Show and...Tell or Don’t Tell?

Show and...Tell or Don’t Tell?

In Invisible Cites, Calvino demonstrates how perception is unique for every reader. “Whatever country my words may evoke around you, you will see it from such a vantage point, even if instead of a palace there is a village on pilings and the breeze carries the stench of a muddy estuary.” (Pg 27) Marco Polo is making the Great Kahn understand that no matter where or how a story or information is reveled to him, he will always have a superior point of view influenced by his insinuations. Figuratively, being the writer, Marco Polo implies that Kahn as the reader will always have his own inferences which alter the story.  But what is that makes readers make inferences and how do they differ? Every reader has a different life formed by different experiences. It is this experiences that make each individual vary their perceptions and views. Consequently different inferences are made. The emperor admits it “My gaze is that of a man meditating, lost in thought-.” (Pg 27) It is at this point where our minds linger between reality and idealism, where creativity and imagination take over control, where our past experiences involuntarily influence our thought, where our senses go numb and finally our perception changes inducing our inferences.

Despite the Venetian’s mastering of Tartar language, emblems proved to be more important. “…Each piece of information about a place recalled to the emperor’s mind that first gesture or object with which Marco Polo had designated the place.”(Pg 22) Show don’t tell. Emblems have an allegorical denotation, making each city have a deeper meaning based on its emblem. This symbol makes the reader as well as Kahn create a unique inference based on the emblem’s significance. Like Dawkins’ memes for society, Polo’s emblems for the cities are patterns that represent an idea. Zirma is an example where memes play an important role. “The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.” (Pg 19)  Targeting the remaindering of the city, Zirma uses repetition. Being a pattern and idea that spreads over persons, memes accomplish this remembrance as well in culture. The emblems do the same; they create this sense of recollection in the minds of the audience for the specific city based on its allegorical meaning.

It is throughout this symbolizing and deductions that language lost its power and thoughts gained it. “…The emperor wanted to follow more clearly a private train of thoughts; so Marco’s answers and objections took their place in discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Kahn’s head. They went from showing, to speaking, to explaining, to thinking to imagining and then alternated.  On a metaliterary level it depicts the relation ship between the writer and the reader. It’s symbiotic where the showing through an emblem became as important as the telling through Marco Polo’s verbal statements. “ The new fact received a meaning from that emblem and also added to the emblem a new meaning.” (Pg 22).