Invisible Cities
Italo Calvino (1972)
“Marco Polo describes 55 impossible cities to Kublai Khan — and every one of them is Venice. Every one of them is you.”
Character Analysis
Calvino's Polo is based on the historical Venetian merchant-explorer but quickly transcends him. He is less a character than a function: the one who travels and returns with descriptions. His subjectivity is deliberately suppressed in the city descriptions — he becomes the vehicle through which cities pass. In the frame conversations he is more present: thoughtful, philosophical, occasionally playful. His deepest characteristic is his relationship to Venice — the city he cannot describe directly because it is the lens through which he describes everything else.
Formal, precise, courtly in the frame — in the city descriptions, he dissolves into a generic second-person 'you.' His personal voice is present but never dominant.