ABSTRACT
In “Invisible Cities in Poland. A Journey Through Languages and Memory”, Anita Kłos weaves together various strands of the rich and multifarious presence of Calvino’s book in Polish culture. From its Polish translation in 1975 to the present day, Invisible Cities has resonated within urban studies and architecture which, like Calvino, foreground cities as dynamic places of continuous exchange and translation. Kłos furthermore provides detailed analysis of the ways in which the changing paratext of Calvino’s book reflects the historical moment and the visual codes that are co-determined by the historical context. The domesticating translation strategy is then analysed, ranging from examples on food to architecture; Kłos shows how the translation brings the book closer to the known world of Polish readers of the time and how it thereby neither fully does justice to Calvino’s text, nor reflects globalisation and changes in Polish society since 1975. More current engagements with Invisible Cities are shown in the last section on (extra-)literary rewritings of Calvino’s book.
