Psarra, Sophia; (2022) “The Void not Filled with Words”: The Role of Venice in Invisible Cities. In: Linder, Benjamin, (ed.) "Invisible Cities" and the Urban Imagination. (pp. 97-115). Springer Nature: Cham, Switzerland.

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Abstract

From cosmic particles to gold-leaf tarot cards, Calvino’s fictions are variations on a theme, confronting literature, direct observation of the world, and knowledge as kaleidoscopic games of narrative possibility. In Invisible Cities, the theme of variations takes the form of 55 micro-texts and 18 dialogues grouped into an overarching text, a prose poem for cities that recounts how Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler, describes to Kublai Khan, the emperor of Mongolia, the cities of the Great Khan’s empire. Kublai soon realizes that every time Polo describes a city he says something about Venice and that all cities are mere variations, achieved by an interchange of elements from Polo’s native city. Calvino described Invisible Cities as a “space” into which the reader must enter, roam around, and even lose direction, implying that the open-ended structure of the book exemplifies a city’s spatial network. Since most cities are built as spatial networks, what role does actually Venice play in this fiction? Is Venice a loose metaphor for Calvino’s multi-faceted text, or does it bear wider significance for his literature? Through an analysis of Venice’s history and geography and an analysis of Calvino’s fiction, this chapter describes Venice and Invisible Cities as systems that resemble a probabilistic algorithm, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of spatial and narrative variations. It argues that from islands and building blocks to official histories and fables, Venice for Calvino is not simply an archetype for the literary imagination, but also a multitude of recombinant elements, capturing its spatial, social, and mythical legacy. Taking inspiration from Polo’s travels in Il Milione and other canonical texts, Calvino found in Venice a combinatorial universe of artisanal craftsmanship, like an ancient artifact of epic or myth, where the theme of multiplicity develops its variations.

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