Jandy’s Anthology

Invisible Cities

by Italo Calvino

selections

Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man’s place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else’s present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches…..Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.

A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past.

For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have only spoken of Irene.

Filed under: 20th-century, Italy, fiction on December 20th, 2006