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 VIII -- Cities and Memory: ZORA

image courtesy of designplaygrounds.com

Zora: a South and West Slavic word meaning "dawn, aurora".

1. How does Marco Polo really know what he claims to know of Zora as it no longer exists?  And the vignette's final paragraph reflects interestingly against the first sentence, which states of Zora that, "no one, having seen it, can forget."  So when it's gone... what?  Memory cannot be inherited, after all.
2. I mentioned synecdoche and metonymy in the last post about Tamara.  Inasmuch as either of these is a sort of--and maybe this is a stretch--mnemonic (and more so than just another crazy spelling) are all of the disparate and unforgettable points, all mnemonics really, synecdochic or metonymic of the whole--all for one and one for all?
3. If the most learned men are those who've memorized Zora and anyone who visits Zora cannot forget it, wouldn't anyone who simply visits and sees [all of] Zora become another of the most learned men?
4. This city is a little difficult for me to grasp.  Is it set up as it is only be ironic in the end?  This alone would make sense, but it leaves Zora otherwise shallower than the preceding cities.
5. Well, maybe not.  The whole notion of this city's memorableness together with its passing reminds me of the danger faced by the general world's public by the loss of a culture.  Loss of a spoken language.  Loss of oral traditions.  Loss of purity in aboriginal bloodlines.  Once lost, it will never return.  Some things, no matter the scholarship that pursues it after its demise, will never be brought back.  Only Jurassic Park managed that.

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?