Dig a Little Deeper

As I kept reading I realized all the names of the cities are feminine. Why is this? What made Calvino chose those particular names? Is there a meaning behind each name?

Olivia:

Olivia is a biblical name that comes from the olive tree. “The olive tree is a symbol of fruitfulness, beauty and dignity”. http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/Olivias. In the book Olivia is describes as  “a city rich in products and in profits” (61). Marco Polo describes it as prosperous “prosperity only by speaking of filigree palace with fringed cushions on the seats by the mullioned windows.” (61) The meaning of the name Olivia perfectly fits the description of the city. Its “free life and refined civilization” (61) make the city seem beautiful and sophisticated. I think this name is given to the city because it describes in a way the greatest attributes the city has.  

Sophronia:

 The origin of the name  Sophronia is greek, it means wise, prudent and self-controlled. http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/meaning_of_Sophronia.html. In the book this city is made up of “two half-cities” (63). The cities are organized and divided in a particular way. In one half of the city is like a circus, representing the wild side. The other half has the bank, the school and everything that is indispensable in a society to keep it organized. “one of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary… take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half-city”(63). One half of the city is just like a circus it is temporary and once the “sojourn” is over the circus moves away into another city. I think Calvino chose this particular name because the city is divided in a way that it can be controlled. It is organized and that is one of the words that define Sophronia the name.   

Eutropia:

Eutropia has an old Greek origin as well, but the meaning of it is well mannered and fair. http://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Eutropia. In the chapter about Eutropia Calvino mentions Mercury, a mythological character also known as the god of trade and travel. The city of Eutropia was known for its inhabitants, which moved whenever their life got monotonous and they became weary. I can’t find a connection between the description of the city and the name of it but ill think about it for future blogs.

Zemrude: I couldn’t find the meaning of this name. The city on the other hand does have a meaning, the beauty of the city lies on the eyes of the beholder. According to your mood and to your vision the city will be either beautiful or horrendous.

Aglaura: I couldn’t find the meaning of this name either, but the city is a colorless city. I think the cities and names are the cities in which there is no language or words are insufficient to describe the city. 

Cities and...

Why are the cities classified with those titles? From what I've seen each title represents criticism of society and what humanity has become.

The book criticizes how people are never satisfied with what they have, so they either pretend they have it or "the traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have " (29).  People are never happy. They may have all the money in the world or all they always desired but they still want more. It happens in all aspects of life, not only with material belongings but with literally genetic belongings. It’s sad to see how unthankful people are and how the world has become a place where desire goes beyond necessity. 

Cities and desires:

"In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal city.." (32) People are not pleased with what they have, most people are seeking their utopia, but does it exist?  Cities and desires remind me of the song imagine by John Lenon. People always desire to find a perfect world. The ideal world varies according to the perceptive of what the ideal life is for people. Unfortunately we have grown with the mentality that perfection is tangible and achievable when in reality it is not. We think perfection is attainable and therefore become lost in dreams that reflect our deepest desires.

Cities and memories:

I think the cities in these chapters are indirectly criticizing how people live in regrets. People are always thinking about the possible outcomes of their actions and once they make one decision they go back to the past and try to decipher what could have happened if they had gone the other way. People have a plethora of images from the past. We are constantly trying to recreate those images to keep the memory vivid. The truth is that our memory distorts the reality and may keep us with remorse.

Trading Cities:

The purpose of these cities in the book is to evaluate how society has become so superficial. Communications between people has become shallow. People are so concerned about their past they stop living their present and forget about their future. They leave people and thing from their present behind and get lost in their memory. Most of our society today is so self centered that they only think about themselves and they don't "trade" anything useful the worlds traded are plain and meaningless.

Cities and Signs:

“Each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences, a city without figures, without form, and the individual cities fill it up.” (34) Each city has different signs and characteristics that make it unique, but people always want what the others have. The image of perfection comes from trends. What seems perfect today will definitely not be perfect tomorrow or might have not been perfect in the past. The cities in Cities and Signs are trying to show how people create their destiny. They create and mold their past and their present according to what they want.

Thin Cities:

“Years and changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.” (35) People are doomed to temptation. Changes come with time and with both discontent and contentment. Unhappiness reins the world because no one is satisfied with what they have. People always want more. What thin cities talk about or criticize is how people always want what their “neighbor has”, people are in a way in scaffolds or in “platforms and balconies placed on stilts at various heights, crossing one another” (35) If they take the wrong step they fall, and people are so scared of falling that they dream about change but never take the risk to make it happen. Thin Cities show the fear and the desire people have. Which weighs more?

“With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear” (44)

Calvino's Imagination

       Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, is a book about Marco Polo’s voyages and Kublai Khan the Mongolian emperor and grandson of Genghis Khan. The plot of the book is what is italicized. The rest of the chapters are like short stories. They don’t seem to relate, they are short, concise and very detailed.

Before starting the book I became a detective. I was trying to decipher the meaning  the pattern of chapters had, looking for a clue word I guess that would make the book meaningful. I wrote down on a piece of paper each chapter’s title: Cities and Memories, Cities and Desires, Cities and Signs, and finally Thin Cities. I listed the name of the city in each chapter and the number of the chapter. I thought maybe D.I.Z.Z D.A.D T.Z. I. (initials of the city names) would actually mean something. I realized it meant nothing. But then I thought… Why were the chapters arranged in that particular order? Does it mean anything?

I usually never read the summary in the back of a book so that I don’t ruin the story. This time I did. I just felt it would help me understand. Before, I asked myself: what does the author mean by INVISIBLE? My first assumption was that by invisible the author meant imaginary, nonexistent. As I read the summary I was surprised with something I read. "Soon it becomes clear that each of these fantastic places is really the same place". How could this be possible? All the descriptions of the cities are completely different, they even have different names. Then I realized maybe my inference was true. Maybe these cities are imaginary. While I was reading the pages we had to I found evidence to support my idea.

“Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.” (19)

        By this the author means that memory is not needed because it only reproduces images and symbols from the past. This is evidence that by invisible Calvino means imaginary. Memory keeps images alive but it also creates and distorts reality. While you may try to remember something exactly as it is, the recreation is not exact therefore you are imagining and inventing things that aren’t actually what the place or object is like in reality. Unless you have a photographic memory it’s not possible to recreate something by memory exactly as it is.     

“Perhaps, Kublai thought, the empire is nothing but a zodiac of the mind’s phantasms.” (22)

        This is another piece of evidence. The zodiac is based on imaginary stars that “affect” your behavior and your character, it is not real but people believe in it. When Calvino uses this phrase he is saying that Kublai thought that the empire was just pure imagination, it was a recreation of the mind. What the travelers told him about their journeys was a false creation, was based on useless memory, it was not real.

Vocabulary: Phantasms: something that you imagine you see but that is not real.

The Garden of Eden

What is life? People are constantly trying to find a utopia but I'm sorry to break your bubble guys, there's no such thing as it. Perfection is non existant, what might seem perfect to someone might not be to others so nothing will ever be perfect for everyone. We all have a different perception of perfection and what our own utopia should be like. 

               According to Pangloss life was a type of utopia whereas everything was for the best, but the question is: was it really for the best? Throughout the story Candide realizes that life is everything but perfect and starts doubting Pangloss´s views about life. When Pangloss and Candide and the rest of the group talked with the Turk they noticed it was true. Life has “three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.”(143) they saw that life is not as perfect as it seems and you have to recreate it to what you want it to be just like nature. Voltaire uses the Garden of Eden as a symbol just because of that, nature can be molded and shaped into what you want it to be just like life.

               For those that don’t know the story behind the Garden of Eden it is a biblical garden created by god. It is a “utopia”, God created Adam and provided him with everything even a women Eve from his own flesh, but the only thing he couldn’t do was eat the fruits from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. This place was paradise but one of the reasons perfection can’t exist is because no one is ever satisfied with what they have. Adam and Eve greedy and wanting more than what they had they ate the fruits of the tree and “Man was forever doomed to a life of toil and restlessness, with pressures, temptations, and adversity at every corner.” http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/biblical-garden-of-eden.html.

               What does this have to do with Candide? At the very end of the book Voltaire uses the Garden of Eden to symbolize life, because life may be paradise, but destiny is in your own hands and based on the decisions you make your life will be good or bad.

Church, Corruption, Avarice

HUMANITY: Voltaire’s main approach throughout the entire book Candide. This book is based upon the different characteristics that portray the human race. The book especially reflects upon the positive aspects that shape us into a mass of naïve and careless people. Why naïve? Some may ask. This is because most of the people expect things to happen. They expect life to be good, some believe that their destiny lies in the hands of god and I don’t want to seem disrespectful but I find that pathetic and simply naïve. I am not a religious person, so I think my destiny depends on my actions and my decisions. It’s not as if I can pray to god that I get an A on this blog entry, I have to work on it so that I can achieve that goal. Things don’t just happen. We have to make them happen.   

               Voltaire criticizes many aspects of humanity but there is one in particular that is repeatedly mentioned in the book, religion. People need something to grasp onto when life stabs them in the back, but I don’t agree with the fact that most of the people rely on faith to succeed. He doesn’t criticize religion directly but he does criticize one of the mayor institutions that enforce it, the church.

“I was an innocent little girl when you first saw me, so a friar who was my confessor had little difficulty in seducing me.”(114)

               This shows the corruption of church and clearly the way Voltaire writes about it is like if it was one of the most common things. It is a direct way of talking about the dishonesty of the church towards its principles. Aren’t the friars supposed to be abstinent? Can they be involved with a woman? They can’t or at least not in the catholic religion. That seems like corruption to me.

               I think one of the main points Voltaire wants to prove through Candide is that money brings evil upon the people.  It’s at such an extent that even the church and the religious people which are supposed to be “good” turn out to be the most greedy and envious of all.

“He realized that the lady who pretended to be Cunégonde was a fraud, that the abbé who had so rapidly taken advantage of Candide´s innocence was also a fraud, and the officer another fraud..” (108)

    “Sermons I have preached have brought me some me in a little money, though the Prior robs me of half of it; at any rate I am left enough to pay for my girls”(116)

            These here are two examples of the greediness and corruption money brought not only in common people but even in religious “holy” people. The first quote represents evil because even the abbé (priest) took advantage of Candide and tried backstabbing him with his own weaknesses (Cunégonde) just because he wanted to steal money. The little I know about the church and the people that belong to that institution is that they shouldn’t be greedy and that they shouldn’t have the need to have money. These two quotes prove that even if the doctrines of the church say they shouldn’t be that way they still were and made unholy acts that were a sign of corruption. 

Money Money Money

A theme that is constantly seen in the book is corruption and the power money has over the people. Money leads to Greed and avarice, and that changes people and turns them into selfish, unscrupulous human beings. Candide and Cacambo went to Eldorado, a place where greed didn't exist. A place as splendid that even as the sand was of gold and the pebbles were precious stones. Eldorado had more riches than the entire world, yet no one had the need to take them all.          

After their journey they left with a fortune they thought would put an end to their adversities. Riches they imagined would bribe their way out of problems and awful situations. What did this fortune bring? It only brought unhappiness because Candide had to face seeing his money disappear as a captain Vanderdendur took all the money he had left except what he had in his pockets. After this incident Candide stopped being as optimistic and started doubting Pangloss's views about life. "But it’s the truth, and I shall have to renounce that optimism of yours in the end." (86). He meets Martin a pessimistic person and makes him his companion during his journey. 
 In my opinion Voltaire thought society had become pure evil. Money had converted men into evil creatures that only cared about their individual wealth and not the wellbeing of others. Money has a huge power over the people and change the mentality of everyone. People think those who have money are the most honorable and the most educated and the most experienced and the most powerful, but that is not true. Poor people are the same as the rich, they are equally honorable and experienced, they are equally honest and maybe they don't have the best education but they are good people. Society stereotypes the poor as least and this is why everyone is constantly trying to become wealthy and this way becoming more powerful.
What has humanity become? Everything is about money, no one cares about others, and no one respects others. Day by day people become greedier, they only want money. I have even seen families fighting for money. What has love become? Isn’t love supposed to be greater than money? Life is not about the money, people cant and shouldn’t be measured by the amount of money they have because money is truly has no worth and can be lost in a matter of seconds. “You see, my friend how perishable are the riches of this world. There is nothing solid but virtue and the prospect of seeing Lady Cunegonde again.” (85) At the end of the day the only thing we have left is hope and the virtues life gave us. 

What is Happiness?

     Can you be happy if you face reality? A question I have had ever since I started reading Candide. This novel seems to be contrasting happiness and hope with reality. Voltaire in my opinion must have been a very realistic or down to earth person. He probably makes fun of the people that live in a fantasy because he was not one of them. Pangloss and Candide are two examples of these types of people. They believe everything is perfect and that their lives couldn’t be better, but finally Candide is realizing life is everything but perfect. 

        Candide´s happiness relies on his true love Lady Cunegonde and life without her is almost not worth living. He faces obstacles in life but none of them is as painful as losing his dear love. Now that he does not have her, he finally faces reality with his eyes wide open and notices it’s not as pleasant as Dr. Pangloss always said. "What would professor Pangloss say if he had seen how unsophisticated nature behaves?... All is for the best, but I must say it is very cruel to have lost lady cunegonde and to be skewered by Oreillons." (71) Now that he is finally starting to face reality he notices that he isn’t very happy because his life is full of misfortunes and not having Lady Cunegonde by his side makes everything harder to bear.

         Nothing in Candide´s life turns out right, after something good happens all that he acquires is taken away from him in a blink of an eye. He seems to be chasing his happiness but he doesn’t really know the true meaning of it. He does not realize that the more you imagine what being happy feels like, the more you distort the real image. It’s like the quote in my blog “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” -Anne Bradstreet. The more you wait and expect for something to be the way you wanted the least it will fit your expectations only bringing disappointment.

      Happiness is a very controversial word. It has a different connotation for every single person. For some happiness might depend on wealth, for others it might mean finding true love, for others it might even turn out to be DEATH. But for Candide happiness is love and love is what gives him hope and somehow gives him a reason to continue in his journey. The problem is when he faces the truth and realizes the probability that he will be back with Cunegonde is very small he starts seeing life differently. So is he still happy now that he has faced reality? What does happiness mean to you?