Anthony Arpin
Assignment One
Invisible Cities
City name; favorite word or phrase; theme.
Diomira; crystal theatre; repetition.
Isidora; bloody brawls among the bettors; wants came too late.
Dorothea; walls flanking seven gates; materials have meaning.
Zaira; hanged usurper’s feet; the walls speak.
Anastasia; golden pheasant; work is love.
Tamara; the city says everything you must think; a picture is a thousand words, a city many more.
Zora; a musical score where not a note can be altered or displaced; unity.
Despina; an embroidered saddle with glittering fring between two spotted humps; from where you come is the opposite of where you go.
Zirma; puma on a leash; déjà vu.
Isaura; windlasses of the norias; rising city.
Maurilia; young ladies with white parasols; same name, different story.
Fedora; avenue reserved for elephants; failed projections.
Zoe; leprosarium; undistinguishable.
Zenobia; cone-roofed belvederes; unnecessary wants.
Euphemia; junks rocking; shared memory.
Zobeide; dreamed chase; one persons dreams don’t translate for others.
Hypatia; amorous trepidation; traded places.
Armilla; acquatic realm; water as aphrodisiac.
Chloe; ostrich-plume fan; sexually repressed.
Valdrada; murdering of the images; distorted perception.
Olivia; mullioned windows; no truth in things.
Sophronia; the shout suspended from the cart of the headlong roller coaster; city as a circus.
Eutropia; they open alternate mouths in identical yawns; continuously changing but never different.
Zemrude; ill-humor of the day before; perception not easily changed.
Aglaura; what was bizarre has become usual; words fail to account for anything.
Octavia; spider-web city; nothing good lasts forever.
Ersilia; relationship of blood; complexities will collapse.
Baucis; pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foliage; inhabitant’s intentions unknown.
Leandra; not infrequently they quarrel; dogs and rats.
Melania; disinherited; city a ply; inhabitants actors.
Esmeralda; zigzag; traveling is part of the destination.
Phyllis; tracery balustrades; when travel becomes primary, rest is ignored.
Pyrrha; this air in which a yellowish dust flies; thoughts don’t materialize.
Adelma; alien faces will appear; rebirth.
Eudoxia; symmetrical motives; reflection.
Moriana; coral columns; polar opposites.
Clarice; chicken runs; transition.
Eusapia; mezzosopranos; imitation.
Leonia; porcelain dinner services; retribution.
Irene; shadows of gardens; identity is in the eye of the beholder.
Argia; worm tunnels; burial grounds.
Thekla; the metal armatures; inspiration.
Trude; goblets; consistency across space and time.
Laudomia; ants’ eggs; finite future.
Perinthia; harmony of the firmament; misunderstood memory.
Procopia; lips stained by blackberries; unstable growth.
Raissa; general grim gaze; glimmer of hope.
Cecilia; mangy goats; nature lost.
Marozia; transparent as a dragonfly; persistence in change.
Penthesilea; opaque polyhedrons; scattered center.
Theodora; lethargy; impossible elimination.
Berenice; sycophants; all things that will be are now.
Marco Polo is the narrator in Calvino’s work. Marco Polo was a great explorer of the lands in the east not set foot in by westerners. Calvino use’s Marco Polo as one who described unknown cities to describe a much known city, so as to give it perspective from a foreigner. Calvino tells the tales from first person, but this changed to third person, probably because once it is known that all the cities are one and the same, Venice, (and that if he speaks of Venice, it will disappear), he switches to third person temporarily, using a morbid voice, killing himself so that he does not kill Venice.
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