Invisible Cities

by

Italo Calvino

Themes and Colors
Memory, Perception, and Experience Theme Icon
Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control Theme Icon
Cycles and Civilization Theme Icon
Modernity Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Invisible Cities, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Memory, Perception, and Experience

Invisible Cities is structured as a fictional conversation between the real-life historical figures Marco Polo, a Venetian tradesman, and Kublai Khan, the emperor of the Mongol Empire. Over the course of the novel, Marco leaves to travel the empire and returns to tell Kublai about different cities in the empire, all of which are named after different women. However, Kublai begins to suspect that Marco is making his cities up and indeed, Marco…

read analysis of Memory, Perception, and Experience

Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control

Kublai Khan wants to hear Marco Polo’s stories—and those of his other merchants—primarily because he believes that if he can learn about every city in his empire, he’ll be able to control the empire. As Marco returns from his journeys and regales Kublai with tales of yet more cities that seem increasingly unreal, Kublai doubles down on his attempts to make definite sense of what he’s hearing. In this way, Calvino seems to suggest…

read analysis of Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control

Cycles and Civilization

As Marco Polo describes cities, he pays close attention to cities that contain elements of both wonder and absolute horror. Not every place, he suggests, is entirely good—within every beautiful city, an element of darkness lurks, waiting to manifest itself. Especially in the latter half of the novel, when his cities seem to more closely mimic real ones, Calvino seems to suggest that the course of human history, as well as an individual’s experience of…

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Modernity

Despite the beautiful passages within Invisible Cities—and despite the only two characters being from the 13th century—the world that Invisible Cities presents is neither entirely beautiful nor a historically accurate reflection of the world as it was hundreds of years ago. Instead, the novel depicts an attempt by the powerful (as represented by the emperor Kublai Khan) to understand how the modern world came to a state that, the novel suggests, is horrific…

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