INVISIBLE CITIES XXXIII -- Chapter 4, ..... 2

Have we arrived at 

the process Calvino employed 

to "create" each of his cities?

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INVISIBLE CITIES XXXII -- Cities and Names: AGLAURA

1. Aside from providing a potential pair of names for Calvino's book, what inspiration is there for the account of this particular city in the plot description, or anything else in the description, of the play Aglaura, as put up by Wikipedia?
2. As the others in chapter four, is Aglaura a double city, or a city accompanied immediately by its reflection?
3. Polo's cursory description of the city identifies it as remarkable only by its drabness--by its unremarkableness, yet he claims the periodic and spontaneous appearances of things "unmistakable, rare, perhaps magnificent."  In the context of any other city, would these spontaneities be less remarkable?

INVISIBLE CITIES XXXI -- Cities and Eyes: ZEMRUDE

1. Another element of duality in Zemrude, this one becoming less metaphysical or fantastic, as it is something one would experience in any city or walking anywhere.
2. There is also another element of water, as it is the drainpipes rather than anything else, that rail our attention as it drops.
3. What is Calvino's commentary made through Zemrude?

from here

INVISIBLE CITIES XXIX -- Thin Cities: SOPHRONIA

1. "Sophronia" means "self-controlled" or "sensible."  If the half-city that bears permanently the name, Sophronia, is the carnival, then what is Polo (I daren't say Calvino here) getting at?
2. The two preceding cities, both Olivia and, if you're willing to stretch a little, the unnamed city of departures, both hold as part of themselves a reflection, double, or twin--a repetition of itself (herself?).  Is this the motif?
3. What do you think of Calvino's imagination?
4. Is the banking, concrete half a reflection of or just a balance of mass to the permanent half?

from here

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 XXVII -- Chapter 4, ..... 1

Of Distant Lights and Crystalline Structures

1. "Your cities do not exist.  Perhaps they have never existed.  It is sure they will never exist again."  Whether they existed before or will exist later, when is it that Marco Polo's stories do indeed exist?
2. Discuss Marco Polo's salesmanship.