Inferno

"It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us." And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." (Page 165) So in the end the beyond is not happy. Or there is no beyond. We live in an inferno or in a heaven, depending on how we manage to deal with it and/or escape from it. This might also be an allusion or comparison to Dante's Inferno.

The first option that Marco portrayed is becoming an emblem among emblems. That is of course easy for many, you just accept the fate you have and deal with it. So you don't see it as an inferno anymore, you just see it as life. The second portrays one selecting the best of the inferno and take care of them to prevent losing them. Give them space and enjoy the good parts of the inferno. So, it is in your hands, it is in your mind and choices the decision of living in an inferno or escaping from it. Your past, present and your future all affect that, and you will have to make the best of those to escape it using one of the two ways that Marco portrays to escape the inferno. As Francisco said in his blog, on half of the city is permanent while the other is temporary. At this point one must be expecting to get the book but it is still hard for me to understand the book. Like the story, some things about us are permanent while others are temporary. I understand the book on a literary level but we all know that you can't take this book literally. One cannot take Calvino literally. Getting some pieces together is still lacking for me, but in the end we must all live the inferno. I believe that what Marco said in section two became true. Now, I am the book. I have become an emblem among emblems. I know that I will never know it all and that I need to keep traveling in my journey through life. At least that is how I take it.

Polo Attacked

"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased." (Page 87) Marco says this phrase after Kublai Khan discovers that all the cities that Marco Polo describes to him come from his memories of Venice. That Marco thinks of Venice as a starting point and on from there he imagines the rest of the city. When Marco is describing Adelma, that to me sounds like if he were to describe heaven or the place that you go when you die, he states: "You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask." (Page 95) He is saying that he only sees dead people in the people he sees. he sees his grandmother, his dad, only people that are dead. Then he says, "Perhaps Adelma is the city were you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead. This means the beyond is not happy." (Page 95) So there he says that either he is in his memory thinking about the people he has known and comparing them to the people that he sees, or he is dead. I chose to believe that he is describing "heaven". In a way, unhappy heaven. He is dead and he can't rest in peace, he just sees the people he knew that are dead once again. Meaning that he is dead or he is dead in a dream. The part that made me think the most was when he said that the beyond is therefore not happy. That gets me thinking. Is there something after life? Do we truly "rest in peace?" Or do we just go back to our memory and dreams and recreate our own world with the people that we used to know? That, one will never know until he or she is dead so I prefer just not to think about it. Honestly, I don't want to be dead haha. Maybe in the end Marco became an emblem among emblems.

"... So the yours is truly a journey through memory!" (Page 98) In a way the Khan is right. It was all based on memory, I thought that was established a long time ago in the book. Everything we do and think are based on memories. Our desires and dreams are based on memories. Therefore the cities had to be based on memories and imagination, memories transformed and recreate by the mind. Then Marco things to himself that in the end of the journey one would find the jam of pat, present, future that blocks existences calcified in the illusion of movement. So in the end you would just find a revolt of thoughts, concluding that the past, present and future affect in different ways; or as I like to say it, nothing. You would find nothing. You cannot do anything about fate and about the fact that past, present and future all affect and indirectly relate to each other. So just go in the journey of life, in which you will find nothing, you will just become an emblem among emblems.

Growing on the Inside

"Falsehood is never in words; it is in things." (Page 62) This is waht Marco states while decribing a city, and it makes a lot of sense. How can you know that something is false only by words? What actually proves something are actions that you take. Besides, the words are based on things, hence falsehood or truth have to be in things. The basis of anything; a thought, a commentary, an action, or anything is based on a thing. The complete basis is a thing.

When describing Trading Cities 3, Marco says something that is very impacting in every sense. He states that this city changes to repeat itself. Just that the protagonist of each story or situation changes. So for example when I get tired or find something weird in my life, I change to someone else's life and someone else changes into mine. It's ike a rotation exchanging lives. In a way this is true. There are people with very similar stories that happen a different times. It is like a recreation of someone else's life. Something as "simple" as marriage happens in many lives. Every time someone gets married in a way it is recreating another person's situation. Something like that. Sounds kind of crazy, but I somehow make sense of it haha. So, is something in the end really original? Is your life really different if you think about it? In the end everything is a recreation. Everything has happened before, it just has different actors. Just like a game. That city as that he describes is a bit crude, and what I am stating in this blog is also a bit crude, because you could argue that you have to live the moment, that there are new things, etc. And it is also valid, well what you live is your life and no one will have it the same way. But in a general sense you see where I am getting with all of this.

