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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Invisible Cities, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Perception, and Experience
Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control
Cycles and Civilization
Modernity
Summary
Analysis
Kublai Khan anxiously smokes and listens to Marco Polo’s stories. Sometimes he insists that Marco’s cities don’t exist and laments that his empire is rotting and infecting everything around it. Marco agrees that the empire is ill but says that, even worse, the empire is trying to get used to it. He seeks to find where there’s still happiness and suggests that if Kublai wants to measure the darkness, he needs to look for the light.
According to Marco, even worse than the empire rotting is that it’s trying to get used to it—in other words, complacency with failure or inadequacy is worse than failing or being inadequate in the first place. The suggestion to look for the happiness and the light introduces the idea that there’s always something good to look for, even in the worst times.
Themes
Other times, Kublai is euphoric about the state of his empire. He boastfully says that his empire is made up of crystals and chastises Marco for telling sad and disappointing stories. To this, Marco replies that while Kublai builds his final city, he’s busy collecting ashes of the possible cities that vanish to make room for the final one. He says that when Kublai is so unhappy that he can’t recover, he’ll be able to measure his sadness and use that measurement to build a diamond big enough to overcome it. If he doesn’t, he’ll be wrong from the start.
Kublai’s habit of jumping from depression to euphoria speaks to how people can change how they see the world, depending on their moods or perception—Kublai, like anyone else, can see the world as failing or as rising. Marco’s warning to measure the sadness so that he can make something big enough to overshadow it is fantastical enough to seem impossible, suggesting that it’s not actually possible to build something capable of overcoming sadness.
Themes
Cities and Signs. 5. Addressing Kublai Khan, Marco Polo says that no one knows better than he does that cities can’t be confused with the words people use to describe them, but that cities and words are linked regardless. As an example he offers Olivia, which is prosperous. It has palaces and lawns with sprinkler systems and white peacocks. However, the words also imply that Olivia is covered in grease and soot, and that pedestrians are crushed in the streets. People are industrious, but he insists that Kublai, being an emperor, thinks of industry in a different way.
Here, Marco begins to get at the idea that a person’s socioeconomic status influences how they understand certain ideas, like industry. To someone like Kublai Khan, who’s an emperor and doesn’t have to labor physically, work might seem idealized or noble; to people who actually have to sweat and toil, it’s likely not as romanticized. The words are the same, but they can mean entirely different things to different people.
Themes
Marco says that Olivia is free and refined and that women in canoes glide along at night, but that is only to remind Kublai that when men and women convene on the banks, someone always bursts out laughing sarcastically. Marco insists that he can’t use different words to describe Olivia. If Olivia really did have peacocks and industry, it would be a “fly-ridden hole” and Marco would have to describe it by talking about soot and sarcasm. He declares that falsehood is always in things, never in words.
Declaring that falsehood is in things, not words, Marco turns what he said earlier about Hypatia (that language is deceit) upside down. In both cases, however, he makes the case that trying to intellectually pick this apart isn’t necessarily a fruitful endeavor, even if it’s possibly entertaining. Someone is always getting fooled, either through language or through how they interpret what they see.
Themes
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Thin Cities. 4. Sophronia is composed of two half-cities. One half has a roller coaster, a carousel, and a big top. The other half is made of stone, marble, and cement and includes factories and palaces. One half is permanent and every year, the other half moves to find a new half-city. Every year, the half of stone and marble packs up to leave, abandoning the Sophronia of delights to wait until its other half returns so it can be whole again.
When the seemingly solid half of Sophronia is the one to pack up every year, it suggests another cycle of civilization—and implies that what a person can find anywhere, no matter where a place is in the cycle, are delights. The bright and fun parts of the world, in essence, are the ones that can always be found, while civilization proper is in shorter supply.
Themes
Trading Cities. 3. When travelers enter Eutropia, they’ll find a number of similar cities. Eutropia is all of these cities, but only one is inhabited at a time. When Eutropia’s inhabitants feel weary, they all pack up and move to the next Eutropia to get a new job, spouse, and hobby. There aren’t major distinctions of wealth or authority, so the system works well. Marco Polo says that Eutropia exists on an empty chessboard. Inhabitants repeat the same things over and over again with different actors. Eutropia is always the same. The god Mercury, who is fickle, worked this miracle and is worshiped in the city.
The system in Eutropia suggests that it’s normal for people to desire variety and new things, but that it’s actually not possible to ever really achieve a life of variety—these people, for instance, never truly get to do anything markedly different when they move cities. That different actors repeat the same things over and over again also suggests that on a grander scale, humanity follows a set pattern.
Themes
Cities and Eyes. 2. How a person feels influences how they see Zemrude. A person who walks through whistling will look up and see curtains and fountains. A person who goes along hanging their head will become fixated by the gutters, fish scales, and garbage. Neither aspect of the city is truer, but it’s more common to hear about the upper Zemrude from people who only remember it. Before too long, everyone looks down. It’s not impossible to learn to look up again, but it’s rare, so people walk along, looking at cellars, foundations, and wells.
The idea that a person new to Zemrude will, eventually, end up looking down suggests that enough time in one place will inevitably lead to pessimism and hopelessness. The fact that it’s hard to transition to looking up again speaks to how difficult it is to break these cycles, but it does indicate that it’s possible to do so—something that becomes important later, as residents of cities contemplate their eventual demise.
Themes
Cities and Names. 1. Marco Polo can’t say much about Aglaura, except to repeat what residents say about it. Ancient people decided Aglaura’s qualities. Marco suggests that the Aglaura that people talk about and the Aglaura in real life haven’t changed much since ancient times, but odd things are now normal and virtues are now faults. Because of this, nothing people say about Aglaura is strictly true, even if those accounts create an image of a city. As a result, the city people talk about has most of what it needs to exist, but the city that’s there exists less. Marco says that the real Aglaura is colorless and dull. And while sometimes he catches something magnificent, he can’t voice it because of what people say about Aglaura. People there don’t understand that they live in an Aglaura entirely separate from the one in real life.
Aglaura is another city built on assumptions; people assume that Aglaura is still the exact same city that ancient people described, and because they rely so heavily on those descriptions, it’s impossible to accurately describe what Aglaura is in the present. This speaks to the way that storytelling can tell the truth, but it can also obscure the truth by continuing to parrot things that are no longer correct. This, Calvino subtly suggests, is also how people talk about the modern world. People talk about it as though it’s the dream of the future, which allows them to ignore the horrors of what it is in actuality.
Themes
Kublai Khan says that he’s going to describe cities to Marco Polo so that Marco can tell him if they exist, but the cities that Marco visits are always different from those in Kublai’s imagination. Kublai says that he’s figured out how to construct a model city from which to deduce all other possible cities. It contains all the normal aspects, so he just needs to figure out the exceptions. Marco answers that his model city contains only exceptions. If his city is the most improbable, they only need to subtract exceptions until they get to real cities. However, this has a limit, as he’d eventually end up creating “cities too probable to be real.”
These logic exercises, notably, don’t get either Kublai or Marco any closer to describing cities. In other words, this is still a pointless venture for Kublai, as trying to come up with real cities out of thin air won’t help him understand the cities that are definitely a part of his empire.
Themes
