“It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless formless ruin.”
Italo Calvino
In Invisible Cities (1972), Italo Calvino seems to contrast a rigid outline structure with a flexible textual content. The tension comprised by the numerical structure proposed in the index; stand out against the set of fluid texts which make up the subject matter of the book. The opposition between form and content seems to point to a fruitful dichotomy in the conception of the novel, linking to the aesthetics and the theories of the open work. This essay will try to investigate the structural construction of Invisible Cities by looking at its index, seeking to discuss some models of formalistic representation proposed by the criticism and the specific contribution they may, or may not, provide. Aiming to uncover possible meanings which may arise from the debate, this text will question to what extent structural complexities can be considered literary if they are not ultimately related to the culture in which a text is found.
The uses of the index as reading possibilities
By checking the index, the reader will detect a total of nine chapters in the book. A more detailed inspection will reveal an interesting progression of titles and numbers. The observer will notice this succession follows an orderly sequence and a keener eye will spot the use of a substitution principle. The criterion employed by the author is surely no random coincidence; on the contrary, it is indicative of a method applied in the formal organization of the book. Whether the reader chooses to explore it by examining the texts under the topics proposed (e.g. Cities & Desire, Cities & the Dead, etc.), or by analysing all the narratives which fall under a specific number on the index (according to the sequence 54321); Calvino’s Invisible Cities seems to unlock its texts to a range of possible ways of reading.
Although the book has the potential to be read in many directions, the concepts of what is known as “linear” reading is not completely discarded. This means that Calvino does not trespass all the fixed rules of narration and the realistic conventions; the encounter between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan persists as a solid foot in the historical realm. At the same time he conforms to a chronological past, Calvino also invests in the potential of the words, exploring the world through projections “in negative” and inverted mirrors-images. Building alternative realities, balancing the real and the fantastic, his art of narration constitutes a magic world of kaleidoscopic visions. Invisible Cities has often been compared to a hypertext, because it works in a connective style and may be approached like links on a web page. Having Umberto Eco’s book on the poetics of the open work as a stepping stone, Teresa de Laurentis refers to the “project” of the contemporary art work as being the use of “techniques of discontinuity and indetermination for the purpose of generating open series of performances or interpretations by the reader/listener/viewer”1.
The entrances to the book are many, as its’ fascicular disposition allows the blocks to be atomised without loss for its entirety. The index certainly provides a good way in, leading the reader to any combination of chapters and freely connecting within the work. But Invisible cities could not truly be called a hypertext if it did not also made way to extra-textual universes. The novel links to the work of other writers such as Borges, Cortázar, Pávitch, who also created literary games pending towards the multiplicity of realities, or a multi-linear2 text, intending to create new ways of expression. Calvino’s apology to the novel as a network in Invisible Cities seems to have been textually captured in the cities of Octavia, the spider-web city hanging over an abyss awaiting for its destruction; and in the city of Ersilia3, a ghost-town where all is left are strings indicating the connections among the people who once dwelled there. Ersilia is “a spider-web of intricate relationships seeking a form”.
In essence, Calvino’s procedure consists in using a “framework” to bring together the short narratives which form the book, giving a sense of closure. At the same time the disposition of index corroborates to recombine the texts, and multiply the interpretations; it also restrains the digressions, giving the texts limits and a sense of a unified, closed system. Calvino’s structural approach to the composition of Invisible Cities is an aspect often pointed out by the specialized criticism; it also constitutes an important characteristic of his other works. His interest in literary texts, which are somehow subject to a mathematical order, derives primarily from his associations with OULIPO group (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), the influence of the structuralist theories of Vladimir Propp, and the early works of Roland Barthes.
Calvino became interested in experiments which dealt with narrative technique, structure and linguistics due to his involvement with Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec, who were members of OULIPO, a group which applied the principles of mathematics and science toward the generation of a new literature. Calvino translated the experimental work of Queneau, Les Fleurs Bleues, to Italian, becoming, I Fiori Blu (1967)4. This association played an important part in his formation as a writer, and although he seems to diverge from it later in life, it certainly remains an influence for all his posterior output. Earlier in the 1960s the studies of Vladimir Propp, on the morphology of Russian folktale, were starting to become known among European and American scholars. Propp’s analysis of the structure of the folklore genre, revealing common basic traces among them, had a great impact on several areas of study, making way for the development of news investigations in areas such as Anthropology, Linguistics, and Literary Theory. According to MacLaughlin5, Calvino’s own interest in Italian folktales had also alerted him to similarities in the structure of all stories, making the author realise the important part structure had in the construction of texts.
The author Allain Robbe-Grillet and the critic Roland Barthes, in their respective works with the noveau roman and Le Degré Zéro de l'écriture (1953), advocated a fresh literary aesthetics, pursuing a fiction that did not breast-feed the readers (writing based on verisimilitude and omniscient narration), but provided only the observable elements from which the experienced readers could draw their owns interpretations. Calvino was also interested in the studies of Ferdinand Saussure, whose science of Semiology, or the language of signs, had an impact on his 60’s texts. According to Markey6, the author was later on influenced by Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralism theories and its sceptical critique of language as holder of the ultimate truth.
Although the origins of his affinities with scientific models are well documented; critics have been divided over the significance of mixing the preciseness of mathematics with the imaginary spirit of literature. The explanations about the significance of Calvino’s craft are frequently contradictory. Angela M. Jeannet claims that “through the intricate pattern of numbers, words, lines, and blank spaces Calvino is hunting for the food that feeds another human hunger, the need to make sense of the world”7. Jeannet defends the presence of a methodical structure set up in the index as the writer’s attempt to support, interpret and explain what is visible in human _expression. In other words, the mathematically constricted text would be a celebration of the signs, symbols, and logic devised by humanity to read the world.
Kathryn Humes refutes this explanation, coming up with a different reason to explain why Calvino employs such artifice. She believes the pattern to be clearly arbitrary, as it, at first, offers an “exceptionally orderly world”, but the “seriality embodies no values of beauty or taste; it is post-humanist and denies the network of cause and effect upon which our normal sense of order depends”8. Hume claims the division/units proposed in the index are just generic names and numbers, evidently interchangeable among each other and without a sense of purpose. “The overt orderliness is deceptive”, she states. Alternatively, she proposes the cities themselves as the bottom line of Calvino’s system, claiming the existence of “minimal units” within the text, which correspond to the appearance of repeated ideas or images throughout the book. Quoting Baker, she reinforces her incredulity about the form being an attempt at miming the reality of human _expression and communication. She concludes with Baker’s words: “the precision of structure set down in the index is itself a concise comment on the contradictory nature of any attempt to give meaning to the labyrinth of reality”9.
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