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Invisible cities italo calvino exerpt11/15/2023 ![]() ![]() When describing the fictional city of Zaira, Marco Polo says to the Khan, “I could tell you how many steps make up the streets…and the degree of the arcades’ curves … but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. “For me, studying math often feels like being led through unknown parts of unseen cities, or like trying to untangle architectural blueprints of the buildings within familiar cities.” Sometimes studying math feels like no more (or no less) than standing in the shadow of one of these buildings, unable to see the top and unsure of where the entrance is or even what lies inside. For me, studying math often feels like being led through unknown parts of unseen cities, or like trying to untangle architectural blueprints of the buildings within familiar cities. Archimedes’ famous cattle problem was presented as a poem in a letter to Eratosthenes, and the 16th-century mathematician Tartaglia revealed his discovery of how to solve certain kinds of cubic equations in a poem to another mathematician.Īside from its structure, I also find Calvino’s novel to be beautiful for the ways its abstractions and images extend themselves in my mind to my own invisible cities. Outside of rigorous studies of meter and form, mathematicians have for a long time dabbled in poetry in other ways. In his writing he presented the construction of what’s now known in the West as Pascal’s Triangle as a way of generalizing possibility for poetic metres. The10th-century Indian mathematician Halayudha wrote extensively about combinatorial mathematics in his studies of Sanskrit Prosody. The Chandaḥśāstra contains an algorithm for calculating powers of 2, discussions of the Fibonacci numbers, one of the earliest uses of the number 0 and descriptions of binary numeral systems. ![]() Even earlier than Halayudha in around the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, another Indian mathematician Pingala wrote the Chandaḥśāstra, a treatise on Sanskrit poetry. In his writing he presented the construction of what’s now known in the West as Pascal’s triangle as a way of generalizing possibility for poetic metres. The10th-century Indian mathematician Halayudha, for example, wrote extensively about combinatorial mathematics in his studies of Sanskrit prosody. OuLiPo’s focus was not new but rather a continuation of the centuries-old practice of studying mathematics and poetry together. Its members explored the possibilities for verse and prose written under predetermined structural constraints. Marco Polo speaks of 55 unique cities, each in its own short chapter titled with one of 11 possible titles, including those such as “Cities and memory,” “Hidden cities,” “Cities and names,” or “Cities and eyes.” Calvino’s structure was intentional - in a posthumously published interview in The Paris Review, Calvino said of I nvisible Cities that “the design … became the plot of a book that had no plot” and that “the architecture is the book itself.”Ĭalvino was a part of an experimental literature group known as “ OuLiPo” (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) which was formed by writers and mathematicians in France in the 1960s. Invisible Cities follows a beautiful mathematical structure that repeats chapter titles to form a cascading pattern (see here for a visual). “ Invisible Cities follows a beautiful mathematical structure that repeats chapter titles to form a cascading pattern” Soon their names and rhythms become entangled in his own imagination. Though the emperor is skeptical of the veracity of Marco Polo’s stories, he listens attentively to the descriptions of these invisible cities. The young explorer, a man by the name of Marco Polo, recounts stories of his travels to the emperor. The Khan’s own footprints of conquest are among these patterns and memories yet so, too, are the cycles of history and empire intertwined with the objects and signs of human dreams and remembrances. Nearing the end of his life, the aging emperor begins to realize that the boundless reaches of his empire encompass cities unseen and unknown to him - cities pulsating with unfamiliar patterns and memories. There’s a beautiful novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino called Invisible Cities, which narrates a fictional encounter between Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and a certain young Venetian explorer. T he novel Invisible Cities by Italian write Italo Calvino narrates a fictional encounter between Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and a certain young Venetian explorer. ![]()
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