Last thing of these two sections (5 and 6) that made an impression in me was when the Khan says something about the fact that his empire is growing too much towards the exterior and not growing within itself. Just like a person. One can take this statement in two ways. One, the Khan could be saying that know his area of knowledge is too broad. That he went over a lot of territory without going too deep into anything so he has like an overall of everything but doesn't have a good specialization in any of those. I personally believe that it is better to be extremely good at one thing than being okay in many. You just have to find that one thing for you and make the best out of it. So maybe he says that he has too much knowledge about everything but about one single thing he cannot go in deep. His knowledge is too shallow. Or two, which has to do with the mind and the heart. Maybe he says that it is also important to know yourself before worrying about the eterior. Maybe he is trying to say that you first have to know yourself and judge yourself to go to the outer world and be who you are. NOt letting stupid thing change you. Of course you will change, but you have clear who you are. Like getting to know what you like, your feelings, and then taking advantage of your good areas to make the best out of them and out of yourself to help yourself and the outer world too. Grow within yourself.

Desires and Memory

"Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it give to a question of yours". (Page 44) I think that the point that is tried to be made here is that when you imagine or discover something new, it has to be based on desires and/or fears because if not your "city" is based on mind and chance only. And these to are not strong enough to hold the thought and make you believe it. Eventually the thought will crumble down if there is no desire, the driving force that keeps you building up on that thought. As we said before, desires and dreams are based on memories so in the end your city has to be based on memories that have impacted you enough to hold the walls of your thought. 

The book at this point is still very complicated, the point I still doesn't fit in my mind. I still quite don't get the book in other words. Specially at the end of section 3 when Marco says, "The city exists and it has a simple secret: it knows only departures, not returns." (Page 56) So what is the point of going to the city if he won't be able to come back and tell the Khan what he saw? Now there are cities everywhere, cities that do not exist and that they are only imagining, cities that they know, etc. It's all just very confusing, and it is having the spiral effect again. It turns and turns on the same idea. The reader still has the doubts of the intention that the author has. Where is the story going? Is there any chronology in particular that the story tries to portray? In page 29, the Khan asks Marco some questions that made me stop and think for a moment. "Journey's to relieve your past? Journeys to recover your future?" He is asking Marco about the purposes that he has for traveling and going through mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, etc. Marco answers, "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that he is, discovering the much that he has not had and never will have."(page 29) I think that Marco is trying to say that the more you explore, the less you know in a way. If you explore more, you keep gaining knowledge but there is also more that you do not know because you are widening your field per say. In the end, you will realize that you will never know it all because there will be always something more to explore, there will always be something new. 

You will never know it all, you will realize that you are one small grain of sand in a world full of mysteries and adventures. So in the end is Marco trying to say that there is not point in traveling? To me, no. He is trying to say that one must try to attain his own empire. One must try to know as much as possible and conquer their own desires, dreams, fears, and memories. That is the purpose of life.    

  

Conquering Your Own Creation: Your Knowledge

After reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino I have decided that I have no clue of what is going on in his mind. I do not understand the book very well. I wonder, has the author given us two ways to read the book for a reason? Or is he just fooling us and let us understand the book on different perspectives? At the end of the first section I got a bit of an idea of what might be going on. MOments after discussing this in class I thought to myself that the idea that was exposed in class had to be right. This idea consisted as seeing the literal parts of the book as the empire tha Kublai Khan is conquering, the figurative as the power, and the metaliterature used in the book as the reader. So, let me expand on this idea a bit more. If Kublai Khan is trying to conquer an empire, if we twist it to the reasoning proposed in class it might make sense. He is trying to conquer knowldge. He talks about tnemy troops, which I find as things that he doesn't know or understand. It is an assimilation, the book describes itself and portrays the reader in the story as Kublai Khan.

"On the day when I know all the emblems," he asked Marco, "shall I be able to possess my empire at last?" And the Venetian answered: "Sire, do not believe it. On that day you will be an emblem among emblems." (Page 23) Let's analyze that last frase for a moment. What is Calvino trying to symbolize with an emblem?  I belive that the Venetian, Marco, is saying that the day that he understands and knows it all (the book for us), then he will just be part of it. He will become part of the book. Another emblem among emblems. The book in a way is like a vicious circle. It goes around a point again and again. Like a spiral.

When I read Stephanie Vainberg's blog, she talked about spirals. She says that whe live by the law of spirals and that we are destined to take turns and go in circles. In a way she is right, it just repeats. It is a spiral. Just like the story is describing itself, recreating itself. Therefore the connection with the spiral. But I think that we and Kublai Khan make our own destiny. That not necessarily must we understand it one way and become part of the book. That we can change our destiny and make many things out of the knowledge we conquer to keep building the empire. At one point he also says that desires and dreams are memories. Going back to the recreation point. It is true. What you imagine and what you dream of is based on memories that reacreate themselves. Desires are memories recreated. This guy is a genius honestly. I have so many doubts of where he wants to go with this book I mean, what will be is conclusion in the end. I can't make sense of the book yet or imagine any end by myself. There is much more empire to conquer, and much more knowldge to attain while reading this book. We still have many enemy troops that attack us with things we don't know. The only solution is to give it time and thought. Let's see what this empire can bring and show us. In the end it won't matter because we will be "an emblem among emblems".