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But it’s no less clunky in Italian - L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà se ce n'è uno – you can’t blame the translator for translating it word for word instead of trying to improve the fluency of Calvino’s prose. Now and again the writing seemed a bit clunky – “The inferno of the living is not something that will be if there is one, it is what is already here.” That “if there is one” is a bit of an eyesore. A little bit of the magic fades but in compensation you notice lots of wonders you missed the first time. Reading this for a second time is a bit like visiting Venice for a second time. I remember a line from a novel I read where a character gazing out at the Grand Canal says, “I keep wondering when all this will happen to me.” Perhaps that’s it, Venice articulates some deep desire we all have or evokes a memory of something that has never quite happened. It’s not a moment I can or even want to explain. I’m not sure why this moment means so much to me. I sit on the steps and let all the activity on the canal wash through me. The moment of walking out of the station of Santa Lucia and beholding the Grand Canal. I catch the night train to Venice and not Florence for one moment. So usually when I return to Italy after visiting London I catch the train to Paris and then the night train to Venice.
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As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.more As Marco tell "Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. "Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images.