Dahlia is bounded by the Ruby Wall, 27 feet high and 9 feet
think, bright red when the rays of the sun beat upon it. It is a three day journey to cross through Dahlia
on foot, more if you bring a camel. As
you traverse the city, you find many structures which are a roof, held up by
four posts and no walls. There are structures
with four walls and no roof. There are
roofs with just one wall, sometimes having a door or windows set within the
wall, sometimes not. There are roofs
with two walls. If you spend many hours
searching, you might find a roof with three walls down one of the twisted
walkways, though I have never seen such a structure.. The roofs are always a bright blue, sometimes
with streaks of white. These structures
serves as dwellings or shops or government offices.
But in the middle of the city sits a structure with a roof
and four walls. It has a doorway set in
the middle of the Northern wall and a
window of painted glass set above the door.
This is the only structure in the whole of the city with a roof and four
walls and it sits directly in the center of the great city. The walls are 17.25 feet high and the roof is
flat.
If a person crosses through the doorway of the structure in
the center of the City, Dahlians say the traveler has gone Outside. In every other place, a person is said to be
Inside. The structure in the center of
the City is well known; one only has to say “Let us meet Outside,” to know that
one should leave the city by going through the doorway in the structure in the middle
of the city. Once Outside, people go Inside
by passing back through the doorway.
There are no other places in all of Dahlia that are Outside. The rest of the City is Inside.
Now that you, Dear Reader have read about Dahlia, do you
wish to visit it? The idea of Dahlia was
born when I was reading Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino. A student gave me the book
(thanks, Lia!), and I can easily imagine her reading it and liking it. The book is dozens of descriptions of cities which
do not exist, with a framing story of Marco Polo describing the cities to Kublai
Khan.
The City descriptions are prose poems, lyrical and
evocative. There is possibly a structure
to the book, but it is hard to tell. It
is the sort of book that might repay endless hours of devoted study or it might
simply be what it is and no more. Could one
add another city to the book or take out one of the cities or would such an addition
or subtraction fundamentally destroy the order and beauty of the book? I have absolutely no idea. I suspect academic papers have been written
on the matter. But, this is one of those
things where academic papers may destroy what beauty the book has. It is a hypnotic book. You roam across the land, with hints that
this is all real or this is all false or some of this is real and some is
not. Even the framing device may be real
or not real.
This is the sort of book that prompts the question: why do
we tell stories? It is an ancient question,
of course. Before thinking about this
book, I thought that question might have an answer. But having just read a seemingly endless
array of stories about cities which do not exist, each one of those stories
being more evocative of a place than actually describing a place, each one of those
descriptions hinting at story upon story that could be told about the city, but
having none of those stories actually told, after reading all that, I am not at
all sure I can explain why we tell stories.
Take the city of Melania, which shows up on page 81. (Melania was chosen totally at random—all of
the following is accurate, but I am pretty sure the same paragraph could have
been written no matter which page I randomly chose.) A page and a half description of a city. It isn’t hard reading the description of the
city to imagine a whole book of short stories coming straight out of the description
on those pages. It would be a challenge
to write such a book, but then again, it is a challenge to write any book. The book of stories from Melania, though, has
the potential to be Great Art, Beautiful and Deep. I can see that book of stories in my mind; I would
like to read that book of stories. But,
Tales of Melania not only doesn’t exist, it never will exist. Instead, we have the page and half evoking
the idea of Melania and nothing more.
So, why tell about Melania?
Having read Invisible
Cities, I am not even sure how to read this book. Reading it straight through was more hypnotic
than thought-provoking. There is no
forward momentum, just one description after another. And even the framing
device is just one description after another.
Having read it, when I now pick it up, I can simply flip to a random
page, and read it and start wondering.
Does a book that just starts you wondering provide anything
to the Reader? I can’t tell. As I sit here puzzling over this book, I
cannot figure out if this is a book I should pick up on a regular basis, read
two pages, and then set down just to start imagining a city and the tales that city
could tell. A book that fosters
imagination. And therein lies my
problem. I do not know the intrinsic value
of imagination.
Take the description of the city at the outset of this
post. I started ruminating about the
book by wondering what it would be like to write a description of a city that
does not exist, and so I began. It
morphed with an idea I puzzled about for a few hours months ago about whether Outside
and Inside could be flipped or not. Is
it possible that by being in my office, I am outside, and everywhere else is
inside? I tried to talk with my family
about this matter which seriously troubled me, but nobody else seemed to think
the matter was troubling. So, that idea worked
its way into the story of the city above.
In that city, they think this way.
But, as a city that fits within Invisible Cities, I am pretty sure it is a failure. A city of one idea, and probably not a very
interesting idea at that. None of the Invisible
Cities seem so small.
My failure to craft a city worthy of this book does not surprise
me in the least, by the way. I do not think I could ever write a respectable
short story, novel or even a poem. I
have always thought my creativity does not lie in that direction. And now I wonder if perhaps my imagination
does also not lie in that direction. Why
is it that I am troubled by the idea of a book that simply sparks imagination? Why do I want Imagination to have some end
beyond itself?
(Incidentally, I actually like this cover version better
than the original (which I always thought was far to saccharine))
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