INVISIBLE CITIES XXVIII -- Cities and Signs: OLIVIA

London

OLIVIA: It makes sense that Olivia, the city, is a wealthy city, as olives are historically a symbol, not mention evidence, of wealth.

The opening sentence continues to emphasize the deconstrivist motif of the entire book (and, again, such an Umberto-Eco, at least as far as this blog is concerned, kind of motif it is), that words [or signs] and the things they represent are not necessarily the same thing--they occupy different spaces--though, as Polo tells the emperor, there is a connection between the two.

1. Is there a theme or plot-device (as it were) tying together each of the chapters?  If so, what's going on in chapter 4?
2. Does Olivia exist?
3. "If there really were an Olivia of mullioned windows and peacocks, ... it would be a wretched, black, fly-ridden hole....": why?  The literalist in me wants to say that, well, there must be a natural hierarchy supporting any wealthy city, that below the luscious green apex with its mansions and gold filigree and white peacocks, must be churning away a massive mechanism of industry with all its accompanying soot and slag.  I don't know if this is what Calvino's getting at.  Is he being less literal, more figurative?
4. And I just can't wrap my brain around the last sentence.  The abstraction is too much for me.  What do you make of it?

INVISIBLE CITIES XXII -- Cities and Signs: HYPATIA

"I realized I had to free myself from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought: only then would I succeed in understanding the language of Hypatia."  So what, then, is the language of Hypatia--or better, how is it nothing like our language in its regard to signs (signs being the referents of our words) --or best, what is the relationship between signs and the mind's expectations?  So then, if "there is no language without deceit," how does one communicate, and is the language of Hypatia actually any different from our languages anyway?

The real question here (because the first is just another of the countless un-answerables really) is what makes this place so attractive or comfortable that Polo apparently doesn't want to leave--at least not any time soon?

INVISIBLE CITIES XVI -- Cities and Signs: ZOE

source here

"Zoe" is Greek for "life," and is a name sometimes used by Greeks to refer to our Eve, whose name, by the way, means "breath."

In my own writing, names are very important, and I really enjoy reading a work where names and etymology are similarly significant and certainly far better and more poetically employed.  I wonder--and encourage your thoughts and hypotheses--how Calvino built up this book.  Did he start with a list of feminine names and searched out their meanings and connected these to the metaphoric constructs of his cities?  The point from where an author's work germinates is a target at which I'm constantly pitching guesses.  This, perhaps more than anything else save the words and narration themselves, for me contributes to the life of a text.

1. Interesting the unacknowledged assumption of the traveler here: that all cities have, unquestioningly, these certain features.  It's just the organization and situation of these in relation to these others that vary.
2. How does the "city of differences" that abides within every man connect, in counterpoint, as it happens, to the name, Zoe?  Along this line, what do you think about the sentence, particularly the second half: "This--some say--confirms the hypothesis that each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences, a city without figures and without form, and the individual cities fill it up"?
3. Perhaps the hardest question: What is then Zoe, the city?  This city is, for me, the hardest to grasp city so far, and I think it may indicate a turning point in the "story."  Thoughts?

INVISIBLE CITIES X -- Cities and Signs: ZIRMA

"Zirma," courtesy
cittainvisibili.com

Zirma: I don't know.  There's nothing on it as a name.  I can find a couple sources that claim it as a city in Turkey, but Google Earth doesn't seem to know anything about; it suggest Szirma, Hungary.  Did Calvino make it up?

1. According to the last line, a thing only exists once it exists in the mind.  I guess that might be true, but it smacks of the whole "If a tree falls in the forest" thing.  Speaking of the last line, consistently it is the final words of a city's description that brings all the pieces together.
2. Couldn't the description of Zirma be used to describe anything, or at least any place?  I have the same problem with certain songs--can't ever get them out of my head without replacing them with something else.
3. How does Zirma work with or against Tamara, the other signs city?

This is such a different book from the others we've read.  I spend considerably more time researching and writing than reading.  It's refreshing!

INVISIBLE CITIES VII -- Cities and Signs: TAMARA

Two things I'm wondering right now as I sit to put together my thoughts and questions for Tamara: [1] do all the cities' names have an applicable significance--are they the framework, like a poem's title, for understanding the contents; and [2] did Calvino work from some sort of map, and we're just not getting all the directions?  I'd love to be able to follow the geography and paths of Marco Polo's travels.

1. The name Tamara is fairly mundane compared to those of the previous cities.  Dominantly Russian and Hebrew, it has connections (particularly via its masculine counterpart--typical) to "palm tree" and "spice," yet this prosaic etymology seems superficially still to fit.  The stuff here is, ostensibly, pretty simple.  The type of this city is "Signs," an oft-used label of deconstructionists (think Barthes and Derrida) for what a word is in relationship to what it represents (for example, the word "computer" is the sign for the machine I'm currently holding on my lap).  But in the opening paragraph, Calvino shifts that use of "Signs"--and this brings us again, tangentially at least, to Eco--to the more general issue of signs across systems, called semiotics.   Calvino's examples are the paw print for the tiger, a marsh for a water course, and the hibiscus for Spring.  So what is Tamara a sign for?  (Or is this a non-issue as we're not even to the city yet?  Personally, I don't think so.  I think it's just a warm-up--an anticipation on the part of the traveler.  You?)
2. These signs, however, in the city seem, at least nearly always, to be metonymous or synecdochical for--related to--whatever they represent.  The deconstructionists would claim, I think obtusely, that it doesn't make any difference what the sign is.  Why not a paw print for Spring or scales for the barracks?  So what about the lions, towers, dolphins, and stars?
3. There's a system of signs--or maybe hierarchy:  scissors for the tailor, the silk for the wealthy, the custom clothing for social status (inelegant examples--sorry).  Where does the ladder end?
4. "Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages."
5. "And while you believe you are visiting Tamara...":  Every city so far has not been what it at first appears to be, and this gives each city--I'm not quite sure how to say it--almost a sense of non-being.  Tamara, for example, isn't really a city but just a book of signs telling you what to think and see and feel.  Though I hate to use this example, it's really just a matrix (yeah, like the movie) upon which something or someone populates the illusion.  Of course, what's the difference between this and the "real" thing?
6. Examine the format of the vignette: it starts with a gradual increase in the frequency of signs until within the, I guess, city limits it's dense and heavily layered, and then at the end, as we leave, the mass of signs decreases, lessens, though the traveler's eye (our eye) keeps looking for signs--out of habit, desperation, or because that's just how the human mind works?