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One of my favorite passages of prose is from Calvino's "Invisible Cities"; I can't pass up the opportunity to share it on HN: "When a man rides a long time thr
by realbarack 7y ago
One of my favorite passages of prose is from Calvino's "Invisible Cities"; I can't pass up the opportunity to share it on HN:
"When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories."
- spbaar 7y agoInvisible cities is the only "fictional" book I've read absolutely worth using a highlighter on. It's great to read a few pages here and there
- bromuro 7y ago“Le città invisibili” is a multi layered book. I’ve read it hundreds of times - just contemplate the beauty of the prose, humble, innocent, yet wise and deep. In Italian is even more astonishing.
- retsibsi 7y agoInvisible cities was too visual for me (I have a weak visual imagination, so I can't appreciate books that rely too heavily on images), but I really liked If On A Winter's Night a Traveler, and this quote reminds me that I want to read more Calvino. Would you (or anyone else here) recommend another book of his, given those preferences/weaknesses of mine?
- riffraff 7y agoit's been a while since I read it, and it wasn't my favourite, but I believe Palomar[0] was much less visual than Invisible Cities. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Palomar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Palomar
- ycombinete 7y agoHis letters. Wonderfully written, and not visual at all.
- retsibsi 7y agoThanks! Not something I would have naturally gravitated to, but I think I might enjoy them.
- alberto_ol 7y agoItalian here. I read all Calvino's novels and short-stories in high school. I would suggest The Nonexistent Knight and Cosmicomics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nonexistent_Knight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nonexistent_Knight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicomics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicomics
- retsibsi 7y agoThanks! Cosmicomics rings a bell as something I'd considered reading but never got around to, and those mini-synopses on the Wikipedia page are pretty enticing.
- kaffeemitsahne 7y agoI have no visual imagination at all, but loved Invisible Cities. Just wanted to mention this so other non-imagers don't discard this wonderful book :)
- qfwfq_ 7y agoCosmicomics has long been my single favorite collection of written work. Calvino's amazing.
- kristianov 7y agoUsername checks out!
- galaxyLogic 7y agoYes that's the best I think, and very suitable for HN audience
- rbrtdrmpc- 7y agoThe Castle of Crossed Destinies (Il castello dei destini incrociati), it helps having visual imagination on this too, but i think is less intensive that Invisible Cities (Città invisibili) and Marcovaldo too. p.s. Italian here too, though i never had the chance to read much of him during highschool
- RobertKerans 7y agoIf you're an English [native] speaker, The Baron in the Trees just received a very nice new English translation (published by Penguin on their Vintage Classics imprint in the UK). I love Calvino so much as an writer, but that's probably my favourite and the one I find I can recommend most successfully; it's imo more straightforward than his other more famous books, with less of the linguistic games.
- piffey 7y agoSo glad you posted this. Baron In The Trees is one of my favorite books and it has been so long since I read it. I'll be picking up that new translation.
- mcphage 7y agoNumbers in the Dark (https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Dark-Italo-Calvino/dp/0544146425 https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Dark-Italo-Calvino/dp/0544146...) has a wide variety of stories, it's a good starting point.
- daviday 7y agoSix Memos for the Next Millennium is outstanding
- bschne 7y agoThis is another one that really stuck with me: "But with all this, I would not be telling you the city's true essence; for while the description of Anastasia awakens desires one at a time only to force you to stifle them, when you are in the heart of Anastasia one morning your desires waken all at once and surround you. The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave."