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The Kublai Khan does not believe all the descriptions of exotic cities that he hears. But I do.
I do, because Italo Calvino, the Italian fabulist, compels the reader to listen with his imagination to his marvelous descriptions of Invisible Cities (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1974, translated by William Weaver). In this dream journey, first published in 1972, Calvino uses words as bricks to construct the towers and spires for a vast empire of imaginary cities and towns.
He conjures the city of Sophronia, made up of two half-cities-one of carousels and circus tents, the other of stone palaces, factories, monuments. One half is temporary, moved every half-year to another half-city. But it's not the carnival and circus tents but the marble pediments, the monuments, the petroleum refinery that stay only briefly, then vanish, and return. He describes Octavia, a spiderweb city, with ropes and catwalks strung between two precipices; instead of rising up, it hangs from the web with rope ladders, hammocks, baskets, and dumbwaiters.
These invisible cities, and many more, are described by an imaginary Marco Polo to an imaginary Kublai Khan, who wants to learn about the wondrous far-flung cities in his vast empire. At one point, Marco Polo tells him, "Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know." The Khan protests: "there is still one of which you never speak...Venice." And Marco Polo answers, "Every time I describe a city, I am...