INVISIBLE CITIES XI -- Thin Cities: ISAURA

underground lake in Mexico

Isaura: refers to an ancient mountain district in Asia Minor.  I can't efficiently summarize the article--or don't want to--so will leave the reading of it to you.  Application to the vignette?

1. As it seems always to be the final line that offers the framework, we'll start there.  Isaura being the city moving ever upward, we might be inclined to think it a metaphor for deep spirituality and religiosity.  That cannot be the case, as I see it, as their gods are, whether in the wells themselves or the provenances that draw up the water, below them, in which case, are they not always moving away from their gods?  Thoughts?  Compare this to the more common religions whose gods are above and hell or the underworld (hence the name, duh) below.  In which direction is the majority of humanity heading?
2. As it appears literally impossible to draw ourselves away from Kim, I'm not going to bother trying now.  We've spoken once before of windlasses (such a cool word; but even better: noria).  Would it be untoward to ascribe Christian symbolism to the wells/fonts of Isaura?
3. What of the calcareous sky (seashells and coral reefs, by the way, are calcareous, as well as many of the more striking features of caves)?  It seems it's the "sky" to the underground lake.  If there are indeed gods below, their only egress is the holes--the wells--poked into their heavens, and put there, not by natural sources, but people.  T.E. Hulme described the night sky as a star-eaten blanket, indicating holes; as lace, again riddled with holes and fissures; and, unlike the previous two, as the white, wistful faces of the village children.  I don't know where I'm going with this, but the image I'm getting from the dark of the lake's surface looking up at the wells above is magnetic.
4. I lived in a city built over an underground lake, called Treviso, in the Veneto region of North-Eastern Italy, just a half-hour outside of Venice by train.  It was nicknamed "Little Venice" for it's many canals.  In a rather drab corner of the city (which was otherwise absolutely beautiful) was a single spigot that tapped into that lake.  While we were encouraged to buy our drinking water in all other cities, we were actually recommended to bottle water directly from the spigot in Treviso--if we could wait out the line always queuing up behind it.  Again, not sure where I'm going with this, but thought you might find it interesting.
5. Finally (and I almost forgot), why "Thin Cities"?

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 V -- Cities and Memory: ZAIRA

"Zaira, City of High Bastions," courtesy
behance.net (click this!)

Zaira is related, and fairly obviously so, to our Sarah and happens to mean "lady" or "princess" in both (and I wish I knew more of the linking history ... McWhorter? ... or is it coincidence?) Hebrew and "Irish" (Gaelic, that is), and "Rose" in Arabic.  That's all fine and dandy, of course, but it marks a difference in theme--if not gender--from the first three cities.  Thoughts?

1. This first sentence, I think, captures the whole reason behind the Great Khan's fascination with Polo's descriptions.  However, do such subjective descriptions do him any good?
2. According to the rest of this first paragraph, what then is the relationship between the "measurements of its space" (physical locations or landmarks (?)) and the "events of its past" (memory)?
3. What do you make of "...the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock."  Does this offer a window into either Calvino (or is he too shrewd to so expose himself) or at least one of the two characters?
4. "...but contains [memory] like the lines of a hand."  Palmistry?  Forget divination for a minute; what's the connection here, and can the memories therefor be "read" at all?  Or is there an issue of magic at hand here after all?  Is memory and its ties to things a mysticism or conjure?
5. Moving, relocating, is an engagement that sparks the memory.  Packing up items, sorting through boxes for treasure and trash, reorganization, etcetera bring past the hands and eyes items--landmarks--that hold in their essence, that trigger, memories.  Those memories are written like so many scars into the collections of junk we accumulate.  Do we throw away those memories, as certainly the runes of their recording are gone, when we throw away the landmarks?  I haven't thought about my Boy Scout days in ten years, but sorting through that old box because we've got to trim the fat down to naught, I encountered stacks and stacks of long-hidden memories.  But as Zaira absorbs like a sponge the waves of memory that happen within it, are those memories ever available to any of those who walk past the chink in a wall or who were not present when the hole appeared in the net?  Or does each citizen have access to an adequate number of memorial artifacts that those of others don't matter?  What do you make of the very physical, earthy, and private nature of the memories of Zaira?  Or do I have it wrong and all is shared by all?
6. So, the "high bastions."  If the city is swollen with memories--even built entirely of memory--it stands to reason that the bastions would be so tall.  But a "bastion" is a defense.  Thoughts?

castle bastion at Copertino, Italy

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana V -- chapter 4: PREPARATORY GARDENING AND PRUNING

1. For whatever reason, Yambo "skated" over his childhood and adolescence, rather than tell his wife all about it.  Something in his past, voluntarily or involuntarily, is being avoided.  I sense a parallel story--or nearly so, because why in the world would Eco not want these two lines to converge!  Of course, the "distant past" will be likely easier to unlock than the more recent.
2. The same paragraph of Paola's that gave us the skated youth also indicates some other traits/weaknesses of Yambo.  Does the information here lead you to any predictions?
3. Note the musical preference for pop over "high-culture" opera (though, of course, opera and "classical" music were the pop music of their day).
4. The general region of the pylorus combined with Yambo's knee-jerk descriptor of a "mysterious flame" seem to indicate something spiritual, or, considering Eco's atheism (and giving Yambo the benefit of the autobiographical doubt), existential--or vertiginous.  Thoughts?
5. Draw out the repeated connection between memory and collection, both of which, apparently, this book is all about.
6. I don't know if Eco is a Freudian or not, but I'm guessing that he likely is.  I'm not particularly eager to discuss at length his purchase at the flea market, but manifestations of potentially latent issues may be keys to unlocking the cave.
7. This is likely a stretch, the continued metaphor from the last chapter of flowers and deflowering; I wonder if there's a connection of some sort (and it seems more Joycean than Freudian--more literary than psychoanalytic--and along the lines of "Araby") between the the impenetrable cave and, say, the protected chalice, carried by "Araby"'s protagonist.  Are all the sexual undercurrents of this chapter indicative of the approaching "deflowering" of the locked-up, otherwise impenetrable Cave of Wonders?  Is this connection inherently flawed, as presupposing similar value upon Yambo's lost past as the flower of virginity (though, of course, he is a bit of an egomaniac)? *** But cultures may get in the way a little bit here, as Italy, as well as much of Europe, is much more sexually progressive than the United States; perhaps virginity is not quite the assumed treasure there as here (and we're losing that!).  Certainly The Virgin is one of the most significant emblems for Italy, as with all dominantly Catholic cultures, and most Christian cultures for that matter, of course, but, perhaps, as Mary was/is the epitomized Virgin, no other virgin need so aspire, so why bother at all?  I don't know.  I'm rambling.  But there seems to me to be something here.  I am, as always, interested in your thoughts.
8. Flowers, the most glorious of garden elements, may perhaps continue the line of Eden here.  But what happens if you deflower (as in memory and/or virginity, as discussed in 7) Eden?  I mean, is Yambo in his Eden now, or is he seeking to return to it wholly, or is it a step along the way (Solara, then, being Eden) to regain his past?  Yes, I know, this is all very, very speculative, but it's currently interesting me.