![]() Instead of God’s gaze into the unknown distance (as on the Hereford map), Renaissance cartographers imagined the Ptolemaic human gaze looking down on the Earth. In a sense the Aleph is a goal of cartography, its theology. Borges’ mystical Aleph on the other hand contains the whole cosmos within its confines (no bigger than the globe held by God on the Hereford map). Its size reminds us of the world’s shrinkage due to the advancing technology of transport and communications of the 20th century. In the Psalter mappa mundi, which is surmounted by an illustration of the Last Judgement, God holds a little dark red ball, the size of a golf ball – the world. In Dante’s time the European ‘mappa mundi’ depicted one single landmass, the Northern Hemisphere, with Jerusalem in the middle and the world is variously shown as dominated or held by God. For medieval cartographers the perfect map included the physical cosmos and the spiritual one. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography (Borges 325).Īlthough Borges’ narrative finishes with a nostalgic conclusion about a superfluous and forgotten discipline, the cartographer’s dream of a perfect map has never ceased: it has merely varied throughout history. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. ![]() In a short parable, ‘Museum, on Exactitude in Science’, Borges describes the mysterious gild of cartographers which charts such a map. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.The cartographer’s dream is that of a perfect map: a map that perfectly represents a territory, a dream of Divine knowledge a map that has haunted the ideology of representation throughout history a map so detailed that it coincides with real space. He wrote: “ My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. Some of his writing has been called postmodern, reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply “modern”. ![]() His style is not easily classified much of his writing has an air of the fantastic reminiscent of fairy tales ( Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more “realistic” and in the scenic mode of observation ( Difficult Loves, for example). His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979). He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal) Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. The foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places. ![]() If you are ready for some reading in unknown territory, you should definitely try Italo Calvino. ![]() The descriptions are very lyric, and give you a good feel of each city. It sounds almost more like poetry than prose. The titles of the chapters evolve, some are repeated, but I tried in vain to discern a pattern, though I’m sure there is one. Each chapter consists in imaginary descriptions of cities by Marco Polo as he meets Kublai Khan of China, and does not want to reveal him that his kingdom is diminishing. Invisible Cities can also be confusing for some readers, but it is worth the effort of diving in, plus this is a rather short book. I discovered Italo Calvino last May, when I read If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, and I had to try something else: I love his smart very literary style. This book counts for the following Reading Challenges: ![]()
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