#invisible cities

[malojasnake]

— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

[lilliankillthisman]

I was told this book was a dreamlike fantasy, but this is just how things are in England?

[thebeautifulbook]

INVISIBLE CITIES by Italo Calvino. [San Diego: Harvest, 1972]

Art Binding by Dmitri Koutsipetsidis, He’s known for his great bindings on FRANKENSTEIN, THE WASTELAND, THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

source — about the design

source — read

[missbelindachandrabombs]

WHAT IS A DREAM CITY? what it says on the tin — an urban environment that you have involuntarily visited multiple, repeated times in dreams. to be a dream city, it must not be a real-life place, whether one you have physically travelled to/lived in or one that you have seen videos of.

doesn’t need to look “alien”. mine, though some of the architecture is quite distinctive, resembles a southern european city, with most of the structures seeming 19th century

the storylines that play out and characters which feature may vary, but the setting crucially must remain the same or at least very similar. certain recurring locations must be present (buildings, streets, landmarks, a river, a bar — for me at least, but once again these locations could be anything in your personal experience).

you will find that, despite logically never having “been” here in reality, you always know where to go, as if you’re a long-term resident or at least a well-prepared tourist.

the public transport is usually weird. for me it’s mostly a winding system of subway networks, complex and misleading like a labyrinth, naturally. what’s a dream city without a maze

so, that’s enough detail for you to know which button to vote for by now. no nuance. either you drop by the dream city on the regular or you don’t.

reblog for reach. and no i don’t have a clue on what i’m planning to do with the results, thanks for asking

[emcyan]

invisible cities, italo calvino // venice, italy

[calliop-e]

Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities

[noosphe-re]

In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the squares, the horse-racing track. That point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as large as a mushroom, then a soup plate. And then it becomes a full-size city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead in the earlier city and presses it toward the outside. Olinda is certainly not the only city that grows in concentric circles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring. But in other cities there remains, in the center, the old narrow girdle of the walls from which the withered spires rise, the towers, the tiled roofs, the domes, while the new quarters sprawl around them like a loosened belt. Not Olinda: the old walls expand bearing the old quarters with them, enlarged, but maintaining their proportions on a broader horizon at the edges of the city; they surround the slightly newer quarters, which also grew up on the margins and became thinner to make room for still more recent ones pressing from inside; and so, on and on, to the heart of the city, a totally new Olinda which, in its reduced dimensions retains the features and the flow of lymph of the first Olinda and of all the Olindas that have blossomed one from the other; and within this innermost circle there are already blossoming—though it is hard to discern them—the next Olinda and those that will grow after it.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

[andmaybegayer]

The Rumor Come Out: Does Marco Polo and Kublai Khan is Gay?

[regicidal-defenestration]

[transmutationisms]

How are you liking Invisible Cities? If you've read any other Calvino, would be curious to hear your thoughts!

this is my first calvino but i might pick up another soon it's super fun. i'm almost done. i'd definitely be curious to see him sustain more of an extended narrative but i love the motion of the language & the way he draws out the interplay between physical city & subjectivity. i mean i was serious when i said about walter benjamin & frédéric le play lol like this is kind of exactly what's very fun about urban design & architecture & infrastructure. idt calvino understands causally this dialectic the way i do but idc when he can describe with brilliance its effects

[peachboy27]

my favorite excerpt from calvino's invisible cities

[vuenville]

Photo credit David Cousin Marsy

Invisibles cities

[etudiantfantome]

Invisible Cities

[neutron669]

Invisibile Cities of Italo Calvino by Dave McKean

[teethburied]

…A Valparaíso (1963) dir. Joris Ivens