Shall I be able to possess my empire, at last?'Īnd the Venetian answered: 'Sire, do not believe it. 'On the day when I know all the emblems,' asked Marco, Had the power of emblems, which, once seen, cannot be forgotten or But, obscure or obvious as it might be, everything Marco displayed The leap of a fish escaping the cormorant's beak to fall into a net Īnother city by a naked man running through fire unscorched a thirdīy a skull, its tree green with mold, clutching a round, white, pearl. His knapsacks - ostrich plumes, pea-shooters, quartzes - which heĪrranged in front of him like chessmen. Of horror, animal barkings or hootings, or with objects he took from Newly arrived and ignorant of the Levantine languages, Marco PoloĬould express himself only with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and The lighted ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her Has made us the heirs of their long undoing. Is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene It is the desperate moment when we discover that thisĮmpire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, Who beseech our armies' protection, offering inĮxchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and The despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops,Īnd flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings Of the planispheres where they are portrayed, With the odor of the elephants after the rainĪnd the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the braziers,Ī dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, We shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. In the lives of emperors there is a momentīoundless extension of territories we have conquered, The greatest leaps of imagnation in modern poetry. Kublai Khan's empire as Marco Polo describes them to him. Lyrical prose poems, each covering the unique soul of different cities in Topics: | fiction | poetry | italian | semantics Thanks to Merja Nieminen, and Marinos Giannoukakis.Book unexamined is wasting trees Invisible Cities Italo Calvino and William Weaver (tr.) The work premiered on Januduring the concert Sweet Anticipation at PACE Studio 1 of De Montfort University in Leicester (England, UK). Valdrada was realized in 2018 at the composer’s studio in Leicester (England, UK) and at the Music, Technology & Innovation studios of De Montfort University in Leicester (England, UK). Valdrada is about memory - but, then again, perhaps the same is true of all acousmatic works…

Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror…” “… the traveler, arriving, sees two cities : one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down.

Valdrada invisible cities