In “Thin Cities 4”, there is not one place described, but two. The two “half-cities” are both fundamentally different environments that represent two aspects of emotion and perspective. The first is a carnival, characterized by its great, billowing shapes and excited movement. Calvino defines this movement by coupling the carnival’s varying forms with vibrant adjectives; “steep humps”, and “spinning cages”, and “the clump of trapeses hanging”. The characterization breathes life and color into the picture, giving the reader an impression of warmth and joy. However, the language also evokes a lingering nostalgia for childhood, when the world was new and exciting and brilliant.
The second half-city evokes a sense of distaste, without Calvino
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It’s basically suspended between two mountains, and only consists of hemp and chains, everything hanging over a deep abyss. The language Calvino uses to describe this abyss is chilling, first describing the experience of entering the city by way of precarious catwalks. He uses words like “careful” and “cling” to invoke fear of the chasm that stretches “hundreds and hundreds of feet”. The fear becomes a dawning horror and sorrow as the reader reaches the end of the passage; namely when the citizens of Octavia recognize that the net could fail at any time. Looking back at the passage however, Calvino uses the descriptions of the citizens’ daily tools- “showers, trapezes, rings for children’s games, cable cars and chandeliers”- to emphasize their determination to live life to its fullest, uninhibited by their imminent demise. This attitude reminds me of the film “Castle in the Sky” by Hayao Miyazaki. The residents of this floating castle were also aware that the crystal powering their floating domain would eventually fail, and they would plummet to their death. Regardless, they endeavored to build the most fantastical castle that anyone had ever seen, and live out their lives separate from the constraints of
Gilbert’s use of imagery emphasizes the wild, vibrant, energetic nature of the city of Naples. It becomes clear that, In Gilbert’s eyes, Naples is a city unlike any other. The author writes, “An anthill inside a rabbit warren, with all the exoctism of a Middle Eastern bazaar and a tough of New Orleans voodoo” (Gilbert 175). This shows us how Gilbert sees Naples better than if she had chosen to describe the city detail by painstaking detail. Gilbert combines aspects of places in other countries in a way that gives the reader a clear image of Naples overall atmosphere. Gilbert writes, “The city is all decorated with the laundry that hangs from every window and
As an idealist, compelled by the detailed imagination of the Venetian, he listens and intervenes within interludes of these chapters. They both start off by exploring the wonders that behold these cities. This gradually led them to question the reality of what has been imagined or is their imagination idealized to the point that it has become their reality. The book is a reflection of how everything interweaves with one another; the mind, matter itself and time all have a relation that are part of our reality. These were broken down throughout each chapter and demonstrated how a city’s foundation is made up of these thoughts and translated through its construction from which its people produce and live within.
“one of those cross streets peculiar to Western cities, situated in the heart of the residence quarter, but occupied by small trades people who lived in the rooms above their shops. There were corner drug stores with huge jars of red, yellow and green liquids in their windows, very brave and gay; stationers’ stores, where illustrated weeklies were tacked upon bulletin boards; barber shops with cigar stands in their vestibules; sad-looking plumbers; offices; cheap restaurants, in whose windows one saw piles of unopened oysters weighted down by cubes of ice, and china pigs and cows knee deep in layers of white beans.”
Octavio Paz’s “Identical Time” and Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” have, in common, a theme of aliveness. They each feature certain individuals as particularly alive in their cities: the old man is alive in the busy dawn of Paz’s Mexico City, and Mr. Mead is alive in the silent night of a future Los Angeles envisioned by Bradbury. The individuals’ aliveness manifests as stillness in “Identical Time” and motion in “The Pedestrian” against the urban backgrounds - signifying, in both, living a human life freely, in the present and nature. Furthermore, in portraying the urban backgrounds as, in contrast to the individuals, dull and lifeless, the two pieces speak together to how cities may diminish and hinder our aliveness and humanity. In “Identical Time,” aliveness is attributed to a state of stillness against the backdrop of constant movement that is Mexico City.
In the poem there is an ABAB rhyme scheme along with use of alliteration, onomatopoeia, and imagery. By using all of these techniques, it helps the reader to better understand the message which is being relayed in the poem. Some of the subjects of this poem include, urbanization, dystopia, nature, dying and the fall of man. The reader gets a vivid image of a huge industrial city built in “valleys huge of Tartarus”(4).
