Introduction
At present moment it is almost impossible to find a person who does not read books and does not know at least several famous writers and poets. Literature is present by the diversity of writers and poets whose masterpieces provoke so many different opinions, contradictory points of view and critical articles. The works of literature written in verse are especially interesting and pleasant to read as poets use so beautiful language to present their ideas and vision of some objects. In modern literature there are a lot works, which depict different cities and historical monuments, but Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is an example of the works, which deal with the description of nonexistent cities.
Main text
In Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino describes the main crises of modern cities. Creating an invented world, the author looks for the way to explain man’s imaginative genius and to emphasize the composite defies created by our perception of modern cities. This work can be regarded as novel. It is written in simple and very beautiful language depicting the places visited by Marco Polo. Performed in the tradition and habit of travel literature, Invisible Cities can be paralleled with such works of classical literature as Homer or Virgil, who presented their stories by means of some famous heroes of Greek legends. In general, Invisible Cities describes 155 cities.
The most remarkable thing is that all of them have female names and can not be found on the map. Symbolically, these cities represent such themes as love, death and people’s connection with technology: “At the end of three days, moving southward, you came upon Anastasia, a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it…” (Calvino 12). Moreover, they also replicate people’s unachievable anxieties or wishes.
This set of novels is easy and pleasant to read, despite of the fact that it gets on a trip through composite, disjointed places and abounds with imageries. In his book Calvino provides the readers with the masterpiece that feature the most significant challenges of our lives. Moreover, he tells about the lack of possibilities and imagination, which can help to realize the changes in our cities: ” The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of the hand…” (Calvino 11).
This book is a subject to a great number of critical articles. Reading this book one can remember the words of a famous writer, saying “Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism” (Rilke 10). To my mind, the word solitude is used in the meaning of uniqueness. It is like an unusual person, who is not alike anybody else, that is why he is doomed for constant solitude. The same can be said about unusual piece of work. It means that every piece of art is unique in its nature and it is useless deal to criticize it, as it is very hard to create something similar.
Conclusion
So, Invisible Cities is an amusing and charming novel that becomes more applicable by the day. Telling about the criticism and solitude, I can completely agree with the author of the saying and I stick to the point that such wonderful pieces of art are needless to criticize, as they are unique.
Works Cited
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. USA: Mainer Books, 2000.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to Young Poet. New York: BN Publishing, 2009.