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.

INVISIBLE CITIES III -- Cities of Memory: ISIDORA

Saint Isidore, courtesy
traditioninaction.org

Isidora, Isadora (alt. spelling), or Isadore (masculine) are essentially equivalents.  As will be the case for most of the Khan's cities--or, well, most of Polo's cities, as they're different, after all--I need to spend a few lines on the name.  While this particular name, similar to the last, is most typically given--if "typical" can apply to such rare use--in Spanish-speaking cultures, the name is originally Greek.  Similar to the last city, however--and I can't help but think, all things so far considered, that Calvino's doing this on purpose--this one has a couple of potential interpretations, one literal, of course, the other(s) much more subjective and connotative.  For a moment, forget the Greek (which thing is a pretty natural course for me as I've essentially no experience with Greek beyond abstract and limited peripheral study and am, instead, so much more Latin in my background).  The little parts of the name--Isi, d', and ora--indicate two iffy connotative possibilities.  It puts me in mind of either "Island of Time," or, particularly if we take ora (Italian for hour) as adjectival  rather than nominal and therefore required to match the feminine gender of island, oro (gold) to ora (adjectivally golden), "Island of Gold" or "Golden Island."  And it this makes at least a little bit of sense as the name deals naturally with a geographic location, correlating strongly with not only the book as a whole but the previous city, Diomira, which name connects directly to city/village, and, in Isidora's case, one near the sea, which would account for all the seashells.  The name "Isidora" is, however, not derived from such a place or from the "dirty" Latin I've employed.  It means rather and simply "Gift of Isis," Isis being a powerful Egyptian goddess.  This works too, of course, and probably even better.  Incidentally, Isidore--er, Saint Isidore--archbishop of Seville, was named in 2001 as patron saint of computers.

1. In many ways, the treatment of Isidora is very similar to that of Diomira.  The city is highly idealized.  We enter on the move and, though it wasn't mentioned by word in Diomira, full of desire.  What is the connection between memory--even nostalgia, that most subjective form of memory--and desire?
2. There are also among these similarities, of course, differences.  Instead of the cock's crow signaling the morning, there are cockfights; instead of the women pleasantly crying out from terraces, they solicitously crowd travelers on the street.  What is the potential that Isidora is (and to a degree even phonetically--just an "m" off, after all) a mirror reversal of Diomira?
3. But Isidora--Gift of the Powerful Goddess--is not a real city, but just the desire for a city by a traveler too long away from civilization.  What does this powerful desire do to the essence of the city--whichever city--he finally reaches at the end or interim of his journey?  Similarly, how subjective upon human perspective is the nature and identity of a city?  Do we see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, find what we want to find, regardless of what really is or isn't there and available?
4. What do you make of all the spirals?  How do they, too, connect to memory and desire?
5. Finally, define the ending sentence in context of what we've gone over above.

INVISIBLE CITIES II -- Cities and Memory 1: DIOMIRA

courtesy bonacho-portuguessave.blogspot.com

1. Many (all, actually, if I'm not mistaken) of Calvino's cities are girls' names.  Diomira is no exception.  My go-to site for name etymology is behindthename.com, which I've used here before.  Today, it failed me.  I found information instead here, and by extension here, which gives the meaning as the "important woman in the village."  The name is allegedly Spanish, but if we look at it from the Italian perspective (admittedly not all that different, particularly in this case), then we can break it into its constituent parts: Dio and mira.  Dio is, of course, God, and Mira (in nominal form) aim, sight, target, butt, end, goal, design (from my well-worn, i.e. beat-to-ribbons, Dizionario Inglese E Italiano by Loescher) and (verbal, "mirare") to take aim, to admire, to gaze, or in its reflexive, to look at oneself.  Thoughts?
2. Notice the motion of the first sentence?  From where are we leaving?  Why begin thus if, without context, we cannot know the starting point, in which case the direction and distance are useless, geographically speaking?
3. What is the poetical power (that is to say dripping rhetoric) of this line, "...is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time"?
4. Compare that line above to the general theme of entropy from the introductory ......
5. There's a dreamlike quality to Diomira--idyllic and distant.  Does it regard the name, Diomira, as discussed above?  How does it regard the type, Cities of Memory?
6. Notice also the sense of fairytale to the description: the 60 of this, the golden and crystal that, the idealized season.  How does this correlate back to Marco Polo and begin build his character (this is a longterm as well as an immediate question)?