Invisible cities

Ce court mais riche ouvrage d'Italo Calvino serait bien difficile à classer. Mais l'auteur lui-même nous aide en parlant de poésie en prose. Un « rêve qui n'était pas un rêve¹ », c'est un peu l'impression que pourraient laisser ces descriptions de villes par ce Marco Polo. L'émissaire a pour mission de décrire à l'empereur Kublai Khan toutes ces cités qu'il ne peut lui-même connaître, tant s'étend son empire. On est happé par ce livre, et comme il se lit relativement vite, on en ressort avec la certitude d'être passé à côté de trop de choses pour ne pas le rouvrir. Je regrette de l'avoir acquis sous forme numérique, c'est un livre qu'il faudrait avoir à portée de main, posé sur l'étagère ou sur la table de chevet, un livre qui, malgré son absence d'illustrations, est comme une plongée dans l'image mentale de ces multiples villes invisibles.

¹ En référence à une réplique du film d'animation Mon Voisin Totoro, d'Hayao Miyazaki.

This little book takes the form of very short sections a page or two long describing either the frame story of a meeting between Kublai Khan and explorer Marco Polo who describes his travels through Central asia, or the fanciful cities he claims to have found there. These are titled with enigmatic tags such as "Cities and memory," "Cities and signs," "Thin cities," "Continuous cities" and the like. Each place is dominated by a single dream-like feature governing its citizens. Some come off as fantasy, others so dark as to constitute horror, while still others concern themselves with some odd philosophical point. There is no plot, not even in the frame story sections, no single theme, and the two named characters are given only the slightest of personal qualities. I would say that this is less a novel or series of short stories than a literary construction with fabulistic features. I feel as though the author's intent is to dazzle the reader with the extreme variety of minimalist settings that might have something to say when taken all together about the breadth of human imagination. I never felt that I wanted any of the little sections to be expanded into a proper story itself. Instead, this book presents itself as a travel guide to a nonexistent region that streams by the reader with the speed of someone clicking on a remote. The only way these cities resemble our own is the way they contain people of types we recognize, preying on one another, suffering, wrapped in delusions, working and desiring and trying to make sense of their baffling circumstances they are to weak and confused to escape.