Imaginations and Utopias

Kublai asks Marco Polo, “I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden” (103). If we are looking at it in a metaliterary way, we are asking Calvino how he has had time to visit all these cities, when all he does is sit in a room.

The first italic part in section seven made me think about imagination. Are all the cities, their dialogue, their relationship imagined? Is he trying to say that once we grow up we may loose our imagination, but we try hard to keep it, and that we try hard to not grow up?  On the other hand, can he also be trying to say we replace all the evil in the world with good things, “Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars… as they swift through a rubbish heap…wastepaper…while drunk on the few sips of bad wine…” (104).

The first thing that caught my attention in Cities & Eyes 5 was the first sentence in the last paragraph, “ From one part to the other, the city seems to continue, in perspective, multiplying it repertory of images” (105). This is EXACTLY like our minds, our imagination. We never stop thinking. Our imagination is never ending. In the quote above, our mind is the city and our imagination represents the word continue. Our imagination continues. Even though we are getting older, and we have less time to pretend and imagine, we still have some of it left in us.

Cities & the Dead 3 made me think that maybe Calvino is making fun of utopias.  First, the city’s name is Eusapia, it kind of looks like the word utopia. Secondly, the part that he could be making fun of utopias is when he says, “ the inhabitants have constructed an identical copy of their city underground…all corpses, dried…” (109). The underground seems like a description of hell, and that is not what you would find in a utopia. Then it says that they put the dead corpses and skeletons in dancing positions or seated around tables. It is the complete opposite of a utopia. They could be trying to be perfect and even make the dead look happy and joyful, but it is just creepy.

The last sentence really caught my attention, “…there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead,” (110). Is that just like society today? We are all just the same and copying one another. The dead are people who no longer are original while the people living above the underground are people who still have a bit of originality. “They say…actually it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia…” (110). In my mind, the dead seem like the people who copy original ideas while the upper part are the original people. It is said that the copiers were the ones who created the people who are original, and now we cannot see the difference between the two any more.