Change

Fedora, from "Cities and Desire 4", is the city that never sleeps. It is constantly in change and has never been the same. As people construct it and build over it to make it their ideal city, it turns into a possible future that never was. "In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal cut, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe" (page 32) explained Marco Polo to Khan, or imagined he understood that. In this metropolis people choose the city that correspond to their desires from the museum and imagine what it would be like. As they imagine possible futures, these are squashed by the instantly coming future. This does not only happen to Fedora, but people too. As we reflect on our past and contemplate what we wanted before, we see we don't see that today because we are in constant change. 

Calvino comments on the divisions of Zenobia, from "Thin Cities 2", of those that through the years and changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it. This view has been the problem of many, seeing the distinct power between high and low classes. Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis portrays a futuristic city were the classist division between the working class, who live in poor conditions, and the upper class, which is made up of the city planners. In Zenobia there is only the view of a happy life as the inhabitants of the cities see their city, but in Metropolis'  dystopian society unconformity is even seen in one from the upper class, or the "planners". Marco Polo believes, it is pointless to classify Zenobia between happy and unhappy, but rather what is seen in Metropolis: those who make a change in the city and those that are consumed with their desires by the city.

Kublai Khan and Marco Polo remain being unable to understand their languages. Still, they successfully communicate because the Venetian's reports gave Khan a void filled everything, but words. Khan could choose to enjoy the cities or evade them because they thought they understood one another, or they thought the other told him what was right about the cities.

As chapter three begins, in the brief conversation conversation, Marco Polo says "With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear," to what the Emperor responded "I have neither desires nor fears." Dreams are understood and remembered as a recollection of images, similar to a rebus. These dreams Calvino talks about are our desires and the limitations they have: fears. How could Khan have no desires if he was a conqueror and how could me as a reader have no desires? I want to expand on Calvino's work and understand where the cities Marco Polo saw, are constrained. For example, what if one of this cities ended in an abyss, as it was believed before Columbus's discoveries.