KEVIN and FATE are just two examples, the turbulence and unrest of its participants being expressed in a physical manner on London streets. The city can be regarded as both a grounding point and a reflection of the
Within Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo recalls from memory cities he has visited and explored. While reciting his accounts to Kublai Khan, the reader views each city as an entity of its own. Small anecdotes from Kublai Khan insist that he views the individual experiences as small fragments of one, singular city. Kublai Khan’s reinterpretation of Marco Polo’s experiences change the meaning behind Marco Polo’s experiences whether they be from multiple cities or an implicit city divided up into many moments. The reader’s perspective on Marco Polo’s stories changes with a second look by Kublai Khan, a revised point of view.
The first half of the poem creates a sense of place. The narrator invites us to go “through certain half-deserted streets” on an evening he has just compared to an unconscious patient (4). To think of an evening as a corpselike event is disturbing, but effective in that the daytime is the time of the living, and the night time is the time of the dead. He is anxious and apprehensive, and evokes a sense of debauchery and shadows. Lines 15-22 compare the night’s fog to the actions of a typical cat, making the reader sense the mystery of a dark, foggy night in a familiar, tangible way. One might suppose that “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo” refers to a room in a brothel, where the seedy women for hire talk about elevated art between Johns (13). The narrator creates a tension in the image of dark deserted streets and shady activities in the dark.
In the “Metropolis and the Mental Life”, Georg Simmel aims to explicate the confines and conventions of modern life. Simmel accomplishes this as he compares modern life in a metropolis with that of the countryside, noting the behaviours and characteristics of people in response to external factors. Simmel explains this by explicitly detailing how social structures affect certain personal connections. Several prominent themes of urban living are investigated and considered by Simmel in his article, the main points, harshness of the metropolis, modernity and subjective and objective cultures, are discussed in this essay.
The first and most obvious instance of aestheticism and decadence as correlating themes in this story is the title, Death in Venice. By fore-grounding the name of the city in the title, Mann is highlighting the city's key role in the unfolding narrative. Mann aligns the word 'Venice' with the word 'death' in the title. This creates a relationship between these two words - the word 'death' strongly infuses the word 'Venice' with all its connotations. Death and decay are important ideas within the context of decadence. By shear nature the title relates the concepts of death and dying to the city of Venice, which implies that the location is where a death will occur. However, this is paralleled by the opening of the story when Mann drearily tells of Aschenbach’s stroll through Munich. In the reading of this passage it ...
“Anna Magnani stars as a resourceful working-class Roman mother trying to overcome her unfortunate past to give a better life to her children, even as outside threats threaten everything she has worked so hard to build.” This vague framework could easily describe both Roberto Rossellini's neorealist war drama Rome, Open City and Pier Paolo Pasolini's irreverent rebuke Mamma Roma. Rome, Open City concerns itself with the devastation the Italian people faced at the hands of their German occupiers and their collaborators, the titular city and its inhabitants crumbling away in both body and spirit over the course of a cruel winter. In their city’s darkest hour, average citizens rise up to become heroes and martyrs for their country and its people.
The two pieces in which this paper will discuss will be The Doge’s Palace and Grand Canal (c.1710) created by Luca Carlevarijs as well as Spring on West 78th Street (c.1905) by Childe Hassam. Although these two works are separated by just shy of three hundred years they share a great number of similarities in trying to portray a busy section of their respected urban centers. Carlevarjis portrays the avenue separating the Doge Palace and the Grand Canal of Venice, an area that had plenty of foot traffic from both locals and visitors alike. While in comparison, Hassam represents a busy street in urban American during a time of transition when cities were beginning to become dominated by high rises and growing populations in smaller spaces. However,
Storyboard depiction of Cities and Memories The storyboard depicts Italo Calvino’s telling of the city of Isidora, found in his book, Invisible Cities. The story is based on an old man who ventures back in time to visit the places in his memory that fulfilled his life’s desires. Through the use of the design elements, such as time, movement, hierarchy, and positive/negative space, the board leads the reader into the retelling of Weaver’s adventurous tale of this man’s greatest memories.
The city’s buildings, although seemingly bland Dutch Expressionism, show a great contrast from the cold of the mat...
We can find an indirectly accuse of industrialisation. Only when the factories are closed, ships, towers and theatre are bare and when the town is silent, it is beautiful because industrialisation and pollution do not spoil it. " Upon Westminster Bridge" is written in the form of an Italian sonnet. It is divided into an octet and sestet. In the octet the poet tells us what he sees before him and describes to us the beauty of the scene.