Eternity Lasts and Instant: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, Chapters IV-VI

People’s lives are comprised of a variety of moments and experiences that are cumulatively added together in order engender an existence. An illusion of time is created in order to satisfy man’s urge to dominate the universe; however, life’s paradoxical character makes eternity an instant. Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities, as well as the film Waking Life, present various schemes that develop in different contexts and indicate how a single moment can comprise the universe’s endless diversity and indisputable truths.
“Not the labile mists of memory nor the dry transparence, but the charring of burned lives that forms a scab on the city, the sponge swollen with vital matter that no longer flows, the jam of past, present, future that blocks existences calcified in the illusion of movement: this is what you would find at the end of your journey.” (Calvino, p. 99).
As the previous quote explains, memory is subject to change every time a new experience is encountered. The perspective one possesses on existence itself is altered every instant by both the actions and emotions one commits or fails to execute. Transparence may symbolize the air itself, dry and impalpable. Even though some may argue that the concept of a “dry transparence” is too vague to be analyzed, this symbol defines reality in the same sense memories give meaning to the past and present existence: air is the medium through which the self is able to perceive that which surrounds him. Ironically, human beings themselves act as the mist that bars the mind and body, like a scab or a sponge, from achieving a complete understanding of existentialist thought. It is important to notice how the author refers to time as “jammed,” meaning that the past, present, and future all converge in order to form one sole unit. Movement, as is explained by the quote, is merely an “illusion,” a creation enacted by the human mind in order to provide explanations and perpetrate mankind’s dominion of nature. The “end of your journey,” or the culmination of life, gives way to an intricate yet infinite state unknown to any individual inhabiting the planet. It is then when one realizes that existence, now complete after one’s permanence on Earth has been terminated, is not a compilation of events that have taken place over a period of time, but rather one sole instant contained together for infinity. Like the man in the arcade in the movie Waking Life said, “time is an illusion – we live in an instant: eternity.” (Waking Life).

Both Invisible Cities and Heart of Darkness discuss the contrasting characteristics of light and darkness. Although Conrad’s novel does so in a more explicit manner, Calvino is able to perceive human feelings through a figurative definition of the concepts stated above. “If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.” (Calvino, p. 59). This passage poses a contradiction in the sense that in order for someone to be aware of the darkness that surrounds them, the person must be able to scrutinize the “faint lights in the distance.” Like the Judeo-Christian Bible, a comparison between opposite elements needs to be established in order to provide a clear definition of each of these aspects. Figuratively, the “faint lights” in this quote represent those individuals who are good in essence. Once one has had a glimpse of them, other people will seem more evil by comparison. It is important to emphasize that darkness abounds but that light is scarce; consequently, one can infer that the forces of evil dominate our daily lives, but that these are so common that one is barely able to notice them.

Heart of Darkness provides a wide variety of instances where darkness is mentioned. All of these refer to the jungle, or the place where Kurtz employed his brutal and evil methods in order to obtain the ivory that was bound to satisfy his worldly desires. “I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river,- seemed to beckon with a dishonoring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.” (p. 59). Darkness extends throughout the vast magnitude of the Earth, making it contrast sharply with the land’s “sunlit face,” which the absence of light seems to irrevocably overwhelm. The “lurking death” and “hidden evil” invade the heart of darkness, or the jungle itself. The fact that it is “lurking” and “hidden” makes it much more treacherous and dangerous. Although Calvino uses darkness to define human conduct and Conrad utilized this concept in order to provide an explanation for its boundless influence, both of them cohere in the sense that evil remains hidden and unseen, yet possesses a universal influence.

Existentialism and the Relevance of Time: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, Chapters I-III

Invisible Cities is a book about the conceptualization of desires and the role of perceptions in determining human thought and opinion. Due to its independent, random, and detached character, the text can be easily associated to the staccato of scenes in the film Waking Life. Both of these works treat with a separate aspect of existentialism, whether it be human lives themselves or the manifestation of the self in the place one inhabits. An aspect that caught my attention in both Waking Life and Invisible Cities is the importance that is attributed to time. For one part, every moment is relevant in determining the course of one’s life and the pattern of existence as a whole. “To say yes to one instant is to say yes to all of existence.” (Waking Life). As Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” says, it is the paths each individual decides to take what makes “all the difference” in the future course of events. Existence can be considered as a sole unit in the sense that every one of its components, experiences, can be regarded as equally necessary in the regulation of one’s present reality. This can be compared to the city of Zoe in Invisible Cities:
“The traveler roams all around and has nothing but doubts: he is unable to distinguish the features of the city, the features he keeps distinct in his mind also mingle. He infers this: if existence in all of its moments is all of itself, Zoe is the place of indivisible existence.” (Calvino, p. 34).
When considered from a figurative sense, the merging and fusing of the elements that compose the city of Zoe can be considered as the separate yet equally significant components of existence itself. A city, or the materialization of human life and thought, brings forth everything and everyone that has contributed to the formation of individual lives. Each unit intermingles and joins with all the rest in order to give way to a massive, intricate, and abstract reality. The features are indistinct because of the synthesis it has undergone; thus, one can infer that existence “is all of itself.” In other words, the separate instances contribute to the formation of the present as we know it. Every moment can be regarded as an entire existence because each event brings forth a series of chain reactions that have taken place in order to produce an “indivisible existence” such as Zoe. The relevance of time is perfectly clear when considering life’s perpetual and incessant transformations; consequently, it is able to encompass the complexity of the past and the variations of the present.

The distorted and somewhat surreal digital clock that appears in Waking Life conceals a double meaning that may lead to the debunking of my thesis; however, it is the irrelevance the film places on the scientific approach to life what highlights the importance of moments rather than measured time itself. Even though the passage of time cannot be accurately calculated, the existentialist experiences that the main character undergoes remain intact. Time is not halted but rather altered. The significance of instants and experiences overwhelm the human urge to control the universe. Science is replaced by the weight an existentialist point of view places in the individual actions that take place throughout the course of our lives and that continually characterize our realities.

Italo Calvino proceeds to incorporate the future as an equally important unit of existence by associating it with a discarded possibility from the past. He talks about how another person’s present could have been a part of our own lives if only we had chosen another path or done something different. (Calvino, p. 29). “Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches… ‘Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.” (Calvino, 29). Marco Polo’s reply to this matter highlights the paradoxical importance non-action has when determining the course of events that will unfold later on in our lives. The contending elements of space, being and non-being, are equally significant when discussing our present. Our negative mirror, or everything that does not make part of ourselves, is barred from our reality and therefore excluded from existence itself. Each person’s reality encompasses everything that is, was, or simply never existed. We live life making the decisions that we think will determine our future, unaware of the fact that everything which is never carried out is equally important as the actions we commit.