INVISIBLE CITIES XXI -- Cities and Desire: ZOBEIDE

(Zobeide -- perhaps from the Arabic "Zubaida," a female name for "elite" or "prime")

1. Smacks a bit of Christopher Nolan's Inception, doesn't it--this dream sharing?
2. What is Calvino getting at when he describes the city as having forgotten the dream of its ... err ... inception?
3. The later men who had shared the dream of the running woman: did they have the dream and seek out the city, or did they stumble upon the city coincidentally?
4. Why is the city so ugly?

M.C. Escher -- again

INVISIBLE CITIES XVII -- Thin Cities: ZENOBIA

source here

Not much in the way of questions with Zenobia, but a couple thoughts, especially as they apply to what I said in the last post about the important I lay upon an author's creative source for a particular work: is it as pointless for me to do that as it is for a traveler to determine whether Zenobia is a happy or unhappy city?  While I can't full define it at the moment, these two questions, as well as the alternative Calvino offers on the second, seem strangely parallel.

So what do you think of Zenobia?  There are, of course, the typical questions I could ask.  Answer a question I haven't asked--whatever you think that might be?  I don't see everything--not by any stretch of the imagination; and my one limited viewpoint is in a bit of a rut.  What am I not touching upon, and what is the answer?
Why is Zenobia a Thin City rather than a City [of] Desire (and is my "of" rather than the given "and" significantly altering the meaning?)?

INVISIBLE CITIES XV -- Cities and Desire: FEDORA

Fedora, as a name, comes from the Russian for Theodora/Theodore (the hat, from a cross-dresser in a 19th century play).

1. Fedora's description is not particularly dissimilar from many of the others in its goal, but, of course, the path that  gets us there is unique.
2. Brilliant noun of the moment: the Medusa pond.  How does the instantaneous image conjured here apply to the infinitude of once-potential-now-impossible Fedoras?  (And as yesterday's city reminded me of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, so this one reminds me of Rowling's Mirror of Erised, which, I think, could just as easily been named--or so nicknamed by those less selfless than Harry--the Medusa Pond.)
3. The last paragraph, Polo's suggestion (and is it perhaps tongue-in-cheek; or is it sincere?) to the Khan, beggars a question: perhaps, the cities, regardless of their realness, all have a degree, even a significant degree, of unreality.  How is the "real" Fedora possibly as imaginary (considering particularly what we've read of other cities) as those in the glass orbs?

If you're not doing this already, see if you can apply the concept behind each city not only to the other cities in the book, but also to your own cities and those others of your personal experience.

INVISIBLE CITIES IX -- Cities and Desire: DESPINA

Despina, from the Greek Despoina: for "mistress" or "lady," also a Greek goddess of mysteries, and only to those initiated to her cult would be revealed her true name, whatever it was.  Finally (and does this at all connect to the Mary/Jesus reference in Zaira?) Despoina is also what the Orthodox Catholic Church names The Mother of God.

1. The first paragraph offers no immediate surprises.  Different approaches to any one thing show different faces, of course.  But how beautiful Calvino renders it!  The camel driver thinks of it as the approach to a ship carrying him from the desert, and the sailor pictures the stability of terra firma and all its luxuries unavailable at sea.  Describe, or define, in terms of desire the intentional self-deceit of the sailor and the driver, though they know it's a city.  Does this connect somehow to the name?
2. Like the last city, Despina seems more conceptual, and therefor less connected in some existential (or whatever) way to its name and the reader and... oh, I don't know.  What do you think? 
3. What do you make of the seemingly anachronistic technology?

INVISIBLE CITIES VI -- Cities and Desire: ANASTASIA

blue chalcedony

The new city's name is Anastasia, the feminine derivative of Anastasius, which is, of course, Greek for "resurrection," which initially, and only initially, turns on its head my first impression--one of extreme negativity--of Anastasia, the city, and is causing me now to look up everything.  Check out the episode's imagery:

• concentric circles, or layers of existence and sustenance;
• kites flying, or risen above the earth; 
• agate, a metamorphic, or volcanic, and therefor changed and risen to a more beautiful and perhaps perfect state, rock;
• onyx, a type of chalcedony, of which "family" agate is also a member; 
• the pheasant baffles me a little, as it, as a word, is not at all related, duh, to "phoenix," and I'm not getting any appropriate lead on metaphor for the marjoram or cherry wood either, though maybe the fire...;
• the bathing women and their water, like the rebirth of baptism (if a bit of a bastard usage);
• the awakening or resurgence of desire;
• and so on, yet despite all this, the city is described as treacherous, and so it must be, as its desires are never your desires and you must "do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content."  Is there, therefor, no choice?  Can't you just leave Anastasia, or is this some sort of metacity where everyone who is alive inhabits?  Is Anastasia herself life?

From the opening paragraph above, does this extraordinarily persistent application of allusions to resurrection bely the negativity or accrete it?

1. Whose resurrection is this?  Or is Anastasia's treachery the fact that, despite the promise of her name, there is no resurrection or, if we're speaking Christianically, redemption or salvation, but just a desire for it, though, of course, that desire is not, could never be, hers as she offers its illusion as bate to steal you away?
2. Worse, if you partake too fully of Anastasia's treasures, you believe you are enjoying yourself and even fulfilling your desires, yet you are only fulfilling her desires, and you will not rise again, like you're stuck eternally in this circle--canal?  Are those concentric canals not interconnected?  Wouldn't that make them a spiral, from which there would be escape, or is this pushing it?  (Sheesh, sounds almost Satanic, this place--at best, entirely hedonist.)

Aside: Most like this has nothing to do with it, but the volcanic source of the episode's mineral treasures recalls the eruption in Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn."

INVISIBLE CITIES IV -- Cities and Desire: DOROTHEA

Take the last part of Isidora and the Greek for god rather than an Egyptian goddess and you've got Dorothea: "Gift from God."  Interesting, the progression of cities and names so far and how their descriptions reflect not only themselves but each other.  As the last city, Isidora, a near-anagram of its predecessor, Diomira, dealt as much with desire as memory and yet was a "City and Memory," does Dorothea, as a "City of Desire" fit the progression?

1. Compare our introduction to the city of Dorothea--the opening lines--to that of the first two cities.
2. Similarly, is there a negative aftertaste here as previously?
3. Clearly Dorothea is a desirable city.  Is there a thematic issue of memory to go with it, as the Cities of Memory had both memory and desire, though the latter left untitled, and if so, how/where?
4. Invisible Cities appears to deal with some big philosophy: cities, desire, memory, time, deity....  Another shows up here: paths.  These are similar issues, though in even smaller literary contexts, as those treated by Jorge Luis Borges.  What's the draw for the author?  What's the draw for the reader?  
5. So the two ways of describing Dorothea: the one is to describe it physically--its architecture and its citizens and their activity; the second is what?  (Notice, by the way, that this second "way" begins much more like the first two cities.)  Apparently connected to the definition of this "way," what has happened to Dorothea in the years since the camel driver's initial visit in his "first youth"?

There is always room to comment on something that I don't mention in the questions.  Where poetry is concerned, any single mind--or mine at least--will always miss something.