We discussed about all the activities we’ve done in the Seminar class, Italo Calvino, we revised all the ideologies and writing styles of him. We talked about how his writing style changed because of his experience.

We then started to talk about his book- Invisible Cities. We pointed out how the different cities were related to each other in some way or the other and also how all the cities mentioned in the book are in Venice, Italy. This book was basically 55 different ways to describe Venice. We did an activity in which Ma’am told us to point out some interesting things from 2-3 . cities that we had read. We did a quick read of the cities we decided to talk about and Ma’am asked each of us some interesting things that caught our eyes or a brief of the cities we read and we had to share it with the class. The cities which I chose were:

Adelma:

In Adelma, Marco Polo begins to contemplate his own death. This is extremely disturbing for him, which suggests that contemplating the end, either of one’s own life or of humanity on a larger scale, is universally unsettling. Beginning to wonder if he looks dead to Adelma’s other residents shows that as he begins to gain this perspective, he’s able to look outside himself and think of how other people interpret the world around them in the same way.

Eudoxia:

Marco Polo doesn’t say anything about the carpet being a direct representation of Eudoxia; rather the carpet seems to be a representation as people want it to seem that way- once again, people’s perspectives change how they look at the city. However, this city takes things a step further by casting doubt on whether the carpet truly is divine, or if people are just imposing artificial significance on it. The idea that Eudoxia is the map of the universe is far less comforting, given how confusing, dirty, and doomed the city sounds.

Aglaura:

Aglaura is another city built on assumptions; people assume that Aglaura is still the exact same city that ancient people described, and because they rely so heavily on those descriptions, it’s impossible to accurately describe what Aglaura is in the present. This speaks to the way that storytelling can tell the truth, but it can also obscure the truth by continuing to parrot things that are no longer correct. This, Calvino subtly suggests, is also how people talk about the modern world. People talk about it as though it’s the dream of the future, which allows them to ignore the horrors of what it is in actuality.

As I said before, we noticed how cities had the same ideology like how Adelma and Eudoxia express the same meaning- perspective. By doing this activity we saw how each and everyone found few things interesting in these cities and also how people who chose the same city still had different

Ma’am gave us another activity to do at home. We had to draw 3 different ways to represent a city within a 3×3 inches box, it can be abstract but still recognisable.