City: “Quote from passage” – My own theme
Diomira: “and who think they were happy, that time.” – Reminiscence, nostalgia
Isidora: “Desires are already memories.” – Loss of time
Dorothea: “bergamot, sturgeon roe, astrolabes, amethysts” – Plentiful, advantage
Kublai: “does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand” – Calculation
Anastasia: “concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it” – deception, desires not always what they seem
Tamara: “a print in the sand indicates a tiger’s passage; a marsh announces a vein of water” – association, cause/effect
Zora: “a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember” – predictability, routine
Despina: “a camel from whose pack hang wineskins and bags of candied fruit” – multifaceted, complexity, perspective
Zirma: “lunatic teetering on a skyscraper’s cornice” – discordance, discontentment
Isaura: “the rock’s calcareous sky” – dependence, sustenance
Maurilia: “the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station” – advancement, changes
Fedora: “what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe” – possibility, opportunity
Zoe: “the pine cone of pagodas” – equality, uniformity
Zenobia: “a-flutter with banners and ribbons” – uniqueness, adjustment, getting used to what you have
Euphemia: “memory is traded at every solstice and at every equinox” – association, passing on of one’s knowledge
Zobeide – “this ugly city, this trap” – labyrinth, chasing the unfindable
Hypatia – “There is no language without deceit” – misconception, outside the box thinking
Armilla – “Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been demolished…I do not know” – essentials, water as the basis of life
Chloe – “a blind man with a cheetah on a leash” – forbidden contact/interaction
Valdrada – “copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror” – imitation
Olivia – “shrouded in a cloud of soot and grease that sticks to the houses” – conflict, bustling contradiction
Sophronia – “before the caravan returns and a complete life can begin again” – complementary aspects
Eutropia – “Mercury, god of the fickle…worked this ambiguous miracle” – rotation
Zemrude – “finding again each morning the ill-humor of the day before, encrusted at the foot of the walls” – mindset, attitude
Aglaura – “punctilious regard for rules” – image, concepts
Octavia – “hempen strands” – unsteady, accepting of fate
Ersilia – “spider-webs of intricate relationships seeking a form” – intertwinings
Baucis – “long flamingo legs” – curious (in more than one way - both odd and seeking knowledge)
Leandra – “huffing, bantering, amid ironic, stifled laughter” – growth, change
Melania – “miserly father” – metamorphosis, evolution
Esmerelda – “The most fixed and calm lives in Esmerelda are spent without any repetition” – intricacy
Phyllis – “Millions of eyes look up at windows, bridges, capers” – remnants, remains
Pyrrha – “a figure or a fragment or glimmer” – discovery
Adelma – “This means the beyond is not happy” – existence
Moriana – “coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine” – conflict/contrast
Clarice – “tormented history” – changing, evolving, shifting
Eusapia – “sheathed in yellow skin” – reversal
Leonia – “The fact is that street cleaners are welcomed like angels, and their task…is surrounded by a respectful silence, like a ritual that inspires devotion” – wastefulness
Irene – “name for a city in the distance, and if you approach it, it changes” – question of existence
Argia – “on every star another stairway is set in negative” – suffocation, entrapment
Thekla – “The sky is filled with stars. ‘There is the blueprint,’ they say.” – reaching the unattainable
Trude – “Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And already I wanted to leave” – déjà vu, inescapable surroundings
Laudomia - “The streets of the Laudomia of the dead are just wide enough to allow the gravedigger’s cart to pass” – fear of unknown, reincarnation, death
Perinthia – “the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters” – uncertainty of religion and faith
Procopia – “to shift my feet I have to disturb those crouching on the floor” – expansion, growth
Raissa – “the windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes” – finding positivity in unhappiness
Cecilia – “‘My goats recognize the grass on the traffic island’” – perspective, point of view
Marozia – “batlike overcoats” – sense of dualism within the city
Penthesilea – “like a lake with low shores lost in swamps” – confusion, direction
Theodora – “When the sky was cleared of condors, they had to face the propagation of serpents” – resilience of dirt and filth
Berenice – “especially their pronunciation of commas and parentheses” – intrinsic unfairness of life
Who is the narrator in Calvino’s work? The narrator in Calvino’s piece is Venetian explorer, Marco Polo, who is telling stories of the cities to emperor Kublai Khan.
What historical significance does this have and why would a contemporary author make such a choice? I felt that having Marco Polo as the narrator but also mentioning modern things such as skyscrapers, traffic islands, etc., displays the evolution of the cities and I felt that the era in which each city existed varied throughout the novel.
What person/point of view does the author choose to tell his tales from? The narrator mostly tells the stories from a first person point of view, sometimes using the word “I” and sometimes just telling it from an assumed first person perspective.
Does this change? This doesn’t necessarily change, but sometimes seems as if it does. For example, the first city does not mention Marco specifically, only “the man who arrives there on a September evening,” which could possibly be a third person narrator referring to Marco Polo, or simply Polo himself speaking of another man.
Why do you think this is? I found that there were several instances where points of view and perspectives were themes within cities, and I think this variance in point of view of the narration ties into that.
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