Denouement

It has come to an end. Though it opened up many doors to questions. Finishing Invisible Cities I learned what Calvino really meant to write. Concentrating more on Marco Polo's and Kublai Khan's dialogue, Calvino tried to explain to us the readers how each city is represented by his memories as we try to figure the meanings behind it. We find out that all the cities are made up of Marco Polo's hometown of Venice,

which represents his old life. Each time Khan asks about the cities and its importance, Polo shows how each representation depends on each person. Throughout the book though, Calvino shows what todays society revolves around in Cities and Memories and Cities and Desires. We can see the evidence of religion, consumerism, jealousy and conflicts among the citizens. However, I do not understand the relevance this has with Calvino's interpretation on life. Calvino's use of chess represents the way life takes a turn. There are choices that will influence the decisions you take at the end either winning or loosing.

What really impacted me was the ending. "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."(165). Calvino describes that the inferno is our everyday lives. After looking at Khan's atlas we look for every possible city there is in our imagination but the final place is where we were all along, in Dante's Inferno. We just need to use our imagination to find the perfect city even though it will never happen.

Cities and Thrones

Watching the season finale of Game of Thrones gave me an idea to compare one of Westeros' cities with one of Calvino's in Invisible Cities. Both Game of Thrones and Invisible Cities have many places to choose from each having its own unique characteristics. I will be comparing Qarth, the gateway of commerce and culture between the east and west, and the north and south of Westeros with Despina, a city in which merchants by land and sea come to trade. Though they might be physically alike, the meaning behind the cities might be a lot different.

Qarth is in the centre of Westeros, granting trade to all the territories surrounded by desert and sea. It's very well known for its wealth and the powerful guilds that attempt to play a role in the governance of the city. It is significant to the story of Game of Thrones as it is the location where Daenerys is kept with her dragons and then the ruler of the city. When Daenerys arrived with her people, the city resembled hope of her achievement in returning to the iron throne. Later it was revealed that the warlocks of the city used her to gain power from her dragons. Deception. At the end when she finally surpassed all obstacles, the city represented power as she had complete control of it.

Despina is also a merchant city that is surrounded by both desert and sea. Its people come by camel and by ships to visit the city of Despina and its women. This city is under the Cities and Desires section describing the desires that lay in Despina. Though, the desires that lay in despina, as mentioned in another blog post, are visiting it by land, when coming by sea, and vise versa. It shows us the jealousy that the city evokes to the visitor.

Both cities are physically same and have desires that attract the visitor. The salvation of Daenerys that Qarth brought to her and her people. The desire of visiting and arriving by land and by sea attracts the visitors coming to Despina. These desires change over time and finally are what make these two cities what they are.

Spectrum

Taking a break from all those wonderful cities that Marco Polo has described since now I wanted to continue onto Calvino's main story, MArco Polo and Kublai Khan. As I mentioned in my first blog of Invisible Cities has metaliterature in it. This is confusing me right now because I'm not getting what the plot of the story is. Though, I can see how Calvino's style of writing is represented by Marco Polo's way of describing his journeys through cities to Kublai Khan.

By including the dialogues between Marco and Kublai, Calvino is given the chance to intervene as Marco and subliminally show his style of writing. “Kublai Khan had noticed that Marco Polo's cities resembled one another” (Page 28). Showing that Khan notices this, he infers that the reader will also notice the resemblance between a city with another as in metaliterature, Khan is the reader, just like us.

Have you ever had those moments where your explaining something and you are lost for words? Well this happens to Calvino, represented with Marco Polo, when he would much rather show than tell. "But you would have said that communication between them was less happy than in the past: to be sure, words were more useful than objects and gestures in listing the most important things of every province and city... and yet when Polo began to talk about how his life must be in those places, day after day, evening after evening, words failed him, and little by little, he went back to relying on gestures, grimaces , glances." (Page 39). We can see that in some parts when describing the cities he shows us how it is rather than straight up telling us. Ironically, he uses words in order to show us, obviously its the only way. 

It is interesting to see how both these characters behaviors reflect upon Calvino's writing. Put some personality in there and it'll just make it more interesting.  

"And the fever getting higher"

I have come to notice that there are five cities that are either in memory, desire, have signs etc.... Now I'm concentrating on Cities and Desires. Again we are introduced to five new cities: Dorothea, Anastasia, Despina, Fedora and Zobeide. These cities are filled with desires that are not sufficient in quenching the visitors thirst for more.

"Before then I had only the desert and the caravan routes. In the years that followed, my eyes returned to contemplate the desert expanses and the caravan routes; but now I know this path is the only one of the many that opened before me on that morning in Dorothea" (Cities and Desires 1). With its magnificent quarters and women in Dorothea, it is every man's desire to be there. Though staying there to long for visitors will want them to go back having their desires fulfilled.
The desire to own and buy everything is found in Anastasia. Desires surrounds finally drags oneself into manipulation becoming the slave of consumerism.
"The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea."( City and desire 3). Despina shows each visitor with what he wants to see. Though, the visitor coming by sea has already been quenched by its desire and is repeatedly experiencing the same journey and willing to go by land and vise versa with the land visitor.
Fedora, the city in which its citizens go to museums in search of what could have been their city. Desires not becoming real lead them to fantasize.
"After the dream they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream." (Cities and Desires 5). Zobeide, the city that was built to be something else. The desire to pursue a dream meant to build something fraud.

Each desire in the city brought unhappiness to its people as desire started to grow and grow never being fulfilled.

Città Invisibili

We find ourselves back to the beginning. Allegory has found its way to ask us to analyze it once more. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is filled with allegories, literal and figurative meanings that are just asking to be found and cracked open. This time they brought a friend along, metaliterature. "Metaliterature: writings about writing; any written discussinganother text."(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metaliterature)

"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young venetian with greater attention and curiosity that he shows any other messenger or explorer of his."(page 5).
Reading the first page was already a work finding what each character meant in the three literary figures. As a class we found out that Marco Polo represents knowledge and power, Kublai Khan represents Power of the east, both a figurative level. Now, in a metaliterature level Marco Polo is the writer (speaker) and Kublai Khan is the reader (listener). But we missed something, the empire in which both our protagonists live in represents reality in the figurative level an oneself in metaliterature.

So I began with five Cities and Memories, Zaira, Zora, Maurilia, Diomira and Isidora. All cities encrypted into memories with slight effects onto the visitor. Diomira, the city in which leaves the visitor with the memory a better experience from the last visit and envy to those who have already seen such beauty.
Isidora, a city made up of ones dreams of youth that are finally made true when old. Its spial staircase representing life and aging indicate how the old men of the city only live in a memory. "Desires are already memories." (Cities and Memory 2).
Zaira, its descriptions only contains its past. The past carved likes lines on ones hands indicate it is there for a lifetime remembering what it is made of.
Zora, the city in which is full of knowledge but once it is remembered it disappears as it has not present. "But in vain I set out to visit the city: forced to be more easily remembered, Zora has languished, disintegrated, disappeared. The earth has forgotten her." (Cities and Memories 4).
Maurilia, the final memory city is forgotten by what it was before with the only memory contained in postcards. Showing only the beauty of Maurilia on the postcards, the past and the reality are forgotten.  
All five cities have one thing in common, and that is that in all of them memories prevent people from enjoying life.

Genes, Memes, Survival Machines

I didn't quite get which kind of meme Dawkins was talking about so I'll just leave this here.

Anyway, in chapter eleven Dawkins comes back with another concept of replication, this time not physical but cultural, memes. He doesn't emphasize on how dolphins or ants have tea time or how eagles play more and more video games as the years go by but he focuses on us humans.

He starts by stating we humans have many memes that have changed through time but one specific that continues to this day after many years is the famous, Does God Exist? “God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or ineffective power, in the environment provided by human culture.” (page 193) This is a controversial matter that has been disputed for many years leading to wars and changes in world history. Though, how can people believe in something that has barely any evidence to support its existence? Faith, as Dawkins describes, is a meme for blind faith that can replicate it self. People can go on believing and spreading faith for as long as they want without any backing up.

Though the our physical characteristics have a limited amount of time until they don't show up anymore through passing generations, memes have a longer life spam than genes. This means that ideas, from genes' survival machines, surpasses what was ideally genes mission to fulfill its needs. 

Symbiosis

Completing the tenth chapter of The Selfish Gene, I feel as if I could ace the Biology exam at any moment. What Dawkins has taught me fascinates me. Especially in this chapter where he describes how fungi co-exist with termites for each others' benefits, which is called symbiosis. Sure, I already knew types of symbiosis as oxpeckers (birds), eat ticks off of zebras to feed themselves and help the zebras get free of parasites. Although, I had never heard of plants and insects helping each other out for their own benefits for survival. That really impressed me. 

Putting this chapter in practice, I can see how this may benefit humans if they use reciprocal altruism. Doing a favor for another can be useful when you need it, though you can't be so sure if you'll fall into a scheming trap of a cheater and you end up as a sucker. When people ask me for favors, I nervously ask what they need hoping it won't be a huge one. I find myself to be somewhere in between a Grudger and a Sucker. looks like my genes are not selfish enough to be a Cheat. 

Vocabulary used: 

Reciprocal altruism (P. 166): Doing a favor to another, expecting to later benefit from this.

Symbiosis (P. 181): Also known as mutualism, this is the “relationship of mutual benefit between members of different species.”

Sucker (P. 184): An animal that helps another even if the other won’t help in return, “indiscriminate altruists.”

Cheat (P. 184): “Gain benefits without paying the costs.”

Grudger (P. 185): Only help those who help them in return.