how valuable knowledge is. Ways of acquiring information and insight into life are important, but as what made Marco Polo different from other travelers was that he analyzed what he saw, what we do with what we learn is what matters. Looking back at the first pages of the book I can realize that all along the author has said how influential knowledge, like this book, can be.