(My analysis of the book is a true stream of conscienceness that may appear random at times. I jump from idea to idea in pure excitement over everything one can gather and interpret from Calvino's work and I will probably being adding more soon enough.)
Calvino uses interesting transitions in his novel
Invisible Cities. The transition I found most obvious was actually one of the first. At the end of Cities & Memory 2, Calvino says "Desires are already memories." (page 8.) The section directly after that, curiously enough is Cities & Desire 1. It is quite obvious Calvino is trying to tie the two sections together here and he does so quite obviously. I feel this proves the idea that one cannot read the sections out of order. If you try to read all of the City & Memory sections without reading everything in between, you will be lost and unable to fully comprehend the point. To understand the idea of desire, you will in turn better understand the idea of memory, and so on.
Calvino also uses a very noticeable pattern. The numbers of the sections go as follows: (1), (2, 1), (3, 2, 1), (4, 3, 2, 1), (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)... The pattern is a constant rise and fall of numbers. When the book itself is turned sideways and opened to the table of contents, this pattern forms a visual cityscape. The changing lengths of the titles, rising and falling, act like the buildings of a city on the horizon. This number pattern therefore not only makes the novel more cohesive by allowing the sections to flow together better, but also allows the reader to find this visual phenomena of text.
Calvino, in describing the cities, at times appears to not be talking about a city at all. The names he chooses to use are all female names and in occasional passages, it truly appears that he is describing a person. The section of Anastasia was the one I first truly noticed this in. Although Calvino constantly mentions that he is discussing a city, the words he uses feel like descriptions of a woman or love. "... 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" (page 12.) This passage could easily be a description of a person falling in love with another person. On either side of the passage is the word "city" which pulled me back down to reality and kept me in tune with the passage in its entirety. But while these words floated through my mind, I couldn't help but drift into a daydream of an alternative, more beautiful meaning.
As I stated in my previous post, I also enjoyed thinking about the idea of looking at things again and again from all different angles and seeing something new each time. I found it so very interesting when I learned all the descriptions were of a single city. As always, I drifted into another "mental rant." This one was about how I had experienced this idea of multiple views. New York is one of my favorite cities. I have been there so many times, stayed in different hotels, and been in different buildings. Each view and angle is always just ever so different. There is the bustling, loud, fun times square and then there is the quiet, solemn spot where the twin towers used to stand. When describing the two areas, it would sound as if I was describing different cities, but both descriptions are necessary to explain to someone who had never been to New York before what it is really like.
