Today, we started reading Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino – a book about the adventures of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Calvino describes every city ( a chapter ) in a very unique way and to understand his perspective we did an assignment where the class was divided into groups and each group was given a aspect of his writing/life and we had to break it down, study it in detail and map it out so as to present it to the class later. My group had to study his belief system.
We started off by briefly studying some of his top works – 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).
On doing so we made a mind map of some of his beliefs that we came across –
Each group then spoke about their research and what they unfolded about Calvino’s early life.
CONCLUSION :
We learnt about the author, his family, his early life before he began writing, his struggles in life – if they impacted the way he wrote, his inspiration and what made him reach the career level he is at. Understanding his beliefs made me question why he contradicted himself and how his perspective was a game changer.
DISHA KALYANI 