Visualizing the Invisible: A study of narrative & compositional structure in Calvino’s Invisible Cities (original) (raw)

Calvino’s Invisible Cities has been a popular design studio exercise in architecture schools. The general tendency in these exercises has been to concentrate on the literal descriptions of places. Nevertheless, reading many of Calvino’s novels, especially Invisible Cities, one has a distinct feeling that there is not only an inherent temporal logic to its composition, as we would expect in all narratives, but rather a more particular suggestion of an intricate set of spatial relationships in its construction. One level of meaning can be read purely in the content, while the compositional structure seems to hint at another dimension of meaning. One can follow the linear succession of pages and read it sequentially, and, at the same time, it is possible to relate compositional units to form meaningful patterns. The meaning embedded in the content can thus be distinguished from the meaning constructed through the structure. The paper explores the structure of the novel, revealing, that while there is a wealth of visual images one is led to suspect the presence of a more abstract shape that underlies the book and that constitutes an additional and perhaps deeper layer of meaning. The analysis of Invisible Cities shows that a sequential reading is related to the content, and thus, leads to an experiential understanding. In contrast to this, the synchronic understanding of the whole reveals the formal shape underlying the compositions and their parts. The analysis demonstrates that it is in this abstract shape that the construction and transformation of meaning can be understood. The notion of transformation in Invisible Cities is synchronically apparent through Calvino's narration of the 55 imaginary cities woven around an abstract figure of symmetry and metaphor, while the representational aspect is more diachronic (sequential), and is evident in the explicit reference to the game of chess in the content and the implicit formal analog adopted in the compositional structure. The two levels at which the composition operate - linear succession of pages can be contrasted with the abstract relationship of symmetry and metaphor. Ultimately bringing forth a much deeper issue of how in literature concepts and shapes are related. This in turn signifies the relation between concepts and space, since configured space can be considered as shape. In Invisible Cities, concepts are represented in the form of compositional units. These are arranged in a relational pattern that imparts an abstract shape to the novel. It is the spatial logic that is at work here. The study underscores the fact that generally in reading literature, the proclivity to initially grasp the narrative rather than the compositional structure is often reversed in architecture, and the investigation of the compositional structure in literature enriches the narrative itself contributing to creative design exercises.