22nd Jan, 2020: Meenal Sutaria
The timeline made by us on Italo Calvino’s life included a lot of aspects. We tried to focus on his early life, education and works. The main idea behind this depiction was to show what inspired him to write and the reasons for his various writings.
The transition from one time period to another is important in this aspect since it shows a change in his writing style and background as well.
This is the timeline made by us:
The book ‘Invisible Cities’ written by him, is a story about an emperor named Kublai Khan, who asks Marco Polo to travel around his kingdom and tell him the tales of the different cities visited by him.
Marco Polo divides these cities into different categories such as, Cities and Memories, Cities and Desires, Cities and the Dead and so on. Under these categories, he again places various cities and names them after a woman’s name. As an example he uses Isidora, Anastasia, Argia, Dorothea and so on.
A vivid discussion on these cities and how they have been created made us imagine them and think about the different possibilities. Each city is different from the other. Some of these differences are huge which make these cities very unique, having their own qualities.
Overall, the writing style used in this book, gives us an entire picture of how the cities have been built. The small comparisons also make us think about the state of mind of the author while roaming through these cities. It gives a very vivid picture of the places that the author has tried to describe in each scenario.
The Idealist 