Calling all Saussaure fanatics and linguists: this book is for you.
Calvino's Invisible Cities has been on my TBR list forever. I have always been daunted to tackle the text alone, however, without guidance or instruction through Calvino's notoriously complex meta-text. So when I finally decided to read Invisible Cities, I made sure I was accompanied by my partner, who was down to begin our impromptu book club with a mind-warping narrative, and my MA coursework on Ferdinand de Saussure. Like I said: this text is not for the faint of heart. Nor for the linguistically hesitant. Because in my opinion, the whole book can be read as an ode to Saussaure's theory on language. Namely, that we can only identify or "know" something not by objective perception, but rather by its negative relationship to other things.
For those of you who did not subject yourself to a degree that required copious hours of philosophical and linguistic study for an inordinate amount of money: Saussure was a nineteenth-century Swiss linguist whose perspective on semiotics (the study and science of signs) has continued to inform modern day linguistic, language, and English studies. You can read more about him here, although if you have the time and commitment, I would try and tackle some of his texts yourself. Just remember to take lots of breaks and have treats at the ready as you muddle your way through.
One of Saussure's most influential theories was that of the negative relationality that informs our understanding of language. This system of difference that Saussure describes purports that we only know something because we know that it is not a whole host of other things. It is this negative relationship to other things that situate a word within a language, not the actual word itself. So if we are trying to "know" a word, we are just "knowing" or identifying the relationality it has to other words. This makes objectivity null and void, but don't dwell too much on that realization. I take from Saussure's semiotics an unsettling but hopeful truth that all of society, culture, and language operate on an under-valued and inherent relationality. Everything is relational, and thus everything is ongoing, ever-changing. Including the cities and the kind of storytelling Calvino creates within Invisible Cities.
Take, for example, the loud absence of Venice in Marco Polo's recounting of his travels in Invisible Cities. When the Khan asks Marco why he never speaks of Venice, Marco replies "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice." The city or thing the Khan believes Marco to be describing is a description of a different thing: Venice. To get to Venice, however, Marco can not speak of Venice. Instead, Marco describes and explores other cities. But when you are speaking of other cities, Marco is also inherently speaking of Venice. Polo's roundabout cartography appears annoyingly contradictory if you hold fast to beliefs of objectivity and ideal forms. If, however, you employ Saussaure's understanding of relationality and a system of difference, Marco's paradox becomes incredibly compelling.
We only know and can place a thing by first knowing and placing other things. This shaky reality is at once terrifying as it is pregnant with the possibility of creation, memory, and meaning-making. As a reader and creative, this kind of relationality and knowing is incredibly exciting; it is how enthralling books, like Invisible Cities, are made to endure the passage of place, time, and cultural fads.
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